(Dexter, Iowa) – The Iowa State Patrol has released the identity of a pedestrian who was struck and killed while walking on Interstate 80 south of Dexter in Madison County, Thursday morning. Authorities say there were two pedestrians walking along I-80 westbound near mile marker 98 at around 7-a.m., when one of them – 45-year-old Mandy Wendland, of Omaha, NE – entered the traveled portion of the interstate, into the path of a 2020 Ford Transit van and was struck.

Wendland came to rest in the north ditch west where she was struck. The van, driven by 25-year-old Mercedes Gambrall, of Grimes, stopped on the north shoulder of the west bound lanes, west of the impact site. Mandy Wendland died at the scene.

DAVENPORT, Iowa – A Burlington man was sentenced today (Thursday) to 151 months in federal prison for receiving and distributing child pornography.

According to public court documents, law enforcement received a CyberTip from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children that Edward Allen Billheimer, 64, had uploaded files containing child sexual abuse material. Law enforcement located electronic devices at Billheimer’s Burlington residence and a search of those devices revealed approximately 100 videos and 400 images of child sexual abuse material, including content of toddlers and infants.

After completing his term of imprisonment, Billheimer will be required to serve a five-year term of supervised release. There is no parole in the federal system. Billheimer was also ordered to pay $3,000 in restitution. In addition, Billheimer will be required to register as a sex offender.

United States Attorney Richard D. Westphal of the Southern District of Iowa made the announcement. This case was investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Burlington Police Department.

DES MOINES, Iowa – A Fort Dodge man was sentenced today (Thursday) to 20 years in federal prison for attempted enticement of a minor. The U-S Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Iowa says, according to public court documents, 38-year-old Mitchell Keith Russell initiated a Facebook chat with a person that Russell believed was a 13-year-old Altoona female. For over three weeks in March 2024, Russell engaged the minor in sexually explicit discussion.

Russell repeatedly requested the minor create and send him sexually explicit photos of herself and sent the minor sexually obscene videos. Ultimately, Russell arranged to meet the minor at an Altoona motel to engage in sex acts on March 26. When Russell arrived at the motel, he was arrested by the Altoona detective who had been posing as the 13-year-old Facebook user.

Russell committed this crime while he was a registered sex offender and on state parole. Russell was convicted in 2015 of sexual abuse in the Iowa District Court for Humboldt County, for engaging in a sex act with a 15-year-old minor; Russell was in his late 20s when he abused that minor. Russell was required to register as a sex offender as a result of that conviction.

After completing his term of imprisonment, Russell will be required to serve a seven-year term of supervised release. There is no parole in the federal system.

United States Attorney Richard D. Westphal of the Southern District of Iowa made the announcement. This case was investigated by the Altoona Police Department.

This case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice. Led by U.S. Attorneys’ Offices and the Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section, Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state, and local resources to better locate, apprehend and prosecute individuals who exploit children via the Internet, as well as to identify and rescue victims. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit https://www.justice.gov/psc. For information about internet safety education, please visit www.usdoj.gov/psc and click on the resources tab.

(Radio Iowa) – NextEra Energy’s chief executive says the company is exploring whether it could reopen the nuclear power plant in eastern Iowa that was closed down four years ago.

“We are currently evaluating the recommissioning of our Duane Arnold plant in Iowa,” NextEra Energy chairman and CEO John Ketchum said during a conference call with investors on Wednesday.

Ketchum said nuclear power will play a role in meeting the country’s increasing demand for energy, but there are only 20 so-called “merchant” nuclear plants that generate power for sale on the open market — and only two of them are west of the Mississippi River.

“Nuclear plants across the country are already serving existing demand,” he said, “so even if they are contracted by specific customers, new resources need to be built to meet new demand.”

Most of the country’s nuclear reactors were built between 1970 and 1990. Small modular reactors called SMRs are operating in China and Russia, but there are none in the U.S.

“Alternatives such as new utility-scale nuclear and SMRs are unproven, expensive and, again, not expected to be commercially viable at scale until the latter part of the next decade,” Ketchum said.

NextEra acquired the Duane Arnold Energy Center near Palo in 2005. The plant was decommissioned in 2020 after 45 years of operation. NextEra began installing solar panels on the property earlier this year. Ketchum said expanding the capacity of solar and wind generation is critical to ensuring power bills don’t skyrocket due to scarce electricity supply.

“Today, there are forecasts for an approximate 6x increase in power demand growth in the next 20 years versus the prior 20,” Ketchum says. “That significant projected shift in fundamental demand is across industries, driven in large part by 7 by 24 loads from data centers.”

Google, Facebook and Microsoft all operate data centers in Iowa.

(Radio Iowa) – The Iowa SIDS Foundation is trying to raise awareness of proper sleeping environments for babies after a big increase in deaths. Foundation executive director Casey Manser says Sudden Infant Death Syndrome happens to babies who are under one year old.

“Since October 2023 we’ve been connected with 34 newly bereaved families who have experienced the loss of an infant who’s died suddenly and unexpectedly during sleep. And this does include families from 18 different counties across our state,” Manser says. That is a 70 percent increase in referrals to the Foundation for grief support for families.

“What we’ve seen is the majority of these infant deaths are related to accidents that occur in a sleeping environment. And so there are safe sleep recommendations, or recommendations of what you can do to keep babies safe during sleep,” Manser says. “And so a lot of these deaths are preventable and include accidents. And so what we kind of realize is maybe people don’t understand these recommendations completely. Maybe they’re not being talked about.” She says a lot of these deaths include infants who are sharing a sleep surface with an adult.

“Sleeping in the same bed as an adult, or sleeping on a couch or on a recliner with a caregiver, and so these surfaces are not safe for an infant when it comes to sleep,” she says. Manser says new parents can get a lot of suggestions about how to take care of their babies. “Everyone loves to give advice, right and tell you what works for them, and there’s lots of options where you can get information from the internet, social media, that kind of thing. What we want to encourage people to do is talk to their medical providers, and so these providers are going to have the most up to date information about what’s safe and what’s not,” Manser says.

She says parent should not overlook this information. “Even during pregnancy, before baby arrives, talk to their O-B or midwife about what their plan is for sleep, and so that they can answer questions before baby even gets here and have a safe plan. And then once baby arrives, we encourage parents and caregivers to ask their pediatricians or their medical providers,” she says.

Manser says their website, iowasids.org, also has information for parents as well.

(Radio Iowa) – A retired physician and educator from eastern Iowa is releasing a book about her experiences as the mother of a dependent 38-year-old son who has developmental and cognitive disabilities.

Maureen McCue, a former University of Iowa professor of public health and global health, says her book, “Dancing in a Disabled World,” starts off as a memoir but evolves into a call to action.

“Disability is all around us, but we act like it doesn’t exist,” McCue says. “We go about causing disability in indirect ways. It’s really hard, if you begin to look around, to say you know anybody who is -not- dealing with disability and yet, as a society, we tend to think of it as an anomaly as opposed to a commonality.”

McCue, who lives just outside Iowa City in Oxford, says the book is a study of what constitutes a disability and the roles disabilities play in everyone’s lives.

“We need, all of us, to pay some more attention to what we’re calling disability, from our ability-focused lifestyles,” McCue says, “as if we aren’t all just an accident of nature, of a car, of weather, you know, a disability away.”

Former U.S. Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa was the architect of the Americans with Disabilities Act, which became law in 1990. Known as the ADA, the wide-ranging civil rights law prohibits discrimination against people with disabilities in many areas of public life. McCue’s research took her all over the world, to places like Ecuador, India, Haiti and Bangladesh.

“I love the fact that the U.S. passed the ADA, and in many countries that I’ve been in, people point to the ADA as a model,” McCue says, “but the ADA is like the Constitution, really, a living document that continues to need improvement, that continues to need expansion.”

McCue is scheduled to give a presentation at the Harkin Institute at Drake University in Des Moines on November 14th. Part of that discussion will focus on the “big picture” of disabilities, and part will zero in on her son. She says everyone with a disability also has many remarkable abilities.

“For my son, it’s his appreciation of music and his ability to hold on to music and seek music and dance,” McCue says. “More than the average adult, he’s driven by music.”

“Dancing in a Disabled World” is McCue’s second book, published by North Liberty-based Ice Cube Press. The first, “Birds in the Morning, Frogs at Night,” was featured on Radio Iowa in 2021.