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KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — A former coach and a choreographer for a high school dance team in Kansas are denying allegations that they prevented a black student from performing during an event because her skin was "too dark" and clashed with the costumes. Former student Camille Sturdivant leveled the accusations in a lawsuit against the Blue Valley School District, saying she faced racial discrimination and was ostracized after complaining about how she was treated before graduating in 2018. Choreographer Kevin Murakami, who isn't named in the l...
KANSAS CITY, Kan. (AP) — The federal public defender's office has asked for the release of 67 inmates from a Kansas federal prison and plans to seek freedom for more than 150 others because authorities secretly recorded conversations between prisoners and their attorneys that are supposed to be private. Most of the federal inmates are being held on drug or firearms-related cases. The practice first came to light in a prison contraband case during which criminal defense lawyers discovered the privately run Leavenworth Detention Center was r...
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — The captain of a tourist boat that sank in southwest Missouri and killed 17 people, including nine members of an Indiana family, didn't tell passengers to put on flotation devices or prepare them to abandon ship even after waves crashed into the boat during a severe storm, according to an indictment released Thursday. The federal indictment shows Kenneth Scott McKee faces 17 counts of misconduct, negligence or inattention to duty by a ship's officer resulting in death. The deaths occurred after the duck boat, a r...
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — A settlement has been reached in a wrongful death lawsuit filed after a developmentally disabled Missouri man's body was found encased in concrete after he went missing from a supported living home. Rudy Veit, an attorney for the mother and sister-in-law of Carl DeBrodie, said Thursday that details of the settlement are confidential but said it provides enough money to care for DeBrodie's mother, Carolyn Summers, and to allow her to make donations to organizations that helped DeBrodie during his lifetime. DeBrodie's b...
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — Jason Kander, a rising star in Democratic politics who narrowly lost a 2016 Senate bid, dropped out of the race for mayor of Kansas City, Missouri, on Tuesday so he could get help for post-traumatic stress and depression that he said he has suffered from for more than a decade. Kander, 37, said in an announcement Tuesday that he has tried since leaving the military to ignore his symptoms but finally decided it was time to step away from politics and concentrate on becoming healthy. "So after 11 years of trying to o...
BRANSON, Mo. (AP) — "Grab the baby!" Those were the last words Tia Coleman recalls her sister-in-law yelling before the tourist boat they were on sank into a Missouri lake, killing 17 people, including nine of Coleman's family members. A huge wave hit, scattering passengers on the vessel known as a duck boat into Table Rock Lake near Branson, Coleman said. When the Indianapolis woman came up for air, she was alone. She prayed. "I said, 'Lord, please, let me get to my babies," she told reporters from her wheelchair Saturday in the lobby of a h...
BRANSON, Mo. (AP) — The country-and-western tourist town of Branson, Missouri, mourned Friday for more than a dozen sightseers who were killed when a duck boat capsized and sank in stormy weather in the deadliest such accident in almost two decades. Divers found four more bodies in Table Rock Lake, bringing the death toll to 17, including nine people from the same family and the crew member who was driving the amphibious boat. In their initial assessment, authorities blamed thunderstorms and winds that approached hurricane strength. "Branson i...
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — The father of an engineering student from India who was fatally shot in Kansas City said Tuesday that he wishes a person of interest in the killing had been arrested rather than shot to death by police, because he wants to know why the man killed his son. Kansas City Police Chief Rick Smith said the man, 25-year-old Marlin Mack, had never drawn law enforcement's attention in the Missouri city until he became a person of interest in the July 6 killing of 25-year-old Sharath Koppu during a robbery at a restaurant. P...
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — An art display that included an altered U.S. flag will be moved from an outside display on the University of Kansas campus to the school's art museum after Gov. Jeff Colyer and other Republican political candidates complained that it was disrespectful. Kansas Chancellor Doug Girod said in a statement that the display, which was part of a national art project called "Pledges of Allegiance," caused conversations on Wednesday that "generated public safety concerns for our campus community." He didn't elaborate on the s...
KANSAS CITY, Kan. (AP) — An inmate overpowered two sheriff's deputies while being transported to a Kansas City courthouse on Friday, resulting in a shooting that killed one deputy and critically wounded the other, authorities said. The suspect was also shot during the confrontation in a gated area near the Wyandotte County Courthouse in Kansas City, Kansas. Investigators said the inmate may have grabbed a weapon from one of the deputies during a struggle after he got out of a van transporting him late Friday morning. "It is very possible t...
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — More than a year after a developmentally disabled Missouri man's body was found encased in concrete, two people who are accused in a lawsuit of making him fight for their entertainment have been charged in his death, a prosecutor announced Tuesday. Sherry Paulo, 53, and Anthony R. Flores, 58, both of Fulton, were arrested and charged Tuesday with involuntary manslaughter in 61-year-old Carl DeBrodie's death. They were also charged with client neglect, felony abandonment of a corpse, and two misdemeanors of making a f...
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — A developmentally disabled Missouri man was forced to fight another man for the "amusement" of people who ran the private care home where he lived and was left to die in a bathtub, his mother has alleged in a lawsuit. Carolyn Summers, the mother of Carl DeBrodie, also alleges in the lawsuit filed Tuesday that government agencies responsible for her son didn't provide required care and didn't check on DeBrodie for months. DeBrodie's body was found in April 2017 encased in concrete in a container inside a storage area, m...
KANSAS CITY, Kan. (AP) — An assistant U.S. Attorney in Kansas declined to answer most of the questions he was asked Tuesday during a hearing to determine whether federal prosecutors improperly used secretly recorded conversations between attorneys and their clients at the privately run Leavenworth Detention Center. Scott Rask, criminal coordinator in the U.S. Attorney's office in Kansas City, Kansas, repeatedly said he was not authorized to answer questions asked by a court-appointed special master and an attorney for Federal Public Defenders a...
KANSAS CITY, Kan. (AP) — Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach violated a court order that required his office to inform certain people that they were eligible to cast a ballot while a lawsuit challenging a state law requiring proof of U.S. citizenship worked its way through the courts, a federal judge ruled Wednesday. U.S. District Judge Julie Robinson found Kobach, a conservative Republican running for Kansas governor, in contempt of court. She did not fine Kobach but ordered him to pay court costs, including attorney fees for the American C...
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens' personal attorney is asking a state House committee investigating Greitens' actions during an extramarital affair to delay the release of its findings, saying an ongoing criminal investigation is likely to uncover information that will make the report inaccurate. In a letter sent Friday to Republican Rep. Jay Barnes, chairman of the House investigatory committee, attorney Edward Dowd detailed what he said were several problems with the criminal investigation being conducted in St. Louis i...
KANSAS CITY, Kan. (AP) — The co-owner of a Kansas waterpark is devastated by the decapitation death of a 10-year-old boy on a massive water slide and is intent on finding out exactly why the ride malfunctioned, his attorney said Thursday. Jeff Henry, co-owner of Texas-based Schlitterbahn Waterparks and Resorts, pleaded not guilty in Wyandotte County District Court to second-degree murder and other charges in the 2016 death of Caleb Schwab on the 17-story Verruckt water slide at a Schlitterbahn water park in Kansas City, Kansas. Henry s...
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — A Kansas waterslide hyped as the world's highest was a "deadly weapon" that had already injured more than a dozen people before a 10-year-old boy was decapitated on it in 2016, according to a grand jury indictment unsealed Friday that charges the water park operator and an executive with involuntary manslaughter. Operators of the Verruckt waterslide at the Schlitterbahn Waterpark in Kansas City, Kansas, also knew that the raft Caleb Schwab and two women used during the deadly accident was prone to go faster and become a...
KANSAS CITY, Kan. (AP) — A visibly angry federal judge on Tuesday blasted Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach for his office's failure to ensure that certain voters are notified that they are eligible to vote in the upcoming election while a lawsuit over a state voting law makes its way through the courts. U.S. District Judge Julie Robinson criticized Kobach during a hearing on a motion from The American Civil Liberties Union to hold Kobach in contempt of court for not updating the state's election guide or ensuring that county election o...
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — A $1.5 billion settlement was reached in a class-action lawsuit covering tens of thousands of farmers, grain-handling facilities and ethanol plants that sued Swiss agribusiness giant Syngenta over its introduction of a genetically engineered corn seed. Lawsuits in state and federal courts challenged Syngenta's decision to introduce its modified Viptera and Duracade corn seed strains to the U.S. market for the 2011 growing season before having approval for import by China in 2014. The plaintiffs said Syngenta's d...
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — A $1.5 billion settlement was reached Monday in a class-action lawsuit covering tens of thousands of farmers, grain-handling facilities and ethanol plants that sued Swiss agribusiness giant Syngenta over its introduction of a genetically engineered corn seed. Lawsuits in state and federal courts challenged Syngenta's decision to introduce its modified Viptera and Duracade corn seed strains to the U.S. market for the 2011 growing season before having approval for import by China in 2014. The plaintiffs said Syngenta's d...
KANSAS CITY, Kan. (AP) — Some of the "handful" of noncitizens who made it onto voter registration rolls in Kansas in the last 20 years were registered because of confusion over the regulations or administrative errors, a national expert on voter fraud testified Friday in the fourth day of a trial that has grown increasingly tense. Lorraine Minnite, a professor of political science at Rutgers University, testified in a trial that could determine whether thousands of Kansas residents are allowed to vote. The American Civil Liberties Union is c...
OLATHE, Kan. (AP) — A man charged with fatally shooting an Indian immigrant last year at a suburban Kansas City bar pleaded guilty Tuesday to murder in the slaying that fanned fears of anti-immigrant violence following President Donald Trump's election. Witnesses said Adam Purinton, who is white, yelled "Get out of my country!" before firing at two men who had stopped for an after-work drink at Austin's Bar and Grill in Olathe, Kansas. Srinivas Kuchibhotla was killed in the Feb. 22, 2017, attack. His friend Alok Madasani was wounded. The m...
KANSAS CITY, Kan. (AP) — Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach defended his state's voter registration law Tuesday in federal court, claiming the measure he championed has prevented between 1,000 and 18,000 noncitizens from casting ballots. During opening statements in a federal lawsuit challenging his authority to implement the requirements, Kobach said one of his experts will testify that the higher end of that range is more likely. He argued the law, which requires people to provide documents such as a birth certificate or passport at m...
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — A Kansas father and husband who is fighting efforts to deport him to Bangladesh was taken off a plane that was flying him back to his native country and is being held at a detention center in Hawaii, his attorneys said Tuesday. Federal immigration officials put Syed Ahmed Jamal, 55, who has lived in Kansas for 30 years, on the plane Monday before an immigration panel granted a temporary stay in the case. He was taken off the flight when it stopped to refuel in Honolulu, said Rekha Sharma-Crawford, one of his a...
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — A southwest Missouri man spent his first weekend of freedom after eight years in prison visiting with family and friends and doing simple things like buying a toothbrush and finding new clothes to wear. Brad Jennings, 61, was released from prison on $250,000 bond Friday, a day after a judge overturned Jennings' 2009 conviction for killing his wife, Lisa, at the couple's home in Buffalo on Christmas Day 2006. Ice that coated the Buffalo area during the weekend didn't stop a parade of supporters from stopping by, said J...
