MANHATTAN, Kan. (AP) — A Kansas man has been arrested in his wife’s stabbing death in Mississippi.
Riley County police took 34-year-old Edward Alexander Broom, of Manhattan, into custody Tuesday on a warrant for extradition to Leflore County, Mississippi. He was indicted there Monday on a capital murder charge in the death of his wife, 29-year-old Lakeyla Broom.
It wasn’t immediately known if he had an attorney.
Lakeyla Broom was found dead in her Greenwood, Mississippi, home after a man called 911 saying he had been tied up and stabbed.
Police found Edward Broom tied up on a bed and his wife’s body on the floor next to the bed according to Greenwood Police Chief Ray Moore.
Moore said authorities believe the crime scene was staged. Broom moved to Kansas after his wife’s death.
The Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration in Junction City will pay tribute to the Buffalo Soldiers this year.
Larry Hicks speaking at the 2014 Martin Luther King Celebration
Larry Hicks, Celebration Committee Member explained that Junction City is fortunate to have two Buffalo Soldiers still living in the community.
“One of them is Retired Master Sergeant Nolan Self, and the other is Retired First Sergeant Albert Curley,” said Hicks.
“We thought this was a very appropriate way in order to honor both Mr. Self and Mr. Curley for the service they gave to this nation in that capacity as Buffalo Soldiers.”
The celebrations keynote speaker will be Col. Andrew Cole, Fort Riley Garrison Commander. It will begin at 10 a.m. on the 18th and will be held at the C.L. Hoover Opera House.
The Junction City High School Blue Jay marching band is planning to try something new in 2017.
Instead of a bowl trip the band has been invited to participate in the National Memorial Day Parade on May 29, 2017 in Washington D.C.
Band Director T. J. Taylor said the band was nominated by Congressman Tim Huelskamp and Senator Jerry Moran. “It’s a big deal. Goes down Constitution Avenue and we’re pretty excited about it. This is the 2017 National Memorial Day Parade.”
Taylor confirmed information is being gathered for the USD 475 Board of Education, so approval can be obtained for the trip. Once that is achieved fundraising can begin, with the cost estimated at about $1,000 per person.
During their trip to Washington D.C. the band will be able to perform in two concerts, and do some sight-seeing in the nation’s capitol.
In recent years the band has traveled to a college football bowl game every other year, but in May of 2017 will try something new. JCHS band students that would be eligible to make the trip would come from the current 8th grade classes, plus current freshmen, sophomores, and juniors at the high school.
Despite receiving a great bid for the northwest inceptor sewer relocation project at K-18 and US-77 Highway the City Commission has put off awarding that contract as well as an agreement for inspection and testing of that project.
Due to the construction of a diamond interchange at K-18 and US-77 Highway scheduled later this year by the Kansas Department of Transportation, the inceptor sewer must be relocated. KDOT has agreed to help pay for that project, but what the split amount will be hasn’t been determined at this point.
Allen Dinkel, City Manager explained that the City’s share has been between 37 percent or as low as 14 percent, but it keeps changing.
“Of course on this size of a project, when it’s over a $2 million bid, every one percent means $20,000 to the local city dollar spent,” said Dinkel. “It’s our interest to get it driven down.”
Dinkel said that the local consultants feel the city share should be closer to the 14 percent range and the last word he had received from KDOT was in the 24 percent range, but that same KDOT representative had quoted him 37 percent just last week.
“It’s trying to narrow that down and get the different departments at KDOT to talk to each other and drive that price down.”
The City does have a bid from Nowak Construction they would like to move forward with, but they first need to know the City’s share of the project. They have 60 days to approve the bid from Nowak Construction.
Junction City, KS – Chelsea Willems, kindergarten teacher at Ware Elementary School and Allie Ronnebaum, 6th grade social studies teacher at Fort Riley Middle School were selected from Region 1 to receive the prestigious Kansas 2016 Horizon Award for distinguished educators who have completed one year of teaching.
Chelsea and Allie were notified of this honor when they received a surprise phone call from Kansas Commissioner of Education, Randy Watson.
The award is sponsored by the Kansas State Department of Education and the Kansas Cable Telecommunications Association. The program identifies exemplary educators who perform in a way that distinguishes them as outstanding, and who have completed one year of teaching in pre-kindergarten through 12th grade. A total of 32 teachers across the state were honored with the award this year.
Willems & Ronnebaum will be recognized at the Kansas Exemplary Educators Network annual conference in February.
Allie received her Bachelor of Science from Kansas State University in 2014 and will complete her Master’s Degree from Ft. Hays State University. Chelsea received her Bachelor of Science in Elementary Ed at Kansas State University in 2014.
The Flint Hills Metropolitan Planning Organization (FHMPO) has released the region’s first long-range transportation plan, the Flint Hills Transportation Plan (FHTP) for public review and comment. The FHTP is the product of an extensive two-year process to:
Establish regional transportation goals;
Recognize transportation needs and issues in the region; and
Identify multimodal transportation projects to achieve established goals and address needs.
The complete FHTP document and appendices are available on the FHMPO website. Hard copies of the draft document are available at the locations listed here.
Any comments should be submitted by email to FHMPO@FlintHillsRegion.org or by mail to the PO Box listed below, no later than Wednesday, February 3, 2016.
Geary Community Hospital officials have announced that Cori Ondrashek, LPN, is the January Employee of the Month at GCH. Ondrashek works as a nurse in the medical office of Dr. Todd Frieze at the hospital.
Ondrashek has worked at GCH for 10 years.
( l-r ) Joe Stratton, Chief Executive Officer, Geary Community Hospital; Cori Ondrashek, LPN, Dr. Frieze’s Clinic; Brad Meier, Nurse Manager, Practice Management Department.
The Kansas Highway Patrol has identified the fatality victim in a two-vehicle accident at U.S. 77 Highway and the 12th Street entrance to the city of Milford Tuesday morning.
KHP said the fatality victim was Gina M. Wertz, 31, Milford. She was traveling eastbound on 12th street in a Chevrolet Impala when her vehicle failed to yield the right of way at a stop sign to a southbound Toyota Tacoma driven by Cory I. Pettit, Clay Center on U.S. 77. Pettit’s vehicle hit the vehicle driven by Wertz on the driver’s side.
Pettit was injured and transported to Geary Community Hospital in Junction City for treatment.
KHP reported that Pettit was using a seat belt and Wertz was not. The accident was reported at 7:23 a.m. on Tuesday.
For the fourth consecutive month area temperatures were above normal,
again, well above normal. The wet, El Nino influenced weather pattern that
appeared in November continued on into December providing abundant
moisture that was fortunately, mainly rain.
The average daily high during December was 46.5, 5.5 degrees above
normal. The average overnight low was 29.0, 7.8 degrees above normal.
This gave us a monthly mean temperature of 37.8, 6.7 degrees above
normal. While it wasn´t the warmest December on record, it will go into the
record books as the fourth warmest December on record! The warmest
December was in 1957 when we had a monthly mean temperature of 40.2.
The coldest December on record was in 1983 when we had a frigid monthly
mean temperature of 13.6. That December an arctic cold front settled into
the region, coupled with abundant snow on the ground, it got cold and it
stayed cold. Right through Christmas it was below zero for 9 straight nights,
reaching as cold as -18 degrees. We went through a 72 hour period where
the temperature never got above zero. Finally on Christmas Eve day it rose
to 1 above and on Christmas Day we hit a balmy 17 degrees! Six years later,
1989, we experienced a similar pre-Christmas Arctic plunge and recorded
our all time coldest temperature of 21 degrees below zero. Quite a difference
from December 2015! There were four temperature records set in
December. The high of 66 on the 9th broke the old record high for that date
of 65 set in 1990. The overnight lows of 46 on the 9th, 42 on the 11th and 49
on the 22nd all broke new record high low temperatures for those dates.
Wet weather continued to grace the state during December. A big rain event
mid month doubled our monthly normal rainfall. Threats of a large snow
storm at the end of the month evaporated to less than an inch of snow as the
weather pattern moved further east and south bringing the area cold
weather, wind and not much more. Average December precipitation is 1.02
inches, which is typically our second driest month of the year. Junction City
recived 3.0″ and Milford Lake 3.24 inches. That made December 2015 our
third wettest December on record. The wettest was 2007, the year of the big
ice storm, when 3.88 inches of precipitation saturated and encased the area.
The second wettest December was in 2011 when 3.80 inches of rain fell. The
driest December on record was in 1976 when no measurable precipitation
was recorded. Snowfall this winter has pretty much been a no-show, at least
so far. 0.7 inches was recorded the end of December giving us the only
measurable snowfall to date. Normal for December is 3.7 inches and normal
snowfall season to date is 4.7 inches.
2015 will go down as a warmer and wetter than normal year. Yet most people
will probably remember it as a mild year. Eight of 12 months of the year were
warmer than normal. However, two of those four cooler than normal months
were our two hottest months of the year, July and August. February and May
were the two other months with below normal temperatures. The average
temperature for 2015 was 56.0 degrees, 1.7 degrees above average. An
ongoing trend has been daytime highs being slightly above average yet
overnight temperatures being significantly above average.
In 2015 we never had a temperature of 100 or higher or below 0. The highest
temperature for the year was 99 (June 20th and July 13th) and the lowest
was 3 degrees (January 5th, 9th, and February 1st). That gave us an annual
temperature extreme of only 96 degrees, the second smallest average
temperature extreme since reliable records were kept (1949). 1992 had a 95
degree temperature extreme (5 to 100). This is only the third time since 1949
that we´ve had a temperature extreme of under 100 degrees. Long term
average temperature extreme is 110 degrees. We have failed to go below
zero 11 times, however 3 of those were in the past four years. Seven years
since 1949 we have not exceeded 100 degrees during the course of the
calendar year.
Rainfall in 2015 seemed to be feast or famine. The first three months of the
year we received less than half of normal precipitation. The next three
months we were at 125% of normal, including over ten inches in the month of
June alone! From July through September we were back to 75% of average
and for the last three months of the year we were at 160%. Officially for the
year we received 35.85 inches of rain at Milford Lake and 38.89 inches of
rain in Junction City. Average annual precipitation is 33.15 inches. While the
10.23 inches of rain in May was well above normal, it was also well below the
record set in 1995 when 17.23 inches of rain fell. In fact, May of 2015 only
comes in at #8 for the all time wettest month of May (with reliable rainfall data
going back to 1931).
The snowfall season is considered October through May. While this season´s
snowfall totals are running well below normal, so did snowfall for the
2014-2015 season. Last winter we only received 7.2 inches of snow with no
event providing over 2 inches of snow. Average for our area is 18 inches of
snow for the season.
-30-
—–
Chuck Otte cotte@ksu.edu
County Extension Agent, Ag & Natural Resources
Rain is in the forecast tonight through Thursday evening, according to the National Weather Service.
Today Areas of drizzle. Cloudy, with a high near 41. South wind 13 to 16 mph, with gusts as high as 24 mph.
Tonight Areas of drizzle with a chance of rain after midnight. Cloudy, with a low around 37. South southeast wind 8 to 11 mph.
Thursday Rain likely. Cloudy, with a high near 44. South southeast wind 7 to 9 mph becoming east northeast in the afternoon. Chance of precipitation is 70%. Thursday Night Rain likely before midnight, then snow likely. Cloudy, with a low around 32. Northeast wind 7 to 10 mph becoming north northwest after midnight. Chance of precipitation is 60%.
Friday A chance of rain and snow. Cloudy, with a high near 38. North northwest wind 10 to 14 mph, with gusts as high as 20 mph. Chance of precipitation is 30%.
