Gazette Daily News Briefing, July 16
This is Stephen Schmidt from the Gazette digital news desk and I’m here with your update for Friday, July 16.
After a rainy week, Friday will begin a stretch of days with no chance of rain. According to the National Weather Service it will be mostly sunny Friday with a high near 81 degrees in the Cedar Rapids area. On Friday night it will be mostly clear, with near 61 degrees.
More than 12 tornadoes carved paths across Iowa as severe storms Wednesday evening left flattened crops, broken trees and battered buildings in their wake, the National Weather Service reported Thursday.
The weather service dispatched two survey teams to assess the damage and determine how severe the tornadoes were -- one assessing Calhoun and Hamilton counties and another assessing Bremer and Butler counties. But it said more survey teams could be added.
Of the tornado reports made Thursday afternoon by the weather service -- showing the findings of some but not all of the assessments -- all were rated EF1 or lower, with maximum winds in the 86 to 110 mph range. Several were rated as unknown -- they touched down too briefly to leave significant damage. The severity scale for tornadoes goes from EF0 to EF5, which is the worst with winds of over 200 mph.
Two Iowa murder trials were prominent in the news Thursday.
On the day Cristhian Bahena Rivera had been scheduled to be sentenced after being found guilty of the murder of Mollie Tibbetts, lawyers discussed new evidence that had been presented by the defense. Assistant Attorney General Scott Brown said during a hearing that a 21-year-old man's alleged confession that he helped kill Tibbetts after she was kidnapped and held at a house used for sex trafficking wasn't credible.
“No evidence supports it. None. Zero,” Brown said.
He told the court that information about the 21-year-old from two witnesses who came forward late in Behena Rivera's trial independently of one another was inconsistent with Bahena Rivera's own courtroom account of what happened. Bahena Rivera testified that he had been kidnapped the night of the murder and forced by two men to find Tibbetts out jogging, where he was then framed for her murder. The other witnesses claimed that Tibbetts had been held at the house and was only murdered after the publicity about her disappearance grew too intense.
Back in Cedar Rapids, a jury has been selected and the murder trial will begin for Drew Blahnik.
Drew Blahnik, 34, of Cedar Rapids, is charged with first-degree murder, accused of fatally stabbing Bagley, of Walker, on Dec. 15, 2018, because Bagley had robbed a local drug dealer of drugs and money. The drug dealer, Andrew Shaw, has been accused by police of running a large marijuana operation, and he is serving time for charges separate from the murder.
Two people from Missouri died when a small plane crashed into a cornfield in Muscatine County in Eastern Iowa, authorities said.
The single-engine Piper went down Wednesday afternoon about 4 miles north of Muscatine, Sheriff Quinn Riess said.
Daniel Slack, 68, and Sharon Slack, 69, of El Dorado Springs, Mo., died in the crash.
Daniel Slack was superintendent of schools in Deerfield, Kan., from 2015 until he retired last year, KSNW-TV reported.
The Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board are investigating the cause of the crash.
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