From the Associated Press:
Police in Waterloo say a woman and three children all escaped injury when their Waterloo house was hit by gunfire early Monday. The Courier reports that the shooting happened just before 6 a.m. Monday. Police who arrived on the scene found several bullet holes on the east side of the house. Police said the woman and three children were all inside the home at the time of the shooting, but no one was injured. Police said they currently have no suspects in the case.
State health officials say for the first time in more than a year, fewer than 100 people are hospitalized in Iowa with COVID-19. Des Moines television station WHO 13 reports that the latest numbers released on the state’s coronavirus tracking site show 95 hospitalized with the virus in the state. That’s the fewest patients hospitalized at one time since April 3, 2020. In the 24 hours prior to 10 a.m. Monday, 13 people were hospitalized due to COVID-19. Of the patients hospitalized, 22 were in intensive care and 10 were on ventilators. The site shows more than 371,400 in Iowa have tested positive for the virus since the outbreak began last year, and 6,055 have died from the virus.
The drama surrounding a sudden vacancy in the job overseeing elections in one of Iowa’s most populous counties has voting experts concerned about what it could signal about the future of voting in America. Roxanna Moritz’s resignation last month, and a series of partisan moves since then, are signs that an office long viewed as quiet and nonpartisan is now fair game in the political fight about trust in the nation’s elections. Democrat Moritz stepped down as auditor in Scott County after months of tension that degenerated into personal attacks and threats of violence. Iowa Democrats criticized the county board for appointing a Republican replacement.
Several hundred volunteers joined law enforcement officials in searching for a missing 10-year-old east-central Iowa boy. Xavior Harrelson was last seen around 11 a.m. Thursday on his bike near his home on the north end of Montezuma. Mitch Mortvedt with the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation said areas around the family’s home were being searched Sunday. One of the volunteers, Dena Bear of Barnes City, said she came out to help because having a missing child is a mom’s worst nightmare and she has two kids in their teens.
A third teenager has died after a freight train hit the pickup truck he was riding in with three other teens on Thursday, and the fourth teen remains hospitalized. Iowa State Patrol spokesman Sgt. Alex Dinkla said Saturday that Rylon Cook, 15, of Osceola had died from his injuries. Authorities had previously said that Brooklynn Eggers, 14, and Gavin Werner, 15, who were both from Murray, Iowa, had died at the scene of the crash in rural south-central Iowa. Dinkla said the 16-year-old driver of the pickup truck remained hospitalized in serious condition. The crash happened around 4:30 p.m. on Thursday at a railroad crossing just east of Murray.
