(Jasper County, Iowa) – A head-on crash late Monday night in northwest Jasper County claimed the lives of two women. The Iowa State Patrol reports a 2018 Hyundai Elantra driven by 21-year-old Blonca Saint-Louis, of Des Moines, was traveling southbound in the northbound lanes of Highway 330 near mile-marker 3.55, when the vehicle collided with a 2012 Infinity G-37, driven by 19-year-old Mackenzie Elizabeth Guilliams, of Clinton.

Both women died upon impact. The Patrol says they were wearing their seat belts.  The crash happened at around 10:40-p.m., Monday.

The Patrol was assisted at the scene by the Jasper and Marshall County Sheriff’s Offices.

(Radio Iowa) – Iowa averages between 20 and 40 inches of snowfall every year, and whether the winter ahead will be warmer than normal or cold and brutal, the winter operations administrator of the Iowa Department of Transportation vows his crews will be ready. Craig Bargfrede says shortly after -last- winter was over, he started stockpiling the essentials, including 265-thousand tons of salt at the 100 D-O-T garages, along with mountains of sand and stacks of new snowplow blades.

The D-O-T has about a thousand full-time employees and also hires on some 500 to 600 seasonal workers every winter to tackle the challenges that lie ahead. Bargfrede says the hiring process is now underway (iowadot.gov/careers).

(Atlantic, Iowa) – Members of the Atlantic School Board will hold a Special Session, followed by a Work Session, Wednesday evening in the Achievement Center Conference Room. The Special Meeting begins at 5:30-p.m., and includes action on:

• Radio bids from three different vendors (Electronic Engineering, NishnaNet, and Wireless Universe).
• An EFR Employee & Family Resources Agreement.
• Review and approval of a Superintendent Search Firm (McPherson & Jacobsen, Ray & Associates, or HYA).

During the Board’s Work Session, they will discuss the 2023-24 Annual Review. The Board’s next REGULAR meeting is on Oct. 9th at the H.S. Media Center, beginning at 5:30-p.m.

The meeting will be viewable via YouTube.

(Radio Iowa) – Five Iowa schools, including the Nodaway Valley Middle School in Adair County,  are on the U-S Department of Education 2024 list of Blue Ribbon Schools. The schools on that list are Alta-Aurelia Middle School, Decorah High School, Nodaway Valley Middle School, Rock Run Elementary School in Iowa Falls , and the Rock Valley Elementary School.

The five Iowa schools were honored as “Exemplary High-Performing Schools”, which is measured by state assessments or national tests.

Each of the schools performed in the top 15 percent of all Iowa public schools based on overall performance on school accountability indicators that include student proficiency, growth, and graduation rates.

(Red Oak, Iowa) – The Red Oak Police Department reports the arrest Monday night, of 35-year-old Bryceton Lee Flathers (No city of residence given). Flathers was taken into custody following a traffic stop at around 10:15-p.m., Monday, in the 700 block of Grimes Street. He was charged with Driving While Barred and transported to the Montgomery County Jail, where his cash-only bond was set at $2,000.

Farnhamville, Iowa — In an update our previous report, authorities have charged a Webster County man in connection with the death this past weekend, of a 17-year-old Farnhamville girl. KCCI reports, according to court documents, 21-year-old Nathan Bevers-McGiveney, of Gowrie, is charged with abuse of a corpse – failure to disclose known location in connection.  Bevers-McGivney is being held in the Carroll County Jail.

The criminal complaint says shortly before 11 p.m. Sunday, a woman contacted the Calhoun County Sheriff’s Office to report her daughter missing. She and her other daughter were out walking and looking for the missing girl when they came upon Bevers-McGivney, who was “covered in apparent blood” and was in possession of the missing daughter’s scooter and other personal effects.

According to the criminal complaint, when questioned by law enforcement about the blood on his clothes, Bevers-McGivney requested to speak to a lawyer. He was detained and transported to the Carroll County Jail while the investigation continued.

The missing girl’s body was found shortly after 9-a.m., Monday. The criminal complaint alleges that the location where the girl’s body was discovered “suggests that Bevers-McGivney intentionally hid” the body to conceal a crime, and that he failed to disclose the location with the intent to conceal a crime.

It is unclear if further charges are pending. The incident left the community of Farnhamville – a population of roughly 400 people – in shock. The Superintendent of Southeast Valley Schools said in a statement, Monday afternoon, that counselors would be available in the district this week to help students and staff deal with the loss of their classmate.

(Radio Iowa) – Election day is just six weeks away and very few of the 435 races for U-S House seats are competitive. However, based the amount of advertising alone, two of the congressional races IN IOWA are getting national attention. University of Northern Iowa political science professor Donna Hoffman says about 95 percent of incumbents in the U-S House will get reelected.

“In Iowa, it’s about 85%, so there’s a little bit of a gap there,” Hoffman says. Six years ago, in the 2018 election, Democrats were elected in three of Iowa’s four congressional districts. Republican won all four districts in 2022. “So it’s the notion of a swing in Iowa. It happens at the presidential level. It can even happen in these congressional elections and they can even be competitive,” Hoffman says. “…Finding the right issues, getting the right cycle in terms of midterm (or) presidential election, turnout — all of those things can combine to make for some surprising results.”

U-N-I political science professor Christopher Larimer says while the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is spending money on candidates in Iowa’s first and third districts, it’s hard to judge whether those seats will swing to the Democrats. “We’re still kind of trying to figure out: ‘What are the atmospherics of this election going to be?” Larimer says. “As strange as that sounds, we’ve had so much change over the summer.”

University of Northern Iowa professors Christopher Larimer and Donna Hoffman on the “Iowa Press” set. (Iowa PBS photo)

Larimer and Hoffman made their comments during a recent appearance on “Iowa Press” on Iowa P-B-S. The professors discussed their recently published research paper titled “Iowa’s Unique Congressional Competitiveness.”

In Iowa’s first district, Republican Mariannette Miller-Meeks, the incumbent, is in a rematch with Democrat Christina Bohannan. In 2022, Republican Congressman Zach Nunn won the third district race by about two-thousand. His 2024 Democratic opponent is Lanon Baccam.