(Radio Iowa) – Three policemen have been honored for saving a man from a burning apartment in downtown Oelwein last February. Iowa Department of Public Safety Commissioner Stephen Bayens says the officers were first to arrive at the scene of an apartment building fire, went door to door to evacuate residents and rescued a man after they heard his feeble call for help.

“These three officers showed exceptional courage and judgment knowing that immediate action was necessary,” Bayens says. “They disregarded their own safety by plunging into a smoke-billowing apartment without the benefit of safety equipment to preserve life.”

Oelwein officers Gage Voshell, William Ward and Codi Wurzer were treated for smoke inhalation. Their Awards of Valor are named for the five Sullivan brothers of Waterloo who were killed in action during World War II when the U-S-S Juneau was sunk by Japanese torpedoes. Kelly Sullivan, the granddaughter of one of the siblings, attended yesterday’s (Wednesday’s) ceremony at the Capital and handed each officer their honorary medal.

(Atlantic, Iowa) – Officials with Henningsen Construction in Atlantic announced Wednesday night that the company’s third-generation owner, Mike Henningsen, died Tuesday, at the age of 72. In addition to his business leadership and vision, the company said in his obituary, that Henningsen had served as president of the Asphalt Paving Association of Iowa, and was inducted into their Hall of Fame in 2015.

He was a long-time board member of the Iowa Association of Business and Industry and served for 20 years on the Atlantic Airport Commission. Henningsen owned a P-51D Mustang, “Big Beautiful Doll,” that was frequently heard in the skies over Atlantic until it was sold in 2014. He also owned a North American T-6 Texan.

A funeral service to celebrate the life of Mike Henningsen will be held on Tuesday, December 17, at 1 p.m. at the First United Presbyterian Church in Atlantic, Iowa.

WOODWARD, Iowa [KCCI] – Woodward police have filed charges against four employees at the Woodward State Hospital following an incident involving the assault of a dependent adult.

Woodward police Chief Jim Graham said the charges stem from an event captured on video in August, where a then-staff member, Mercedes Denise Wilson, assaulted a 21-year-old resident diagnosed with a mild intellectual disability. The incident reportedly occurred when the victim was in a chair.

A report filed with the Department of Inspections and Appeals details that the victim was trapped underneath the chair, and the staff member pressed down on it. The assault lasted about 15 minutes, according to criminal complaints, during which the victim was pushed out of different chairs multiple times.

Graham said three other staff members were present in the room but did not intervene. These staff members have been charged with neglect of a dependent adult. At least one of these cases has been dismissed, while another still has a warrant out for their arrest.

The Iowa Department of Health and Human Services oversees the Woodward Resource Center. In a statement officials said  “Iowa HHS takes the safety of our staff and clients very seriously, including reporting and conducting internal investigations into any reported incidents. The individuals involved in this incident are no longer employed by Iowa HHS.”

(Sidney, Iowa) – Fremont County Sheriff Kevin Aistrope reports the following arrests:

(Radio  Iowa) – Jim Leach, a Davenport native who represented Iowa in congress for 30 years, has died at the age of 82. Leach — first elected to the U-S House in 1976 — rose to be Republican chairman of the powerful House Banking Committee. Dave Loebsack — the Democrat who defeated Leach in 2006 — calls Leach a statesman.

“As I said many, many times — I wasn’t running against Jim Leach. I was running against total Republican control of Washington, D.C. at that time,” Loebsack said. “…I respect him for what he did in office. I respect him for breaking with his party as much as he did. I often tell people he was one of only six Republicans who voted, at the time, against the Iraq war resolution.”

That vote was in 2002. In 2008, Leach, a Republican, endorsed Barack Obama and the following year Obama appointed Leach to be chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities. In 2022 during an Iowa Public Radio interview, Leach said he’d become a registered Democrat and was backing Democrats running for the U-S House to make congress more functional.

“We have to come together as a society and if we don’t come together as a society, we’re going to have a very difficult time leading ourselves, let alone leading the world,” Leach said. Leach moved from his hometown of Davenport to Iowa City when congressional district lines changed for the 2002 election. Secretary of State Paul Pate served as mayor of Cedar Rapids from 2001 to 2005 when Leach was representing the city. “He truly listened and tried to do right by us,” Pate says.

Leach, a three-sport athlete in college, won a state wrestling title in 1960 as a high school senior and was elected to the National Wrestling Hall of Fame. After graduating from Princeton, earning a masters from Johns Hopkins University and studying at the London School of Economics, Leach entered the foreign service and, for a time, shared an office with Dick Cheney. In the past decade, Leach served in several academic roles. Leach briefly led the Institute of Politics at the Kennedy School at Harvard and taught at Princeton. He’d also been a visiting professor and a senior scholar at the University of Iowa.