[UPDATED 11:15-a.m.] (Des Moines, Iowa/KCCI) – The Des Moines Police Department is investigating the city’s tenth homicide of 2021. Officers responded to a home in the 1400 block of Searle Street, just east of I-235, at around 1:50-a.m., Thursday (Today). Police said in a news release that “First responders arrived to find a person suffering from serious traumatic injury. Lifesaving measures were immediately initiated, and medics transported the injured person to a local hospital. That person later died at the hospital.” The 19-year old man’s name was being withheld, pending notification of family.

Police are investigating the death as a homicide and are processing the scene for evidence. There were 21 homicides in Des Moines in 2020.

(Radio Iowa) – Iowa Congresswoman Mariannette Miller-Meeks is defending how the meatpacking plant in her hometown of Ottumwa responded in the first weeks of the pandemic. “Let’s not forget that even experts like Dr. Fauci didn’t know what was going on in those early months and guidance was changing daily,” Miller-Meeks says.

A new congressional report has found at least 269 employees at the five largest U-S meatpacking companies died of Covid during the first year of the pandemic — three times higher than previously reported – and 59-thousand U.S. packing plant employees tested positive for the virus. Miller-Meeks, a Republican, is a member of the U.S. House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis, and she is pushing back on the idea the majority of J-B-S workers in Ottumwa who contracted Covid got the virus inside the plant. “People don’t spend 24 hours a day at their workplace,” Miller-Meeks says. “They are at home or in their community and our contract tracing showed that most of our spread came from in the home or other living conditions or in transportation with carpooling.”

Miller-Meeks says the average number of packing plant employees who’ve tested positive for Covid since last November has consistently been lower than the U-S population as a whole. “There has been a declining rate of Covid among meat and poultry workers since May of 2020,” Miller-Meeks says. “…The industry clearly has made significant progress in their Covid-19 mitigation strategy.”

The congressional report singled out the National Beef Plant in Tama, calling it a Covid hot spot during the early weeks of the pandemic, with 44 percent of employees testing positive for the virus. Democrats in congress say OSHA failed to issue meaningful fines last year when unsafe conditions inside meatpacking plants led to the deaths of employees.

(Radio Iowa) – The Iowa Legislature reconvenes today (Thursday) in special session to vote on new maps that change the boundaries for Iowa congressional and legislative districts. Republicans in the Iowa Senate rejected Plan 1 for redistricting, so the non-partisan Legislative Services Agency released a second set of maps last Thursday. If approved, Congresswomen Cindy Axne, a Democrat from West Des Moines, and Mariannette Miller-Meeks, a Republican from Ottumwa, might wind up running against one another in 2022. Both live in the proposed third congressional district. The maps for legislative districts show 58 members of the Iowa House and Senate live in the same district as at least one other incumbent. Republican legislative leaders have not indicated whether this second set of maps has majority support.

Democrats, who hold a minority of the seats in the Iowa House and Senate, plan to vote for the new redistricting plan.  Some Republicans have been pressing for a vote today (Thursday) on legislation that would ban Covid-19 vaccine mandates. During the legislature’s October 5th special session, Representative Jon Jacobsen of Council Bluffs said the House needs to act this fall.

(Harlan, Iowa) – Officials with the Harlan Police Department, Wednesday, released information pertaining to five arrests conducted over the past week. On Wednesday (10/27), 26-year-old Matthew Allen Strong, of Harlan, was arrested on an active Shelby County warrant. Strong was transported to the Shelby County Jail. On Tuesday, 32-year-old Daniel Jon Kenkel, of Harlan, was arrested on active Shelby County warrants. Kenkel was transported to the Shelby County jail where he was charged with violation of a no contact order, harassment, possession of a controlled substance and prohibited acts.

Last Friday, 64-year-old Terri Jo Utterback, of Harlan, was arrested following the execution of a search warrant. Utterback was charged with possession of a controlled substance and possession of drug paraphernalia. And, on Oct. 19th, 35-year-old Albert Alexander Johnson, of Harlan, was arrested following a traffic stop. Johnson was transported to the Shelby County Jail where he was charged with driving suspended, speed, fail to yield to emergency vehicles, operating a non-registered vehicle and no proof of insurance.

That same day, 49-year-old Jamie Dean Anderson, of Harlan, was arrested on an active Jasper County warrant. Anderson was transported to the Shelby County Jail.

(Albia, Iowa) – Two people were injured during a collision late Wednesday morning between an AMTRAK train, and a garbage truck. The collision happened at around 11:30-a.m. in Monroe County, northwest of the small town of Avery, which is northeast of Albia. The Iowa State Patrol reports a 2011 International garbage truck driven by 33-year-old Kyle Vincent Redinger, of Fairfield, was traveling east on 160th Street from 695th, when the truck was struck broadside by the train, and the truck was attempting to cross the Burlington Northern tracks.

The force of the collision caused Redinger to be ejected from the truck, and resulting in serious, life threatening injuries. He was not wearing a seat belt. Redinger was transported by Mercy One Air helicopter, to Mercy Hospital in Des Moines.The garbage truck was destroyed by the crash.

The operator of the train, 49-year-old Jennifer Harvey, of Gretna, Nebraska, was injured during the collision, but refused medical care.