The Red Oak Police report the arrest of a Red Oak man on an active warrant for carrying weapons on Friday.  At 10:56pm officers arrested 18-year-old Tyler Austin Sowers at the intersection of N 7th and E Corning Streets in Red Oak. Sowers was arrested on an active State of Iowa warrant for Unlawful Possession of a Firearm, an Aggravated Misdemeanor.  Sowers was taken to the Montgomery County Jail and held.

The Red Oak Police Department reports a two-vehicle accident occurred on Friday in Red Oak. The accident happened at approximately 2:16pm at the intersection of Hammond Street and 2nd Street.  After investigation is was determined that a 2007 Chevy Avalanche driven by Amber Christine Goranson of Red Oak failed to stop at a stop sign traveling west bound on Hammond Street and struck a 2008 Chevy Aveo driven by 61-year-old Linda Sue Major of Red Oak.  A witness stated that he observed the accident and saw that Goranson had failed to stop at the stop sign. No injuries were reported. The Aveo sustained an estimated $4,000 damage and the Avalanche had $800 damage. Goranson was issued a citation for failure to obey a stop sign.

The Iowa Supreme Court has ruled Iowa law does not allow judges to hand down a criminal sentence that includes the seizure of bail money. In 2013, Patrick Letscher and another man were arrested in Forest City and accused of stealing a pickup. Lescher paid a two-thousand dollar cash bond and was released. Letscher eventually pleaded guilty to the theft charge.

A district court judge ordered him to forfeit the two-thousand dollars, to pay part of his fine for the crime and court costs. He appealed. Iowa’s supreme court notes it’s been common practice for judges at the state AND federal level to order “pretrial” bail money be used to pay “court-imposed” fines and restitution. But the court’s opinion says in 1976 the legislature rewrote Iowa’s criminal code, so that bail money cannot be used to pay restitution and other court-ordered obligations.

(Radio Iowa)

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — A California man has been charged with setting up fake businesses in three states, then using names taken from temporary visas issued to students to obtain more than $355,000 in unemployment benefits for nonexistent workers.

Nikolai Monastyrski is charged in federal court in Iowa with wire and mail fraud related to the scheme that prosecutors say he perpetrated there as well as in Illinois and Pennsylvania.

A complaint filed Nov. 10 says Monastyrski received $114,215 from Iowa, $230,000 from Illinois and more than $11,300 from Pennsylvania. He appeared at a hearing in Des Moines on Thursday and was ordered held by federal marshals until a Jan. 6 hearing in Davenport, where he’ll be tried. His federal public defender and a spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney prosecuting the case declined comment.

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa (AP) — An eastern Iowa woman has reunited with her son nearly 40 years after she placed him for adoption. Television station KCRG reports Cheryl Janss embraced Sam Lane at a Cedar Rapids airport Thursday. Janss, of Cedar Rapids, says she was 16 when Lane was placed for adoption. Lane, now 39 and living in the Dallas area in Texas, began searching for his mother about five years ago. The station says he used an ancestry research website and Facebook to make contact.

Janss says the adoption was aimed at giving her son a better life. Lane, who praised his adoptive parents, says he wanted to thank his biological mother for giving him life. The pair will spend a few days together before Lane returns to Texas on Sunday.