WEST UNION, Iowa (AP) — The mother of one of two slain Iowa cousins has pleaded guilty to drug charges. The Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier reports Misty Cook-Morrissey pleaded guilty Wednesday to two counts of delivery of methamphetamine in Fayette County District Court. She was sentenced to 10 years in prison. Authorities say she was arrested in November for selling drugs out of her West Union home.

Morrissey is the mother of Lyric Cook, who disappeared with her cousin, Elizabeth Collins, in Evansdale in July 2012. Their bodies were found in December 2012 in a rural wildlife refuge in Bremer County. No arrests have been made in their deaths.

Lyric Cook’s father, Daniel Morrissey, was sentenced in September up to 90 years in prison on drug charges.

Four Shelby County residents have been appointed to the Extension Council Nominating Committee, Julie Klein announced. The committee is charged with nominating candidates for the five vacancies on the council before August 6, 2014. Committee members selected to nominate extension council candidates for the 2014 election are Erin Gaul, Harlan, Cindy Scheuring, Defiance, Chris Schweiso, Harlan and Justin Wagner, Harlan.

By law the nominating committee must include two women and two men, and cannot include any current member of the council. The committee is required to take county geography into consideration when nominating candidates.

“Serving as an extension council member is one way to give back to your community. If you believe local educational opportunities are vital to the community’s well-being, then you should consider running for council,” said Terry Maloy, director for Iowa Association of County Extension Councils. “It is rewarding to know that people are able to improve their lives, farms, businesses and communities because of ISU Extension and Outreach’s education and information.”

Candidates nominated by the committee must submit petitions containing the names of 25 qualified voters to the county election commissioner by 5 p.m. on Aug. 27, 2014. Additionally, individuals may petition to have their names placed on the ballot through a self-nominating process by submitting petitions with 25 names to the election commissioner. Petition forms are available from the election commissioner and at the county extension office.

Voters will cast ballots for the nominees in the Nov. 4, 2014, general election. Successful candidates will serve four-year terms beginning in January 2015.

One person was transported to the Cass County Memorial Hospital in Atlantic following a collision between a van and a passenger car late this (Friday) morning, at 7th and Chestnut Streets. The accident happened at around 11:10-a.m.

No other details are currently available. Atlantic Fire and Rescue and Medivac Ambulance, along with Atlantic Police, responded to the scene.

A town hall meeting for emergency responders was held Thursday night in Harlan with information on a new emergency response network. The FirstNet Network town hall meeting took place at the Harlan Fire Hall. The event was hosted by the Shelby County Emergency Management Agency, with  Shawn Wagner from the Iowa Statewide Interoperable Communications System Board (ISICSB) conducting the meeting. Bob Seivert, Shelby County Emergency Management Coordinator, says the network is being established to help emergency responders communicate with one another.

“This is the Nation’s answer to interoperability issues between agencies. This project will provide an infrastructure for the sharing of emergency date between emergency response agencies.” He says the current system works in smaller counties but there are issues. “But what we want to be able to do is we want to leverage the technology that you see being developed on smartphones and different vendors such as Verizon and AT&T. We want to be able to use that technology to save lives.”

FirstNet is hoping to partner with local and state governments and private partnerships to build the network out for the entire country. Seivert says the network is in the beginning stages. “The federal government has been looking at this for several years and it is to the point now where the concept and perception is being pushed out to the public so we can gain enough support to tell our legislators this is indeed something that is valuable and they should look at funding.”

Seivert says there is nothing concrete yet but this is a good way for the general public to learn about FirstNet and what it can do for local responders. The Iowa Statewide Interoperable Communications System Board is continuing to host town hall meetings in the state of Iowa with the goal to hold one in each county. If you would like more information on the FirstNet network, contact your local County Emergency Management Agency.

(Joel McCall/KNOD)

The Harlan Municipal Utilities (HMU) Board of Trustees has received an update on the search for a new Chief Executive Officer. HMU had contracted with the Iowa Association of Municipal Utilities (IAMU) to search for a new CEO. In a board meeting held Thursday, Chairman David Tyrrel said that search yielded candidates but no one was hired by the board. Tyrrel said he spoke with Scott Fry from MyCoff, Fry and Prouse LLC and found out other utilities are in the same position.

“He had several things to say that I thought were quite interesting. What it has turned out to be is there are a number of communities of our size that are in the same position that we are in. The labor pool that has experience in this type of area is quite small. Even if he took us on, he didn’t feel like he was going to get the pool of candidates we are looking for.”

The board decided to go back to the list of candidates gathered from the IAMU before going out and hiring another search firm for candidates. Board member Terry Arentson also stated he had another search firm he could contact in hopes of landing another applicant or two. Tyrrel said it has been a tough process.

“I think when we first started this; our expectations were this was going to be an easier search process than it turned out to be. Hopefully by the time we have another meeting, we will have something more positive to report.”

In other business, the board approved some additions to the service rules on electric utility and going back to one meeting per month.

(Joel McCall/KNOD)

Police in Lenox report the arrest Wednesday night of a man suspected of assault.

Michael Hartley

Officials say an investigation into an incident at a residence on west Ohio Street resulted in the arrest of 26-year old Michael Hartley, of Lenox, on charges of Domestic Assault causing injury, and Trespass. Hartley was transported to the Taylor County Jail where he was being held without bond pending an appearance before a magistrate.

A bank in northwest Iowa’s Ida County was held up on Thursday afternoon. Authorities say the United Bank of Iowa in Holstein was robbed at gunpoint about 4:05 p.m. An African-American male entered the bank displaying a firearm and demanded money from the tellers. The suspect left on foot with an undisclosed amount of U-S currency. Law enforcement officials say the male suspect is in his 20’s stands nearly six feet tall, and weighs approximately 180 pounds, and was last seen wearing a gray sweatshirt.

The Ida County Sheriff’s Office was assisted on the scene by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation, Iowa State Patrol, Sac County Sheriff’s office and the Storm Lake Police Department. The investigation is ongoing and anyone that has information regarding the incident is encouraged to contact the Ida County Sheriff’s office.

A Dallas County man was sentenced this week to prison on child pornography charges. The U-S Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Iowa reports 76-year old Harold “Hal” Holmstrom, of Minburn, was sentenced Wednesday to serve a maximum of 10-years in jail plus a lifetime of supervised released, on federal child pornography charges.

In determining the sentence, U.S. District Court Judge John A. Jarvey took into account the fact that Holmstrom had sexually abused five female members of his family decades ago when they were small children, which had gone unreported and therefore unaddressed prior to the federal prosecution. Judge Jarvey described the victim impact statements as among the “most difficult” he has read during his tenure on the bench.

Holmstrom was caught using a computer program to download child pornography from the Internet by U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Homeland Security Investigations special agents in 2012. According to HSI, Holmstrom was one of the top ten most active collectors of child pornography on this particular computer program in all of Iowa between 2010 and 2012.

Holmstrom told case agents he had deleted all traces of child pornography from his computer before it was taken from him by law enforcement authorities in August, 2012, but HSI’s computer forensic team was able to recover evidence that he downloaded over 4,800 images of child pornography. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children reported 1,286 images were of known victims from 69 different child pornography series. Images involved children under 12, bestiality, and violence.

Any persons having knowledge of a child being sexually abused are encouraged to call the Iowa Sexual Abuse Hotline at 1-800-284-7821. The case was investigated by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Homeland Security Investigations, and was prosecuted by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Iowa.

The Taylor County Sheriff’s Office is being swamped with calls about a  puppy mill in the county. Authorities says an “Outfit in New Jersey has dug up a photo from several years ago purporting to show a puppy mill in Taylor County and is urging people from across the nation to call and complain.” To counter the rumor mill (again), the Sheriff’s office has issued the following statement:

“The Taylor County Sheriff’s Office has investigated the matter and has not found any evidence of violations of Iowa Code Chapter 717B, or any other Iowa Statute. The Sheriff’s Office has received multiple telephone calls about the matter based upon Facebook postings. Facebook postings are not evidence upon which we can base a criminal prosecution. If you posses evidence of a current violation of this statute, you need to provide this and we will review. However, evidence does not include dated photographs posted on someone’s Facebook page. We would need evidence of recent acts or omissions which violate the statute and implicate specific persons in the violations. If you cannot provide us with evidence of a crime, then you cannot expect us to be able to prosecute someone for a crime.”

w/ Ric Hanson

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