One of the Tyson Foods managers fired for betting on how many workers would contract COVID-19 at their Iowa pork plant says the office pool was spontaneous and intended to boost morale. Don Merschbrock, a former night manager at the plant in Waterloo, said he was speaking out in an attempt to show that the seven fired supervisors are “not the evil people” that Tyson has portrayed them to be. Arkansas-based Tyson announced the terminations of the Waterloo managers on Dec. 16, weeks after the betting allegation surfaced in wrongful death lawsuits filed by the families of four workers who died of COVID-19.
Coronavirus-related hospitalizations and admissions ticked higher in Iowa Monday after several days of decline. The state reported no additional deaths in the previous 24 hours as of yesterday morning. That leaves Iowa’s death toll at 3,745. State data shows 540 new coronavirus cases were reported in the previous 24 hours.
Two people are dead and another person is injured after a wrong-way, head-on crash late Saturday on Interstate 80 near Walcott. The Iowa State Patrol said an auto was traveling eastbound in the westbound lanes when it struck another vehicle. The driver of the wrong-way vehicle, 30-year-old Amanda Countryman of Compton, Illinois, was killed, along with 28-year-old Connor Reisenbigler of New York City. The driver of the vehicle that was struck, 27-year-old John Martin Keane of the Bronx, New York, was hospitalized. The accident remains under investigation.
An Illinois man has been charged with fraud for filing a false claim on a vacant house in Cedar Rapids after the August derecho. Federal prosecutors say Tavonte Donnell Stewart improperly received almost six thousand dollars in aid from the Federal Emergency Management Agency after the derecho. Stewart was one of 16 people who applied for assistance related to the same property. When officials contacted the firm that owns the home, the property manager said it was vacant at the time of the storm and only sustained minor roof damage.
The Linn County Attorney’s Office is launching a new program in 2021 that aims to give low-level marijuana users a chance to avoid significant punishment. The Marijuana Diversion Program was announced yesterday by Linn County Attorney Jerry Vander Sanden. The program is designed for first time offenders found in possession of a user-quantity amount of marijuana. Linn County prosecutors will weigh multiple factors when considering whether to recommend a defendant to participate in the program. Participants must complete a treatment and community service component as well as other diversion program requirements. Upon successful completion of the program, the case will be dismissed and the Linn County Attorney’s Office will recommend expungement of the arrest and charge from the participant’s record. The office says it’s creating this program to balance the need to enforce laws with preventing a suspect from having the incident follow them for a long time.
The UNI women’s basketball team’s conference season will be delayed a week…the Missouri Valley Conference announced yesterday afternoon that the Panthers pair of games in Cedar Falls Friday and Saturday against Missouri State will be postponed due to a high number of COVID-19 cases in the Bears program. UNI will now start league play on January 7-8 at Valparaiso.
Council Bluffs Police say a Nebraska man was found dead after his vehicle drove off of Interstate 480 in Iowa near the Missouri River. Police said 50-year-old Stephen Johnson of Omaha was found shortly after 10 a.m. Saturday after his vehicle came to rest against a tree. Council Bluffs Police said it wasn’t immediately clear why Johnson’s vehicle left the road.
An man has been sentenced to life in prison for killing his grandmother in 2018. District Judge Zachary Hindman sentenced Eliot Stowe last week in connection with the beating death of 66-year-old Cheryl Stowe at her rural home in Castana in June of that year. The sentence was mandatory for first-degree murder. Prosecutors say Cheryl Stowe’s body was found wrapped in a rug and duct tape at the edge of a cornfield near her home a day after her supervisor had asked authorities to check on her.
A Clinton County man is accused of lying on his insurance claim about a fire. 38-year-old Luke McDermott of Delmar has been charged with Insurance Fraud by Presenting False Information, a Class D Felony. McDermott was arrested last week and released with a promise to appear in court at a later date. Investigators launched their probe in February, after they say McDermott lied about his claims and submitted a document with intentional falsehoods in an effort to be compensated after a fire. The Iowa Insurance Division’s Fraud Bureau led the investigation.
