From the Associated Press (11:29 a.m.):
COUNCIL BLUFFS, Iowa (AP) – Police in western Iowa have arrested a former high school math teacher accused of writing and planting notes threatening gun violence at the school. Council Bluffs police say in a news release that 37-year-old Katrina Phelan of Council Bluffs turned herself in to police on Wednesday after an arrest warrant charging her with three counts of making terroristic threats were issued for her. Police say Phelan admitted in an interview with detectives that she had written the four notes found over two weeks in November and that she had done so to try to show that the school is not a safe place. The school district says she is no longer employed there.
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) – Iowa hospitalizations from the coronavirus have reached a high for this year with 721 people being treated in hospitals. The last time hospitalizations reached that level was mid-December of 2020 when the state was coming down from the historic peak of COVID-19 activity in November. Hospitalizations peaked at more than 1,500 patients in mid-November 2020. Iowa Department of Public Health data released Wednesday indicates 10 children age 11 or younger are in the hospital. All are unvaccinated. An additional unvaccinated child between ages 12 and 17 is hospitalized. The state also confirmed 91 additional deaths in the past week, with some dating back to mid-September. Iowa officials report a total of 7,445 COVID-19 deaths.
IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP) – A 30-year-old Iowa City man cursed a judge and threatened the mother of his victims as he was being sentenced to life in prison without parole for sexually assaulting two young girls. Jorge Maldonado was sentenced Monday for the abuse of girls who were ages 9 and 12 when the abuse occurred in 2019. Testimony during his trial indicated that Maldonado threatened to kill the girls and their mother if they told anyone. He was convicted in September of four counts of first-degree sexual abuse and one count of second-degree sexual abuse.
WATERLOO, Iowa (AP) – A jury has convicted a woman of two counts of first-degree murder for the 2018 arson deaths of another woman and her 9-year-old son. The Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier reports that 45-year-old Denise Susanna O’Brien was convicted Tuesday in the deaths of 32-year-old Ashley Smith and her son, 9-year-old Jaykwon Sallis. The charges stemmed from an April 22, 2018, house fire that prosecutors say O’Brien started on the home’s back steps because she was angry that her boyfriend had spent the night with another woman in the house. Three others escaped the fire, including Smith’s then 12-year-old daughter. O’Brien faces a mandatory term of life in prison when she’s sentenced at a later date.
CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa (AP) – Former television news anchor Tiffany O’Donnell has been elected mayor of Cedar Rapids. O’Donnell garnered 68% of the vote to businesswoman Amara Andrews’ 32% in Tuesday’s runoff election. The runoff was triggered when no candidate reached a majority 50% of the vote in the Nov. 2 general election. O’Donnell will take office in January at the end of incumbent Mayor Brad Hart’s term. O’Donnell is a former news anchor for television station KGAN and is chief executive of Iowa-based women’s leadership group Women Lead Change.
OMAHA, Neb. (AP) – A new monthly survey of business leaders in nine Midwest and Plains states shows the region’s economy remains healthy, and overall confidence in the economy over the next six months has improved. But about half of supply managers surveyed expect supply chain disruptions to get worse for the first six months of 2022. Firms reported that transportation issues such as trucking, air and rail delays were the greatest factors accounting for supply chain disruptions. The overall index for November of the Creighton University Mid-America Business Conditions released Wednesday fell to 60.2 from October’s 65.2. Any score above 50 on the survey’s indexes suggests growth. The monthly survey covers Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma and South Dakota.
