A fight on Thursday, September 25th at Council Bluffs Abraham Lincoln High School ended with a 17-year-old student being sent to the hospital in critical condition. The Council Bluffs Police Department reports that a Council Bluffs School Resource Officer responded to a fight between two students at the school at approximately 7:45am Thursday.  During the course of the fight that occurred in a common area just outside the cafeteria, 17-year-old Dakota Escritt fell to the ground, striking his head on the tiled floor, which rendered him unconscious.  Staff intervened in the fight and rendered aid and upon arrival the officer requested ambulance assistance due to the serious nature of the injuries.

Escritt was transported to Mercy Hospital in Council Bluffs and later transferred to Children’s Hospital in Omaha, where he remains in Critical condition at the time of this report Friday evening.

The other student involved in the fight was identified as 16-year-old Gregary Teer whom was arrested after the incident.  Teer was charged with Assault Causing Serious Injury, a class D felony and was later released into the custody of his guardian.

Detectives are still working with school officials on the case and anyone with information regarding the incident are asked to contact the Council Bluffs Police Department, Criminal Investigation Division at 712-328-4765.

The Red Oak Police Department responded to a fight that occurred at the South Casey’s Store on Broadway Street in Red Oak around 5:00pm Friday (9/26) afternoon.  After investigation officers arrested 23-year-old Michael Eugene Sickels of Red Oak for Serious Assault which is a Serious Misdemeanor.  Sickels was taken to the Montgomery County Correctional Facility and is being held on $1,000 bond.

An Iowa State University research team is using a 400 thousand dollar ($400,000) federal grant to improve a physical activity tracking program for kids. ISU Professor of Kinesiology Greg Welk says the online tool provides a more accurate picture of how much exercise kids actually get each day. “Schools might say, ‘well, we provide PE and recess, and so therefore we’ve given kids 30 minutes a day.’ But, the reality is kids might not actually be getting that much physical activity, those are just opportunities they have,” Welk says. Youth Activity Profile is the online system that tracks a child’s time spent exercising or at play. Welk says the measurement tool focuses student’s patterns of physical exertion to encourage them to get up and moving. “Most schools measure fitness in children and kids are used to doing fitness assessments and those provide a lot of value. But, a key need in physical education is a way to help kids to learn about their physical activity habits because physical activity is how you eventually change your fitness,” Welk says. The online tracker is filled out once a semester by students. The students report whether they walk or bike to school and answer other questions about their amount of physical activity. Then, the researchers pair that information with data collected from physical fitness monitors worn by a sample group of students. Health and fitness experts generally recommend children get at least 60 minutes of physical activity a day.