Gazette Daily News Briefing, March 26
This is Stephen Schmidt from the Gazette digital news desk and I’m here with your update for Friday, March 26th.
The rain from Thursday will continue into Friday. According to the National Weather Service, it will be cloudy with a high of 55 degrees in the Cedar Rapids area on Friday. There will be an 80 percent chance of rain throughout the day. The forecast does have the rain stopping by Saturday, with the temperature also picking up a bit in time for the weekend as well.
Two Linn County residents — one a husband, father and volunteer firefighter and the other a nurse, avid gardener and aunt — are being remembered after an attack claimed their lives Tuesday at the Anamosa State Penitentiary.
Correctional Officer Robert McFarland, 46, of Ely, and registered nurse Lorena Schulte, 50, of Cedar Rapids, were bludgeoned to death with hammers by two inmates in a failed attempt to escape, investigators said.
The suspects, Michael Dutcher, 28, and Thomas Woodard, 39, each have been charged with two counts of first-degree murder, second-degree kidnapping and attempted murder. They made their initial court appearances Thursday afternoon through a virtual hearing from the Iowa State Penitentiary in Fort Madison, where they were transferred after the grisly attack using tools checked out from the prison under the ruse of doing repair work.
The night Tyler S. Lee drove the wrong way on Interstate 380, crashing into a northbound sport utility vehicle, his blood-alcohol level was twice the legal limit, according to a criminal complaint.
The complaint, filed earlier this month in Linn County District Court, said Lee’s blood-alcohol level was 0.164 after the crash that killed 23-year-old David Nguyen in the other vehicle. Other passengers were injured in the accident and required treatment.
The criminal complaint said responding officers found Lee, sitting “behind the wheel of a Ford pickup truck,” displaying “obvious signs of insobriety.” He now faces two vehicular homicide charges — one related to driving while drunk and the other for reckless driving. He also faces two counts of causing serious injury by motor vehicle.
Lee was also out on bond at the time of the accident in connection to a fatal shooting in Illinois.
Iowa Republicans continued a GOP-pressure campaign Thursday, casting a U.S. House review of an incredibly close congressional election in Iowa’s 2nd District as a partisan power grab to pad Democrats’ narrow 219-211 majority in the House.
The news conference held by Republicans Thursday featured Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds, Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate, and the head of the Iowa Republican Party. Jeff Kaufmann. You get the impression they may be worried about the result of the review, as the press conference was in addition to the process being already denounced by Republicans in Congress, both Iowa Senators, and, of course, the candidate who was narrowly declared the winner, Marionette Miller-Meeks and her campaign. Miller-Meeks was seated as the provisional winner after the results were certified, her current lead stands at just 6 votes.
Her challenger, Rita Hart, argues that 22 ballots were legally cast in the district but not counted, because of errors by election workers. Had the 22 ballots been tallied, Hart argues she would have won by nine votes.
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