From the Associated Press (11:20 a.m.):
CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa (AP) – A Coralville man has pleaded guilty to vehicular homicide and other counts for a fatal 2020 crash police say he caused while under the influence of illegal drugs. The Gazette reports that 32-year-old Bryce James Wagehoft pleaded guilty last week to reckless vehicular homicide and being a habitual offender in the April 2020 death of 43-year-old Dawn Elaine Detweiler Stout, of Cedar Rapids. Wagehoft also pleaded Monday to a third offense of operating while intoxicated, driving while barred and possession of drug paraphernalia. Investigators say Wagehoft was speeding when he passed another vehicle on a rural road near Palo and hit Detweiler’s vehicle, killing her. Police say a toxicology report showed Wagehoft had amphetamines, marijuana and opiates in his system.
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) – Police have announced a second arrest in the 2020 shooting death of a Des Moines woman. Police said in a news release that 31-year-old Derrick Glenn Smith Jr. was arrested Tuesday and charged with first-degree murder and intimidation with a dangerous weapon in the killing of 33-year-old Catherine Bobbitt. Police believe Smith shot Bobbitt on April 3, 2020, as she drove a vehicle just blocks southwest of the Drake University campus. Police say Smith was arrested after being released from a hospital where he was treated for wounds from a Sunday shooting in downtown Des Moines. Another suspect, Antonio Markez Hodges, was also charged last year with murder in Bobbitt’s death. He faces trial in June.
DAVENPORT, Iowa (AP) – Union leaders for workers at a Davenport defense contractor supplier say a labor strike that began last week will continue for at least another week. A representative of International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers District Lodge 6 tells the Des Moines Register that Eaton Corp. signaled company representatives won’t return to the bargaining table until March 1. The strike at the Eaton-Cobham Mission Systems factory in Davenport began Friday. It ensued after 98% of union members voted Thursday to reject a tentative agreement with the company over what union representative John Herrig said was the company’s offer of “sub-standard wages” and cuts to health care and retirement benefits.
OMAHA, Neb. (AP) – The National Weather Service is warning of bitter cold descending on several Midwest states, including Nebraska, Kansas, Iowa and parts of Missouri, as a winter storm system dropped some snow, sleet and freezing rain on those areas early Tuesday. The weather service has issued a wind chill warning for much of western and northern Nebraska until noon Wednesday, with sub-zero temperatures and high winds combining to send the wind chill plummeting to a dangerous 40 below zero in some areas – including Chadron, Alliance and Broken Bow – by early Wednesday morning. Much of Kansas could see wind chills as low as 20 below, while most of Iowa and a northwest segment of Missouri were warned to expect wind chills around 15 below.
WASHINGTON (AP) – Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds will deliver the Republican response to President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address on March 1. GOP congressional leaders made the announcement Tuesday. Reynolds is being praised by Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell as fighting COVID “without forgetting common sense” by protecting Iowans’ health and their rights at the same time. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy says “disastrous decision-making in Washington” has been offset by real leadership in states across the country, and cited Iowa as an example. Reynolds is the 43rd governor of Iowa and has served since May of 2017.
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) – Iowa House Republicans have approved a bill that prohibits transgender girls from participating in girls sports moving the direction of about 10 other Republican-run state legislatures in passing the controversial measure. Opponents say the bill which passed on party lines 55 to 39 is discriminatory and state-sanctioned bullying of transgender children while supporters say it’s the only way to protect girls from being dominated in sports competition by males who identify as females. Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds has supported the idea. The Iowa Senate has not yet voted on its slightly different version of the measure.
