Police say a woman and three children all escaped injury when their Waterloo house was hit by gunfire early yesterday morning. The shooting happened just before 6 a.m. Police who arrived on the scene found several bullet holes on the east side of the house. 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.
An Evansdale family came home to find black smoke coming from the basement and the rest of their home yesterday afternoon. Multiple fire crews responded just after noon to the house fire in the 33-hundred block of Lafayette Street. Officials are unsure of the exact cause of the fire, which caused significant smoke damage, but no injuries were reported.
Armed burglars broke into a Waterloo house Sunday evening while the resident was there. It happened just before 6:30 p.m. in the 15-hundred block of Forest Ave. A man was home when three males forced their way inside the residence. Police say one of them pulled out a handgun. The burglars rummaged through the house and took the man’s phone and a pair of shoes before leaving. Investigation into the incident continues.
State health officials say for the first time in more than a year, fewer than 100 people are currently hospitalized in Iowa with COVID-19. Of the 95 patients hospitalized, 22 were in intensive care and 10 were on ventilators. State data shows more than 371,400 Iowans have tested positive for the virus since the outbreak began last year, and 6,055 have died from coronavirus.
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. 15-year-old Rylon Cook of Osceola died from his injuries over the weekend. Authorities had previously said that 15-year-old Brooklynn Eggers and 15-year-old Gavin Werner, both from Murray, Iowa, had died at the scene of the collision around 4:30 Thursday afternoon at a railroad crossing just east of Murray in rural south-central Iowa. The 16-year-old driver of the pickup truck remained hospitalized in serious condition at last report.
A vigil for 11-year-old Xavior Harrelson, missing from his Poweshiek County home since Thursday, was held last night outside the county courthouse in Montezuma. Harrelson was last seen at about 11:00 a.m. on Thursday in Montezuma, wearing a red t-shirt, blue pajama pants, and black high-top shoes. He has brown hair and blue eyes, and is about 4′8″ tall and weighs 100 pounds. Montezuma residents are being asked to check their own properties and surveillance systems. Anyone with any information related to the disappearance is asked to call the Poweshiek County Sheriff’s Office. Some 500 volunteers and law enforcement personnel searched the area on Sunday.
Nevada lawmakers have passed a bill aiming to make that state the first to weigh in on the 2024 presidential primary contests. The move yesterday upends decades of political tradition and is likely to prompt pushback from Iowa and New Hampshire—currently the first-in-the-nation states. Nevada’s bill still needs to be approved by Democrat Gov. Steve Sisolak to become law, and also needs backing of the national parties.
A Des Moines woman received two 25-year sentences to be served concurrently for hitting two young people with her vehicle in December 2019 because of the color of their skin. 43-year-old Nicole Poole Franklin was sentenced last week. She admitted to state charges of attempted murder after she hit a 14-year-old girl who is Latina, and a 12-year-old boy who is black. She also yelled racial and ethnic slurs at a gas station employee, and told police she was schizophrenic and had smoked meth hours before the attacks. Franklin will still be sentenced in August on two federal hate crime convictions related to the attacks.
