Officers with the Marshalltown Police department responded Tuesday night to a residence following a reported shooting. According to KCCI-TV in Des Moines, when Officers arrived, they discovered 25-year old George Sims, Jr., unresponsive in the common area of the apartment building. Police said Sims was stabilized and transported by ambulance to a hospital.

While interviewing witnesses, detectives learned evidence from the shooting could be found at a separate residence in Marshalltown.  A search warrant was requested and granted. The warrant was served by the Marshalltown SWAT Team. While serving the search warrant, officers arrested 44-year-old Robert Fite Jr. on an outstanding warrant for a parole violation. Police said Fite was also charged with accessory after the fact for his role in the shooting investigation.

At 10:50 p.m., officers located the suspect in the shooting inside a vehicle. Police said a traffic stop was conducted on North 13^thStreet in Marshalltown and the suspect, 38-year-old Joseph Wade Bown, was taken into custody without incident. Bown is charged with attempted murder, intimidation with a dangerous weapon and possession of a firearm by a felon. Police said the investigation is still ongoing.

VINTON, Iowa (AP) — A woman has been accused of stealing nearly $296,000 from an eastern Iowa vehicle dealership where she’d worked for several years. Benton County court records show 56-year-old Kelly Banghart, of Vinton, pleaded not guilty to a theft charge earlier this month. Authorities say Ervin Motor Co. officials contacted Vinton police last month after finding suspicious transactions. A court document says she told an investigator that between May 2015 and August this year she used the company’s checking account to make unauthorized payments on her personal credit cards.

(Radio Iowa) — A new national Tap Water Database is now online that details water testing and contaminant information from nearly 50-thousand public utilities — including 11-hundred utilities in Iowa serving almost three-million people. Sydney Evans, a science analyst with Environmental Working Group, says the comprehensive consumer resource is user-friendly and it’s free. “If you go to the Tap Water Database, all you have to do is type in a zip code,” Evans says. “It’ll bring you a list of the utilities that serve that area, you can find yours and review all of the data that’s available on the page.”

Given all of Iowa’s agricultural activity, she says many Iowa water systems have trouble with nitrate contamination, which comes from things like farm fertilizers, manure and runoff. “The original legal limit was set at ten parts per million to protect from what’s called Blue Baby Syndrome,” Evans says, “but now we know that really low levels of nitrate can actually increase risk of cancer, particularly colorectal cancer and other reproductive outcomes at much lower levels.”

Switching to bottled water isn’t a good solution, as Evans says it often contains the same contaminants as tap water in addition to breakdown products from the plastic bottle itself. Plus, bottled water is more expensive. Evans recommends all homeowners consider investing in a home water filter. “On each system page at the bottom of the page, there is a table that shows which filter types work for which contaminants for your water specifically,” Evans says. “We want people to choose what’s best for them, not only for the contaminants that it can reduce or remove, but also the type of filter that’s going to work for your budget and your lifestyle.”

While a home filter system can help protect your family, she says better water quality overall will require action at local, state and federal levels. Evans says, “We also include recommended questions to ask your elected officials about water quality to start that conversation on a local level so we can start making changes, figure out what we need to do to strengthen these regulations and also support our water treatment systems and provide the resources and infrastructure that we need to get this better water quality.”

Evans recommends everyone give the database a look, as she says just because your community’s tap water gets a passing grade doesn’t mean it’s safe. Federal limits for new contaminants in tap water have not been updated in almost 20 years, according to Evans, while more than half of the contaminants detected in U.S. tap water have no federal regulatory limits at all.

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Des Moines police say they plan to beef up security of the downtown skywalk system in the wake of an attack earlier this month on a man and his girlfriend. Station KCCI reports that the plan unveiled Tuesday includes updated security cameras. Sgt. Paul Parizek also says the department plans to assign more officers to ensure the skywalk system remains safe.
Tom Conley’s company provides security for the skywalk under contract to the skywalk association, and he says he welcomes additional support from the police department. Police say a 21-year-old man and his girlfriend were attacked Oct. 12 by 20 to 30 teens or young men in the skywalk near the Wellmark YMCA. The man was later hospitalized for treatment after being kicked and punched. The woman also was punched.