(Red Oak, Iowa) – The Red Oak Police Department reports the arrest Monday night, of 35-year-old Bryceton Lee Flathers (No city of residence given). Flathers was taken into custody following a traffic stop at around 10:15-p.m., Monday, in the 700 block of Grimes Street. He was charged with Driving While Barred and transported to the Montgomery County Jail, where his cash-only bond was set at $2,000.

Farnhamville, Iowa — In an update our previous report, authorities have charged a Webster County man in connection with the death this past weekend, of a 17-year-old Farnhamville girl. KCCI reports, according to court documents, 21-year-old Nathan Bevers-McGiveney, of Gowrie, is charged with abuse of a corpse – failure to disclose known location in connection.  Bevers-McGivney is being held in the Carroll County Jail.

The criminal complaint says shortly before 11 p.m. Sunday, a woman contacted the Calhoun County Sheriff’s Office to report her daughter missing. She and her other daughter were out walking and looking for the missing girl when they came upon Bevers-McGivney, who was “covered in apparent blood” and was in possession of the missing daughter’s scooter and other personal effects.

According to the criminal complaint, when questioned by law enforcement about the blood on his clothes, Bevers-McGivney requested to speak to a lawyer. He was detained and transported to the Carroll County Jail while the investigation continued.

The missing girl’s body was found shortly after 9-a.m., Monday. The criminal complaint alleges that the location where the girl’s body was discovered “suggests that Bevers-McGivney intentionally hid” the body to conceal a crime, and that he failed to disclose the location with the intent to conceal a crime.

It is unclear if further charges are pending. The incident left the community of Farnhamville – a population of roughly 400 people – in shock. The Superintendent of Southeast Valley Schools said in a statement, Monday afternoon, that counselors would be available in the district this week to help students and staff deal with the loss of their classmate.

(Radio Iowa) – Election day is just six weeks away and very few of the 435 races for U-S House seats are competitive. However, based the amount of advertising alone, two of the congressional races IN IOWA are getting national attention. University of Northern Iowa political science professor Donna Hoffman says about 95 percent of incumbents in the U-S House will get reelected.

“In Iowa, it’s about 85%, so there’s a little bit of a gap there,” Hoffman says. Six years ago, in the 2018 election, Democrats were elected in three of Iowa’s four congressional districts. Republican won all four districts in 2022. “So it’s the notion of a swing in Iowa. It happens at the presidential level. It can even happen in these congressional elections and they can even be competitive,” Hoffman says. “…Finding the right issues, getting the right cycle in terms of midterm (or) presidential election, turnout — all of those things can combine to make for some surprising results.”

U-N-I political science professor Christopher Larimer says while the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is spending money on candidates in Iowa’s first and third districts, it’s hard to judge whether those seats will swing to the Democrats. “We’re still kind of trying to figure out: ‘What are the atmospherics of this election going to be?” Larimer says. “As strange as that sounds, we’ve had so much change over the summer.”

University of Northern Iowa professors Christopher Larimer and Donna Hoffman on the “Iowa Press” set. (Iowa PBS photo)

Larimer and Hoffman made their comments during a recent appearance on “Iowa Press” on Iowa P-B-S. The professors discussed their recently published research paper titled “Iowa’s Unique Congressional Competitiveness.”

In Iowa’s first district, Republican Mariannette Miller-Meeks, the incumbent, is in a rematch with Democrat Christina Bohannan. In 2022, Republican Congressman Zach Nunn won the third district race by about two-thousand. His 2024 Democratic opponent is Lanon Baccam.

(Council Bluffs, Iowa) – Officials with the Council Bluffs Police Department report a second suspect believed to have been involved in  the August 29th shooting of a 17-year-old male, was arrested Monday in Nebraska. According to the report, 20-year-old Ethan William Stevenson was arrested without incident by the Metro Area Fugitive Task Force at a residence in Valley, NE. He was being held in the Douglas County, NE Jail, while awaiting extradition to Iowa, on a charge of Attempt to Commit Murder (A Class-B Felony). Authorities say he is the last suspect in the case.

On August 30th, Detectives with the Council Bluffs Police Department’s Criminal Investigation Division located and arrested 19-year-old Isaac James Landanger, of Council Bluffs. He was being held in the Pottawattamie County Jail on the Felony,  Attempt to Commit Murder charge.

Both men were arrested following an investigation into an incident that took place in Council Bluffs at around 9:30-p.m. August 29th, in the area of S. 26th St. and 3rd Ave., where a 17-year-old male was shot. The teen suffered leg and chest wounds, and was transported to Mercy Hospital prior to officers arriving on scene. His injuries were said to be non-life threatening.

(Radio Iowa) – A sort of snowplow driving school is getting underway this week for hundreds of Iowa Department of Transportation workers who will be using those big orange machines to keep our roads clear of ice and snow in the season ahead. Craig Bargfrede, the DOT’s winter operations administrator, says trailers containing sophisticated snowplow simulators are being set up at many DOT garages across the state.

“It provides realistic training in the simulator,” Bargfrede says. “Ultimately, it’s refreshing our folks on winter driving skills, puts them in scenarios that are similar to being out on the road, but it does it in a much safer environment, and it doesn’t put wear and tear on our trucks.”

DOT Snowplow cam

Ideally, before the snow flies in Iowa, a wide cross-section of DOT drivers will have brushed up on their snowplow skills. “Each year, we shoot to get right around 500 across the state,” Bargfrede says, “which is about a third of our force, when you include both our full-time staff and then the seasonal staff that we get each year.” Bargfrede has been in the simulators himself and says the experience is very close to being in the large, lumbering vehicles in all sorts of difficult conditions.

“The scenarios are very realistic. The seat that you sit in, the controls are very realistic and very comparable to actually being in the truck,” Bargfrede says. “There’s such things as if you should kind of drift over to the edge of the road and you hit the rumble strips, the seat will actually shake.”

While this past Sunday was the start of fall, Bargfrede knows winter weather can sometimes arrive in Iowa early, and his goal is to have all crews and equipment ready for the roads by October 15th.