OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — The U.S. Department of Agriculture says workers on farms and at meatpacking plants who were severely affected by the coronavirus pandemic will be eligible to get grants of up to $600 per person as part of a new $700 million aid program. The grants announced Tuesday are intended to defray some of the costs workers bore as many of them bought their own protective equipment or took unpaid leave as the virus tore through their industries even as they were required to keep showing up for work. The United Food and Commercial Workers union estimates that at least 132 meatpacking workers died of COVID-19 and at least 22,000 workers have been infected or exposed to the virus.
DAVENPORT, Iowa (AP) — A 27-year-old Davenport man has been charged with first-degree murder in the shooting death of an Illinois man. Demarco Darrelle Gray Jr. is accused of killing 25-year-old Jeremiah Earl Martinez-Brown, of East Moline, Illinois. Gray was arrested on Tuesday. Davenport authorities said officers responded to a report of shots fired on Sunday afternoon and found Martinez-Brown wounded. He died later at a hospital. Gray is currently being held in the Scott County Jail without bond.
IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP) — The Iowa Board of Regents has approved a plan by the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics to build a $230 million hospital in North Liberty, coming a week after it was approved by a state council over dozens of objections. The Gazette reports that the regents voted unanimously to allow the health system to build the hospital as part of a nearly $400 million complex the system argues it desperately needed to relieve pressure at its other facilities. Opponents have said the planned 300,000-square-foot, four-story, 48-bed hospital will run community hospitals in the area out of business.
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Police in Des Moines have arrested a 19-year-old man they say accidentally shot his 14-year-old brother in the face with one of two handguns he had stolen. Television station WHO 13 reports that the shooting happened Saturday afternoon, when officers were called to a home and found the younger teen with a gunshot wound to the face. The boy was taken to a hospital with injuries to an eye that aren’t believed to be life-threatening. Police tell station KCCI that the victim’s older brother, Titan Chaney, was handling a gun when it fired, hitting his brother. Police say Chaney’s girlfriend, 1-month-old son and another brother who is 16 were also in the room when the gun went off.
HAMPTON, Iowa (AP) — Police in north-central Iowa have arrested a man suspected of beating a nearly 2-year-old boy to death last year. The Hampton Police Department reports that Jhonny Junior Salvatore Suarez Rivera was arrested Sunday in the 2020 death of 23-month-old boy. Police say Rivera is charged with first-degree murder and child endangerment resulting in death. Investigators say police were called after the child was taken to a Franklin County hospital on Aug. 1, 2020, and pronounced dead about an hour later. An autopsy showed the boy had died of blunt force injuries. Police say an investigation showed the boy had been in Rivera’s care when he was fatally injured. Rivera is being held in the Franklin County Jail.
GUTTENBERG, Iowa (AP) — The Iowa State Patrol says a motorcyclist was killed in the northeastern corner of Iowa when he was hit by a kayak that had fallen from a trailer. The Telegraph Herald reports that the crash happened Sunday morning on a county road in Allamakee County. Investigators say 75-year-old John Thein, of Guttenberg, was northbound on the road just before 11 a.m. and was approaching a southbound pickup truck pulling a trailer loaded with kayaks when one of the kayaks fell from the trailer. The loose kayak hit Thein’s motorcycle, causing the crash that killed Thein. The patrol continues to investigate the fatal crash.
