(Radio Iowa) – Forty-three-year-old Kyle Ricke has entered a written plea of not guilty to first-degree murder in the shooting death of Algona Police Officer Kevin Cram last month.

Online court records show a pretrial conference has been scheduled for November 14th in Kossuth County District Court. If there are no delays in the case, a trial has been scheduled to begin on December 12th. Ricke is accused of shooting Cram, who was trying to serve an arrest warrant on the Algona man, and then fleeing the area around 8 p-m on September 13th. Ricke was apprehended near Sleepy Eye, Minnesota later that evening after an extensive search that involved law enforcement agencies from Iowa and Minnesota.