BLOOMFIELD, Iowa – On July 26, 2023, at the request of Bloomfield Police Chief Zach Dunlavy, the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation and the Iowa State Patrol began an investigation into a non-fatal officer-involved shooting that occurred in Bloomfield that evening.

On July 26, at 9:32 p.m., Bloomfield Police Officer Jared Wittmaack, an officer with three years of law enforcement experience, stopped an erratic driver in the 400 block of East Arkansas Avenue. While Officer Wittmaack was speaking with the driver, a 17-year-old male approached the traffic stop from a nearby home. During a verbal and physical confrontation, Officer Wittmaack fired his duty weapon, striking the male.

The male was transported to a local hospital and then airlifted to a Des Moines hospital for further treatment. He is expected to make a full recovery. Officer Wittmaack was treated at a local hospital and released. He remains on critical incident leave.

This is an ongoing investigation. A complete report will be filed with the Davis County Attorney for review and determination.

(Radio Iowa) – A new report has found 33 Iowa counties are considered maternity care deserts. The report from the March of Dimes defines a maternity care desert as a county with no OB/GYNs and no hospital with a maternity ward. Jessica Dill, a manager with the March of Dimes, says Medicaid reimbursement rates play a big part in why many rural hospitals are closing their labor and delivery units.

“Hospitals can’t afford to stay open in places where the majority of families are coming to them with just Medicaid and not private care insurance,” Dill says. The state’s Medicaid program covered more than 40 percent of the births in Iowa in 2021. Mothers and babies in maternal care deserts face higher risk of poor health outcomes according to the March of Dimes report.

“Issues related to birth, maternal morbidity rates go up when families have to drive more than 30 minutes to get to a care provider,” Dill says. Dill says increased access to telehealth services could help give people in maternity care deserts more options to access care. The March of Dimes has found the number of babies born prematurely has increased over the past decade in Iowa.

According to the American Medical Association, the maternal death rate in Iowa more than doubled between 1999 and 2019.

(Council Bluffs, Iowa) – Police in Council Bluffs are asking for the public’s help in identifying and/or locating a suspect involved in the robbery early Monday morning, of a motel Authorities say at approximately 1:07 am, Council Bluffs police officers were dispatched to 3032 South Expressway, Motel 6, for a Robbery. The investigation revealed that a male who was wearing a black ski mask entered the hotel lobby and took money from behind the front counter. The male was armed with a handgun during the incident but no employees or customers were injured. Officers searched the area but were unable to locate the suspect.

The suspect is described as a white male who was wearing a black ski mask, gray shirt, black pants and dark colored New Balance brand shoes. Surveillance camera photos are shown below.

Anyone with information is encouraged to call Council Bluffs detectives at 712-328-4728 or to remain anonymous, they may call CrimeStoppers at 712-328-7867.

(Radio Iowa) – Six presidential candidates have met the polling and fundraising thresholds to qualify for the first televised debate in August and other candidates are scrambling to get invited. Just five of the 13 presidential candidates on stage at the Iowa G-O-P’s Friday night banquet have gotten donations from 40-thousand different people and had at least one percent support in public opinion polls the Republican National Committee is recognizing.

Miami Mayor Francis Suarez has only met that fundraising mark. Suarez sought to build his name recognition among the 12-hundred or so Iowa Republicans at Friday’s event — with a little dig at frontrunners Ron DeSantis and Donald Trump. “I don’t have a fancy bus. I don’t have a private plane, but we do have these amazing towels with my name on them for the Miami heat that I brought up here and the humidity,” Suarez said, to laughter.

Suarez entered the presidential race in June. “I think we have big problems in this country and I think we need a personality of someone who is a solver of problems, of someone who can bring people together,” Suarez said. Suarez touts Miami as a prosperous, flourishing city and a national model for how to get to a balanced FEDERAL budget. Suarez says the next president will have to deal with a global financial meltdown.

Francis Suarez (From his campaign Facebook page)

“We have to do with our federal government what we have to do every single day in America where we balance our checkbooks and where we now if we put something on the credit card, we’re eventually going to have to pay for it,” Suarez says. “It’s not that complicated.”

In 1985, Suarez’s father, Xavier, became the first Cuban-born mayor of Miami. In 2017, Francis Suarez was elected mayor with nearly 86 percent of the vote. He was re-elected in 2021 with 80 percent support.

(Radio Iowa) – The Iowa Department of Transportation is pulling its motor vehicle offices out of malls across the state. Customer Services Bureau director, Darcy Doty, says some of the 18 offices where people get driver’s licenses were unreachable in closed shopping malls during the pandemic.

“We don’t want state government to stop. So we wanted to be able to be operational at all times,” she says, “so we made the strategic decision to say, you know, we need to have a direct door access for our customers to be able to enter so we can continue services at any time whether a mall is open or not.” This year locations in Iowa City and Muscatine are moving.

“We decided that as leases were coming up in those particular areas that we would make the decision to leave those particular areas where we don’t have a direct outside door for the customer to come into,” she says. The offices in Waterloo and Council Bluffs will move once their lease is up. The D-O-T is shifting the Iowa City mall office location to Coralville.