An accident involving a motorcycle trike in Montgomery County, Saturday morning, left the operator seriously injured and his passenger dead. Both were from Stanton. According to the Iowa State Patrol, a 2018 Harley Davidson operated by 66-year-old Wendell Keith Gourley was westbound on Highway 34 at around 10:10-a.m., when a gust of wind pushed the trike off the road to the right. The cycle collided with a cable barrier and six barrier posts before it rolled onto its top.

Wendell Gourley and his passenger, 66-year-old Jeannie Marie Schomburg-Gourley, were ejected from the motorcycle. She died at the scene. Wendell Gourley was transported by Air Med to the UNMC in Omaha. The Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office and Emergency Management assisted the Patrol at the scene.

(Radio Iowa) – Governor Kim Reynolds is planning to consolidate the Iowa Department of Veterans Affairs and the Iowa Veterans Home in Marshalltown into one agency. The Iowa Department of Veterans Affairs helps Iowa veterans and their families secure military benefits and it oversees the Iowa Veterans Cemetery. According to a news release from the governor’s office, department director Steve Lukan is “leaving for employment in the private sector” and has resigned.

Reynolds has appointed Iowa Veterans Home Commandant Matthew Peterson as interim director of the Department of Veterans Affairs. The governor says she’s exploring a merger to house all veterans services in one agency.

The Iowa Veterans Home sits on a 150 acre campus and has about 500 residents. It’s the fifth largest veterans home in the country. The Department of Veterans Affairs has offices at Camp Dodge in Johnston. The agency’s website
still lists Lukan as its executive director.

(Radio Iowa) -Governor Kim Reynolds says she believes the State of Iowa could use federal pandemic relief money on additional school security measures. Reynolds says banning semi-automatic weapons like the one used to kill two teachers and 19 students in a Texas school isn’t the cure to mass shootings.  “You can’t focus on one thing and think it’s going to fix it because then the other thing that you do is you start to give some false sense of security that that’s it and we’re all going to be safe,” Reynolds says. “We all have to vigilant in our response looking for ways to keep kids safe — and people.”

Earlier this spring, Reynolds met with a company that digitizes the layout of schools, so those maps could be used by law enforcement in an active shooter situation. The state may also buy an app that lets students anonymously submit tips that a classmate may be threatening their school. “One of the things we wanted to make sure we had in place also is you need a central location, so we have somebody there that’s actually hearing, because it’s not an 8-5,” Reynolds says. “A lot of times those things happen later at night.”

Reynolds signed a law in 2018 requiring every Iowa school to have a high-quality emergency plan, conduct annual reviews and practice the response to an active shooter. The Iowa Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management also conducts threat assessments. “I think they’ve done about 54 since 2015 with the different school districts,” Reynolds says. “So what we’re looking at is maybe contract that out and provide that for all school districts.” Those could be done over the summer, according to Reynolds.

IA Gov. Kim Reynolds speaks during a Press Conference (File Photo)

Reynolds says there’s no single answer to what happened in Texas, but the governor says she is concerned by reports the shooter was in the school for an hour before law enforcement intervened. “As we have these horrific things happen we need to do an honest assessment and we need to be forthcoming about what happened and what we do differently going forward,” Reynolds says, “and we talk about that and we implement that into the training.”

The Texas shooter shared his plans on social media right before heading to the school and Reynolds says she’s troubled by news he may have indicated at the age of 14 that he’d go into a school with a gun when he was a senior. “I cannot imagine what these families — parents, grandparents, spouses, the school staff, the community, the local law enforcement to have to walk into that scene, the country, I mean, it is horrific,” Reynolds says. “…You can do everything you can and continue to evaluate and be as prepared as you can to make sure that things like this doesn’t happen, but there is evil that exists in the world and if you’re determined to do something like this, you’re probably going to find the means to do it, but let’s be proactive.”

Reynolds says the Governor’s School Safety Bureau is submitting applications for federal grants and is coordinating state agency efforts to plan for and respond to threats in Iowa schools.

DES MOINES, IA – A man from Polk County was sentenced Friday (May 27) to 55-yearsd-in prison, following his guilty pleas to production of child pornography, receipt of child porn, and to being a felon in possession of a firearm. Authorities say 62-year-old Gary Dale Elliott, Sr., of Des Moines, has a long criminal history that includes a 1988 conviction resulting from the death of his infant son. Elliott spent approximately 27 years in prison for that offense before being paroled in 2015.

The investigation into Elliott’s latest activities began in early 2021, when a woman reported to law enforcement that she had found thumb drives containing child pornography in Elliott’s Des Moines residence. Elliott, a felon, later threatened the woman while armed with a loaded gun.

In February 2021, officers executed a search warrant at Elliott’s residence and seized computers, thumb drives, and other electronic devices. Officers searched those devices and located thousands of images and videos of child pornography. The investigation also revealed that Elliott produced child pornography in 2018 by filming three minor victims with a camera hidden in the bathroom of his residence.

The matter was investigated by the Des Moines Police Department, Iowa Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, and the FBI Child Exploitation and Human Trafficking Task Force. The case was prosecuted by the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Iowa.