WATERLOO, Iowa (AP) — A Waterloo woman has been given a 15-year sentence for scamming a couple out of thousands of dollars by saying she had a kidney transplant, tumors and other medical problems. Black Hawk County court records say 47-year-old Shawn Adams was sentenced Friday. She was convicted Nov. 15 of theft and false reports. She’s also known as Shawn Tomkins.

Prosecutors say she got nearly $58,000 in aid from the Waterloo couple after telling them her tale of woe. Prosecutors say she accused one of one of them of sexually abusing her son when they discovered her scam. In June she was sentenced in Grundy County for an unrelated theft. Prosecutors say she took people to a farm in rural Dike in December 2017, selling them items that she falsely said were hers.

The Creston Police Department says a Creston man reported Monday evening that sometime between Nov. 30th and Dec. 9th, his camper was stolen while parked at 312 N Division – property owned by the reporting party. The stolen camper was described as being a white 2002 Four Winds Travel Trailer, valued at $6,000.

COUNCIL BLUFFS, Iowa (AP) — A man accused of beating to death his grandmother in Council Bluffs has been sentenced to 50 years in prison. Court records say 30-year-old Jacob Heyer pleaded guilty Monday to second-degree murder. Prosecutors lowered the charge from first-degree murder in exchange for Heyer’s plea. Heyer was arrested in August 2018 for the assault of 71-year-old Karen Fort. She died within a month, and his original charges were raised. Heyer’s grandfather told officers that Heyer had said Fort tried to kill him.

(Radio Iowa) — Rescuers who arrived at the Cricket Hollow Zoo near Manchester on Monday discovered some of the animals were missing. The judge had ordered that all exotic animals at the zoo be removed immediately due to “deplorable” conditions. The zoo’s owners, Pam and Tom Sellner, appealed the case, but last week, the Iowa Supreme Court ruled the rescue could continue. The Animal Legal Defense Fund has said they will be comparing their inventory of animals transferred with the one from the U-S-D-A’s reports to see what animals were missing and then investigate when the animals were transferred.

If the animals left Cricket Hollow Zoo after the court order, that would mean the zoo is in violation of the court order and in contempt of the court – which could result in jail time of up to six months.

(Radio Iowa) — A study of drug overdose deaths finds there several different simultaneous opioid epidemics in the country rather than just a single crisis. Iowa State University associate sociology professor David Peters says one crisis is driven by heroin. “Where most overdoses are driven just by deaths from heroin –whether that’s black tar heroin or powdered heroin. The second one was the prescription opioid epidemic cluster — and that’s obviously prescription pills,” Peters says.

He says the heroin epidemic has taken root in states out west and in the Midwest, especially in urban areas near major interstates that experience heavy drug trafficking. The prescription drug epidemic persists in rural southern states where access to opioids centers on local pharmacies. A third epidemic of counterfeit pills is a major concern in urban centers in the northeastern United States. “They mix fentanyl with prescriptions and heroin and they mix those together to form a counterfeit pill,” Peters explains. “And then the last one we identified was one called a syndemic. And those are places that have a heroin epidemic and a prescription epidemic and this counterfeit pill epidemic all at the same time.” T

he syndemic exists in counties where the opioid crisis first erupted, particularly in mid-size cities in Kentucky, Ohio and West Virginia that have experienced steep job losses in manufacturing and mining. Peters says Iowa is a split state when it comes to the drug epidemics. “On the east side of the state….long the Mississippi River, we primarily have heroin counties. Starting in Dubuque and the counties around Dubuque and then to Davenport and some counties in the extreme southeast corner of the state,” Peters says.

He says the action slows down in the middle of the state. “Most of central Iowa — it doesn’t fall into any one of these opioid epidemics. But on the west side of the state along the Missouri River we have a couple of counties that are plagued by a prescription epidemic,” according to Peters. “So it tends to happen along our borders — on our eastern and western borders — and not in central Iowa. And they are mostly in rural counties.” He says the evidence of the split shows up in Des Moines. “For example Des Moines doesn’t rank high in terms of opioid overdose death rates compared to some of the smaller rural communities,” he says.

Peters says it is important for each area of the state to get a handle on what is happening in their community. “Instead of taking a more traditional law enforcement approach, really try to work with local social services agencies, local clinics, local churches to try to identify people who are risk for using these highly potent opiods and try ot divert them away from usage,” Peters says. Peters and his co-authors conducted a county-level analysis of death certificates from across the country that noted opioid overdoses as the cause of death. Peters said roughly a quarter of all counties in the United States fall into one of the epidemic categories noted in the study.