(Radio Iowa) — A 77-year-old state prison inmate has died of complications related to Covid-19. Richard Leroy Peters of Evansdale had been in prison since early 2014. He’d been committed on a special lifetime sentence after being found guilty of sexually abusing two girls when they were six and seven. He had a previous child sex abuse conviction in 1988. Peters died early Sunday afternoon in a prison hospice unit in Coralville. An Iowa Department of Corrections news release indicates Peters had multiple pre-existing medical conditions.

The Iowa Department of Corrections website indicates 74 inmates in the Medical and Classification Center in Coralville, 132 inmates in Mount Pleasant and one inmate at the prison in Newton have Covid. More than 600 inmates and 100 staffers who work in the state prison system have recovered from the virus.

Emergency personnel in Atlantic responded to a two-vehicle accident Tuesday afternoon, at 5th and Olive Streets. The collision between two pickups was reported at around 3:55-p.m. KJAN has learned three teens in a Chevy S-10 pickup suffered non-life threatening injuries and were checked-out at the Cass County Memorial Hospital. The truck was totaled in the crash.

Ric Hanson/photos

It’s unclear if there were injuries people to persons in the second pickup.

No further details are available at this time.

DUBUQUE, Iowa (AP) — A private eastern Iowa college has announced it will remove a statue of the school’s founder after officials there learned new details about his slave-owning past. The Telegraph Herald reports that Loras College will remove the statue of Bishop Mathias Loras from the Dubuque campus and place it in storage. Loras, the first Roman Catholic bishop of Dubuque, established the seminary in 1839 that would eventually become Loras College.

Loras College President Jim Collins says school officials recently learned from a researcher that Loras bought an enslaved woman named Marie Louise while he was living in Mobile, Alabama, in 1836 and kept her as his slave until 1852, and hired her out to collect proceeds for various Iowa ministries.

State district court judges in Des Moines and Iowa City have declined to halt enforcement of a state requirement for schools to return students to classrooms. The judges Tuesday rejected arguments from two school districts and a teachers union that local officials could ignore the governor and educate students at home due to surging numbers of coronavirus cases in Iowa.

In two separate rulings, a Polk County judge said Iowa law clearly establishes state control over the time schools must hold in-person instruction, and a Johnson County judge concluded the governor has broad emergency powers under the Iowa Constitution that local school boards do not have.

Sheriff’s officials in Mills County report two arrests. Today (Tuesday), 63-year old Ricky Lynn Frame, of Lincoln, NE., was arrested at the Page County Jail, on warrants for two counts of theft in the 5th Degree.

Monday afternoon, 45-year old Tracey Lynn Klahn, of Glenwood, was arrested for: Driving While Barred: Failure to provide (proof of insurance); and Operating a non-registered vehicle. Bond was set at $2,000.

And, authorities say a Silver City man was injured during a single-vehicle accident early Sunday morning at 250th and Barrus Road. 22-year old Kenneth Sobbing was driving a 2020 Harley Davidson motorcycle east on Barrus Road at around 2-a.m., when the cycle entered the westbound lane of traffic while negotiating a curve. The bike went off the road and crashed into the north ditch. Sobbing was transported to a hospital by EMS.

The Page County Sheriff’s Office reports two arrests over the past week. On Saturday, Deputies were dispatched to an area near the intersection of 140th (Highway 48) and Avenue H…about 2 miles east of Essex…for a man that had jumped out of a vehicle. Deputies arrived and spoke with 45-year old Robert Eugene Herr, of Red Oak, and after a short conversation, placed Herr under arrest for Public Intoxication. He was transported to the Page County Jail and held on $300 bond, pending further court proceedings.

Last Thursday, a traffic stop on a vehicle near the intersection of 280th and Highway 71 for a minor traffic infraction, resulted in the arrest of 42-year old James Allan Kieper, of Milwaukee,WI. The man was taken into custody for OWI/1st Offense and transported to the Page County Jail. His bond was set at $1,000.