(Creston, Iowa) – Police in Creston, Thursday night, arrested a man on an assault charge. 39-year-old David William Fister, of Creston, was arrested at his residence for Domestic Abuse Assault/1st Degree. He was later released from the Union County Jail, on a $300 bond.

Des Moines, Iowa – An eastern Iowa family whose son died in an accident on a water ride in Altoona, has filed a wrongful death lawsuit associated with his death. The suit filed in state court by David and Sabrina Jaramillo, of Cedar Rapids and three of their children, alleges Adventureland Park failed to properly maintain and repair its rides.

The family, including 11-year old Michael Jaramillo, were on the Raging River ride at the park on July 3, 2021, when the raft carrying all six family members flipped over trapping them beneath the water. Michael Jaramillo drowned and other family members were injured.

The family seeks to recover monetary damages for negligence. An attorney for the park says safety has always been a priority and a number of extraordinarily unusual factors came together to cause the accident.

The Department of Natural Resource’s (DNR’s) Derelict Building Grant Program (DBGP) has awarded grants to the Cities of Carson and Griswold. The program was created by statute to help rural communities with populations of 5,000 or less, remove environmental hazards, improve community appearance and minimize costs by recycling and reusing building materials through deconstruction or renovation of abandoned, derelict buildings that have sat vacant for at least 6 months. Established in 2011, the program has assisted 56 communities, diverted over 35,000 tons of materials, and saved over $1 million in landfill disposal costs.

The City of Carson (Pottawattamie County) was awarded $69,891 and $66,884 to abate asbestos and deconstruct old commercial buildings at 119 Broadway Street and 121 Broadway Street. The city plans to develop the space into a new daycare center.

The City of Griswold (Cass County) was awarded $94,625 to abate asbestos and deconstruct an old commercial building. The city plans to develop the space into a new daycare center.

Other grants were provided for the following communities in western Iowa…

City of Mapleton (Monona County) – $22,900 to abate asbestos and deconstruct an old commercial building. City plans to have a new space for commercial redevelopment.

City of Sac City (Sac County) — $80,275 to abate asbestos and deconstruct an old commercial building. City plans to develop the area into a trail head and green space for farmer’s market.

DBGP funding is awarded annually on a competitive basis with cash matches required. Applications for the next funding round will be due on Feb. 24, 2023.

(Radio Iowa) – Iowa’s only national cemetery, created by President Lincoln during the Civil War, is said to be a beautiful, peaceful place, but the street leading to the manicured graveyard is a pot-holed moonscape. Keokuk Mayor Kathie Mahoney is making an appeal for money to replace the eight blocks of road, sidewalks and infrastructure that leads from the town’s Main Street to the federal landmark. “Basically what today is, more than anything, we are trying to create awareness,” Mayor Mahoney says. “We’re asking our government, we’re asking state, federal and our county government, too, and our local government, to help in this project.”

Keokuk National Cemetery (Photo provided by Mayor Mahoney)

The $3.2-million dollar price tag is a small sum to pay, she says, to honor the six-thousand-plus veterans and their family members for whom it’s the final resting place. “In that group of people is one U.S. Supreme Court justice, Samuel L. Miller,” Mahoney says. “There are 600 Civil War veterans buried in our cemetery. There are eight Confederate soldiers buried in the cemetery and there are 11 unknowns. And there are five Civil War generals buried there, too.” During the Civil War, the federal government opened five military hospitals in Keokuk. The sick and wounded were transported to them by riverboats on the Mississippi.

The Keokuk National Cemetery is one of 12 original national cemeteries designated by Congress and it’s on the National Register of Historic Places. The white headstones are all uniform and in neat rows, as it was modeled after Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia. “It’s an amazing place. I mean, it takes your breath away,” she says. “We have a ceremony every Memorial Day, Veterans Day, and if you have to speak, it brings you to tears to think about what those people, those soldiers, did for us and how they died for us and then here we are honoring them and the place is just beautiful — and the road is just crappy.”

That road is Keokuk’s South 18th Street, but in a ceremony today, it was renamed “The Road of Honor,” the first step toward renovation.

(Radio Iowa) – Iowans are warned every Fourth of July about the risks of losing fingers or hands to fireworks, but explosives can also do serious damage to eyesight, even causing blindness. Doctor Rao Chundury, an ophthalmologist at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha, says last Independence Day they treated dozens of people who came through the emergency room. “We see many different types of injuries from fireworks, from minor injuries to ocular burns and sometimes rather severe injuries,” Chundury says. “Personally and unfortunately, I also took care of several individuals who lost their eye completely because of fireworks.”

Some fireworks, including sparklers, can burn at temperatures up to 22-hundred degrees. Even brief contact with the delicate tissues of the eye can cause devastating burns. The injuries are preventable and he urges Iowans to wear safety glasses to protect the eyes when using fireworks. “If you or your loved one has an ocular injury from fireworks, the most important thing that you can do is seek medical attention,” Chundury says. “We really don’t want individuals to remove the foreign body or the fireworks, apply ointments or rinse it out. That may actually cause more harm than good.”

The Consumer Product Safety Commission reports fireworks are involved in more than 15,000 injuries treated in U.S. emergency rooms every year, with about 15% of those injuries involving the eyes

(Radio Iowa) – Iowans are encouraged to attend next week’s funeral for a World War Two veteran who worked as a funeral director more than five decades — and who’s only living relative is on the East Coast. Hugh Bell of Shenandoah died June 2nd at age 98. Staci Shearer, a funeral director with the Hackett Livingston Funeral Home, says Bell shared many stories with her about his time as a civilian mortician for the Army Mortuary Service in the late 1960s. “Kind of the heartache and the tragedy that he had to deal with during that time,” Shearer says, “but he felt it was such an important calling for him to be able to offer his services in order to prepare the casualties of the Vietnam War, to be able to go back to their families and back to their homes.”

Shearer met Bell some 15 years ago when he came into Hackett-Livingston with information regarding his own funeral arrangements, including an obituary he’d written for himself. She says Bell’s personality had a lasting impact on the facility’s caregivers. “As I took him back to the funeral home, there was just a lot of tears shed, and you could definitely tell a piece of an important resident was no longer going to be at the facility,” Shearer says. “He was definitely a very loved guy.” Bell’s only relative is a nephew in Warwick, Rhode Island, so Iowa Funeral Directors Association Communications Manager Taylor Teays wants as many people as possible at Bell’s funeral. Teays says it’s the last chance to honor his military service and 50-plus years as a funeral director.

Hugh Conklin Bell

“It means a lot when people can turn up and show up and just take a half-an-hour of their day to honor someone,” Teays says. “Even though he’s not here to see it, it just as a whole, is really awesome to be able to say that we took the time to honor someone like him.” Born in McCook, Nebraska, Bell was a 1942 Shenandoah High School graduate. He was drafted into the U-S Army in 1943, earned his pilot’s wings and an officer’s commission in 1944, and trained pilots in the A-20 and A-26 light bombers. After the war ended, Bell became a troop carrier pilot visiting 33 countries and flying across 25 others before being released from the Air Force in 1953. After his time in the military, Bell spent 55 years as a licensed funeral director in Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas and Arizona.
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The graveside service for Bell will be held at the Rose Hill Cemetery at 11 A-M on July 8th and will include military honors conducted by the Shenandoah American Legion Color Guard. Memorial donations are welcome at People for Paws or the American Legion Color Guard.