DES MOINES — The Iowa Attorney General’s Office today (Tuesday) said a judge has ruled that a former Atlantic vehicle recycler must pay an additional $50,000 penalty for violating environmental laws and ignoring state orders to clean up the abandoned site.   Fourth District Chief Judge Jeffrey L. Larson also ruled that Jason Wright, who now lives in Colorado, is liable for future cleanup costs and could face contempt charges if he fails to comply with the order.

In his ruling issued Feb. 21st, Judge Larson said “Wright repeatedly ignored the DNR’s notifications, warnings, and an administrative order to remove the solid waste and contamination left behind by his company. At trial, Wright appeared unconcerned about the condition of the property, and demonstrated no inclination he intends to comply with the administrative order.”

The ruling is on top of an order last April in which Chief Judge Larson imposed a $100,000 penalty on Wright’s business, Recycling Services LLC.  The Department of Natural Resources, represented by the Iowa Attorney General’s Office, sued Wright and Recycling Services on Feb. 1, 2019, and the case was tried on Feb. 5, 2020, in Cass County.

CLINTON, Iowa (AP) — Nestlé Purina has announced it will expand operations at its Clinton plant and create about 60 new jobs. A company news release says the $140 million investment will add processing and packaging lines for dry pet food, which has grown about 7% in the past year. Purina first opened in Clinton in 1969 and now employs 360 workers. The company says the Clinton factory plays a unique role in the company’s network of 21 factories across the country. It’s a a hub for innovation and design of new products, in addition to producing flagship food brands.

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa (AP) — A former school bus driver in Cedar Rapids accused of sexual misconduct is scheduled to go on trial May 11. Linn County court records say Thomas Williams pleaded not guilty last week to misdemeanor charges of false imprisonment and sexually exploitation by a school employee. Investigators have said Williams forced a 10-year-old girl to sit on his lap inside the bus he drove Jan. 2 in a district parking lot. Court documents say he grabbed the girl’s head and tried to kiss her before she pulled away and left the bus. The district has since fired Williams.

More State and area news from KJAN News Director Ric Hanson.

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(Radio Iowa) — Researchers at Iowa State University are looking to expand on the information that can be gathered after the whorls, loops and arches of fingerprints are identified. I-S-U graduate student in chemistry, Paige Hinners, want to be able to put a time on when a fingerprint was created. She says the idea came out of other research into fingerprint information. She says people are trying to determine if they can establish age, ethnicity, and gender based on the compounds found in a fingerprint.

Fingerprint analysis (NSF.Gov. image)

Hinners saw the degradation of chemicals could possibly give a timestamp for fingerprints. “What I originally set out to do was to use a physical and chemical method –so we use mass spectrometry imaging — meaning we get a chemical profile and a spatial profile — so I could actually see where the chemical is on the fingerprint ridges,” according to Hinners. So, what I wanted to look at was how the compounds in the fingerprint ridge diffused with time.” She says the early research has shown they can create a chemical image of the print. “The older the fingerprint got, the more I lost the fingerprint ridges in my chemical image. And so, that’s kind of what led us into looking at what was happening in those compounds,” Hinners says.

Hinners says everyone has a couple of different types of chemicals in their fingerprints. “There can be both sweat-based, and then kind of like grease-based residues in your fingerprint. So, when you touch a surface you’re leaving a combination of that behind,” Hinners explains. “And the oily portion actually comes from you touching your face, touching your hair, touching other areas of your body where you have sebaceous glands and those secret lipids and it’s more oily. You touch a glass and you see a fingerprint on there — you are leaving some of that material behind.”

Hinners says they’ve done a small survey of fingerprints kind of as a proof of concept. “We just did a study from fresh through seven days age. So, even by one day age, we were able to tell that those fingerprints had been exposed to an ambient environment, and they were no longer fresh,” Hinners says.  The research confirmed that ozone in the air was causing the degradation of the unsaturated fats in fingerprints. Hinners says knowing when a fingerprint was left can help in narrowing when someone was at a crime scene. “If you’ve ever heard the defense ‘I was there the week prior.’ So this kind of just assists in locking down and says ‘yes’ this fingerprint is from within the crime window — so we know it happened during this time — and the fingerprint also came from this time,” Hinners says.

She says it could also be helpful if you don’t have a suspect and can tell that one set of fingerprints was left during the time of the crime and rule out others. Hinners says there needs to be a lot more study with a larger test pool of fingerprints to move toward making a time determination on a fingerprint something that can be used in a case. “To get something presented in court is a very difficult task. It has to meet many different standards. And I think the very broad team is it has to be generally accepted by the scientific community,” she says.

A National Institute of Justice grant is supporting the research.

The area’s latest and/or top news stories at 7:05-a.m. From KJAN News Director Ric Hanson.

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KNOXVILLE, Iowa (AP) — A judge has again ruled that a civil trial verdict holding a man responsible for his mother’s death will stand although the man was acquitted after a criminal trial on a murder charge. Marion County Judge Martha Mertz released her decision Monday in the case against Jason Carter. The civil verdict ordered him to pay $10 million to his mother’s estate. His father had filed a wrongful death lawsuit against his son, saying Jason fatally shot Shirley Carter in June 2015 to gain access to his parents’ assets. In March a jury found Jason Carter not guilty of the murder charge.

(Radio Iowa) — Democrats are calling for the legislature to investigate patient care at the state-run Glenwood Resource Center. Recently-released email appears to show an administrator in the Department of Human Services knew 20 months ago that disabled patients at Glenwood were to be part of a “sexual preoccupation” study. Representative Ruth Ann Gaines of Des Moines is the ranking Democrat on the House Oversight Committee. “With this new information, it is our job as lawmakers to find out what’s going on,” Gaines said.

Senate Democratic Leader Janet Petersen of Des Moines says it’s past time for legislators to seek answers from the executive branch. “We have a Government Oversight Committee for a reason and it should have been meeting long ago on this issue,” Petersen says. The Des Moines Register recently received email, texts and other documents from the Iowa Department of Human Services. The material indicates some staff at the Glenwood facility were warning the agency’s very top manager of several problems. Representative Dave Deyoe, of Nevada, was among a handful of lawmakers who met with then-D-H-S director Jerry Foxhoven a year ago to raise concerns. “Foxhoven said none of this was going on,” Deyoe says, “that they couldn’t do studies there, that’s not their job to do studies and it would be illegal if they did.”

The governor fired Foxhoven this past summer for undisclosed reasons. The manager who seems to have approved the sex-related study recently retired. Deyoe and other Republicans in the legislature say lawmakers should defer to the U.S. Department of Justice investigation of patient treatment at the Glenwood Resource Center rather than have the state legislature launch an investigation at this time.

Police in Red Oak, Monday afternoon, arrested 39-year old Penny Marie Griggs. The Red Oak woman was taken into custody on a Mills County warrant for Possession of Drug Paraphernalia. She was being held in the Montgomery County Jail on $300 bond, for Mills County.

DES MOINES, Iowa – Officials with the Iowa Dept. of Public Safety report no charges will be filed in connection to the deaths last November of a woman and her child in northern Iowa.

On November 10, 2019, the Webster City Police Department requested the assistance of the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation (DCI) to conduct a death investigation at 721 Des Moines Street in Webster City, Iowa. At approximately 8:13 a.m., Webster City police officers responded to the residence following the report of a roommate who had discovered two bodies. The deceased individuals were identified as 28-year-old Mariangelys Ortiz and her three-month-old daughter Abimelec Ortiz Figueroa. Both decedents were residents of 721 Des Moines Street.

Autopsies were performed on both individuals by the Iowa State Medical Examiner’s Office. Autopsy results indicated the following cause and manner of death:

•    Mariangelys Figueroa Ortiz’s cause of death is ligature hanging and manner of death is suicide.
•    Abimelec Ortiz Figueroa’s cause of death is unknown and manner of death is undetermined.

The DCI, along with the Webster City Police Department, Hamilton County Sheriff’s Office and the Iowa State Medical Examiner’s Office conducted the investigation