Category: kmiz-local-news

Matthew Sanders

COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)

One of four men charged with stealing an ATM pleaded guilty Thursday.

Augustus C. Sherman, 25, pleaded guilty to vehicle theft Thursday in Camden County. A charge of felony stealing was dropped. Sherman was sentenced to five years in prison for being a prior and persistent offender, court records show.

Sherman was one of four men charged with stealing a truck and using it to bust open an ATM at Oak Star Bank in January in Osage Beach. Cases are still open against Mylek Freeman, Christopher Delasbour and Tyrese Holloway.

The suspects took off in another vehicle, which was later found in Oklahoma, where they were arrested, court records say. The probable cause statement says that $47,315 in cash was found in the vehicle, but $11,440 of it was from the ATM.

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Olivia Hayes

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (KMIZ)

Lincoln University’s police chief says safety is everybody’s concern for its Centennial Homecoming tradition.

The department is using multiple forms of technology to keep those attending homecoming events safe, along with more than 600 Flock security cameras across campus. The campus uses the RAVE Guardian app, which allows users to directly message campus police.

Chief Gary Hill said the Flock cameras are also fitted with gunshot detection.

To celebrate 100 years, the university has held a number of events throughout the week, like a talent show on Tuesday and a DJ battle on Wednesday.

On Friday night, there will be a Centennial Masked Ball benefitting student scholarships at 5:30 p.m. in Jason Hall and a Homecoming Step Show at 8:00 p.m. at The LINC recreational center. The festivities continue into Saturday with a homecoming parade at 9 a.m., followed by the homecoming football game against Truman State University at 2 p.m.. A concert will follow at The LINC at 8 p.m. Saturday.

The RAVE Guardian works along with the university’s RAVE Alert system. Hill said faculty, staff and students can download it to their phone.

“The Guardian, they can say they’re going to leave a building and they can hit this button and it will tell us that,” Hill said. “An alarm will go off here in our dispatch area, and then we’ll call them and say ‘Hey, we just received the Guardian alert from you. Are you okay?'”

The RAVE Alert system allows university officials to push out important messages campus-wide.

“If we have an active shooter situation, weather alerts and things like that, any kind of emergency situation, we’re able to push that out to people’s cellphones and that comes across your email as well,” Hill said.

The safety plan also includes a multi-agency effort from state, county and local law enforcement. Hill said 14 county deputies are among the extra personnel being brought in.

Hill said the goal with having multiple agencies on site is prevention through presence. The university has also brought in 20 outside staffers to handle traffic and security.

“They’ll be working the metal detectors and making sure to secure the doors to make sure no one’s trying to get in for free or anything like that,” Hill said.

Even with the use of technology to keep homecoming goers safe, Hill says safety is also as simple as saying something to law enforcement if you see something or someone that raises concern.

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Matthew Sanders

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (KMIZ)

Open burning season in Jefferson City will start Saturday.

The season runs from Nov. 1 to March 1 under city ordinance, and residents can burn yard waste between sunrise and sunset, the city wrote in a news release Friday. Fires should be attended to while they’re burning, and they should be put out by sunset.

People who violate the ordinance can be ticketed and fined.

Yard waste can also be dropped off at 708 Ellis Blvd.

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Matthew Sanders

COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)

The Columbia City Council will vote on Monday to allocate $50,000 to the Food Bank for Central & Northeast Missouri, as the federal government shutdown continues.

The item appears on the city council’s consent agenda in Monday’s meeting. Consent agenda items are voted on in a block without discussion.

The city government announced the decision in a news release Friday, saying the city would allocate $50,000 of emergency money to the food bank. The status of federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits are in doubt for November because Congress has not voted to fund them.

Two federal judges ruled on Friday that the Trump administration must use a contingency fund with $5.3 billion in it to cover SNAP payments. However, the program costs about $8 billion to $9 billion per month.

“Many households in our community depend on SNAP to meet their most basic needs,” Columbia Mayor Barbara Buffaloe said in the news release. “This funding ensures that The Food Bank can continue to serve families who suddenly find themselves without this vital support.”

The Boone County Commission has also approved an extra $50,000 for the food bank.

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Matthew Sanders

COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)

A second wrongful death lawsuit against the truck driver in a crash that killed two women on Interstate 70 in Columbia was filed Thursday.

The lawsuit, filed by three of Melvina Colin’s children, seeks damages from the driver, Walter Montejo, and four companies connected to the load he was carrying when he crashed into a U-Haul carrying Colin and Cindy Helms, 54, of Rockwood, Tennessee, in August 2024.

Helms was driving the U-Haul.

Montejo’s tractor-trailer drove over the concrete median barrier on I-70 and hit the U-Haul head-on. Colin, 84, of Broomfield, Colorado, was pronounced dead at the scene.

Montejo, a citizen of El Salvador in the United States on a work visa, pleaded guilty last month to two counts of involuntary manslaughter and a count of fourth-degree assault. He faces a maximum of four years in prison and will be sentenced Nov. 24.

The lawsuit claims that Montejo was driving aggressively, on too little rest, and speeding when the crash happened. The plaintiffs claim his employers, FDH Trucking and JL Transportation LLC, failed to perform a proper background check when hiring Montejo. The company also should have known Montejo had no valid driver’s license.

Bluebird Logistics and Bluebird Compositing, which owned the trailer, were also named in the lawsuit.

Rudolph Colin, a son of Melvina Colin, and Jacob Helms, a son of Cindy Helms, filed a similar lawsuit in May.

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Matthew Sanders

The Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services has issued a warning about a psychoactive product many people have probably never heard of.

The department says Missourians should stay away from products containing 7-OH — a natural compound derived from the plant kratom that is marketed as a way to deal with stress, pain and other maladies. However, health officials say it can have harmful opioid-like effects that can end in death in the worst scenarios.

Kratom and 7-OH are not regulated and can be sold openly.

Have you ever heard of these legal drugs? Let us know by voting in the poll.

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Erika McGuire

COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)

The Columbia Police Department is searching for a suspect after an armed robbery Thursday evening in the 2100 block of Paris Road.

According to a release, a cashier told police that a black man entered the store wearing a black hoodie, a black mask, black pants with white markings on the legs, and a dark colored backpack.

Police said the suspect demanded money from the cash register while keeping one hand in his pocket and making statements indicating he had a weapon, leading officers to believe he was armed.

After collecting the money, the suspect, believed to be between 18 and 22 years old ran south, according to CPD.

The department described the suspect as having a thin build and being of average height.

Anyone with information is asked to contact the Columbia Police Department or call CrimeStoppers to remain anonymous.

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Dan Kite

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (KMIZ)

With less than a month left until Thanksgiving, officials with the Jefferson City Parks and Recreation Department have a big reason to be thankful this year.

That’s because of a large donation that funded a pair of projects, one in the spring and the other in late summer, given anonymously to help fund projects at Oak Hills Golf Center.

The first project, totaling $73,625.07, according to Parks and Rec spokesperson Ashley Wiskirchen, expanded the cart path on the course’s 11th hole.

The other, much larger project, totaling $353,508, allowed for the re-growth of the green on the 18th hole. It was completed earlier this month, but the course will keep that hole closed until early next year, according to Wiskirchen.

The anonymous donation, which funded these projects, of more than $400,000, was given to the department in early August.

Wiskirchen said it shows that “our progress in caring for the municipal course has been celebrated by the community.

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Euphenie Andre

COLUMBIA, Mo (KMIZ).

Columbia Public Schools held a meeting Thursday evening to discuss a project worth more than $560,000 focused on a master plan, space utilization, and facility condition audit.

The district said the plan is crucial to help maintain and improve its buildings.

Board members said they recently met with several agencies before deciding that DLR Group was the best fit to help CPS move forward with the project. The district is also parting ways with its former asset management system, Isis.

“We had Isis do our facilities audit in the past and we received that, but there wasn’t anything built into that to really create a plan for that,” said April Ferrao, Columbia Board of Education member.

On Thursday, the board approved having DLR’s space utilization study proposal discussed at its next meeting in November for a first read. Ferrao said DLR previously worked with Kansas City Public Schools, a district similar in size and structure to Columbia.

“Kansas City Public Schools just passed a $474 million bond to address their billion dollars in deferred maintenance, and they’re very similar in size to us,” Ferrao said. “They have 37 buildings with an average age of 60 years old, several more than 100 years old, so it’s a very similar situation. DLR worked with them closely to engage the community, which is something we’re really looking forward to.”

Board members said the assessment will help CPS keep its facilities up to standard.

“They will come into each one of our buildings and assess the condition of various features, then give us information on what needs to be replaced and what kind of replacement cycle something might need to be on,” Ferrao said.

District leaders believe these updates will help schools better serve students.

“As a parent, you would want the best educational environment for your student,” said Lezell Ofield, Columbia Public Schools Chief Operating Officer. “It’s really hard to educate a student in the winter months if the building HVAC system isn’t properly warming the space.”

Ofield also said CPS will now have more control over its data than before.

“Now we’re able to own that information and so we can track each project and put timeliness attached to it and kind of be able to control the narrative and share the information to each of our buildings and the community so we can stay transparent,” Ofield said.

Previously, Ofield said CPS did not have that level of control under its former system.

“The way the ISIS management system worked, we didn’t have access to it for a long time, and then we got access to it from them but in order to update the things that we had already done was a very cumbersome process that they were going to have to do manually,” Ferrao said. “We didn’t have access to do it and so this will be completely ours,”

Due to a tight timeline, CPS said most of this work will take place during the summer months, when students are out of class. The district also plans to hear from the community about which updates should be prioritized but not everything can be addressed at once.

“There’s going to be things that we have to do regardless of how the community feels about it, a priority. You know, we’re going to have to address any safety issues if there’s any compliance, legal compliance issues, health issues,” Ferro said.

Board members said to look out for community engagement opportunities from CPS as they roll out the master plan.

If this proposal receives final approval in December, members say DLR is expected to begin work in January 2027.

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Alison Patton

COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)

SNAP users won’t receive new funds for November starting Saturday, unless Congress can find a way to fund the government. This means grocery stores are losing out on SNAP dollars.

Dan Shaul, the Missouri Grocers Association Executive State Director, said this could be detrimental to grocery stores in food deserts, which are typically in rural areas where access to food is already limited.

“Food deserts could have 30, 40, 50% of their sales going to SNAP recipients, and that could be a problem when you lose that type of revenue,” Shaul said.

Gov. Mike Kehoe announced Wednesday that $15 million is heading to crucial food programs, and some grocery stores, like Schnucks, are doing local food drives to support food banks.

But those efforts don’t replace SNAP dollars.

Shaul said some grocery stores might not make it through November, depending on how long the government shutdown lasts, because some stores were breaking even before SNAP benefits were paused.

That won’t be a problem for grocery stores in areas like Columbia, where consumers have many options to buy groceries from.

Peter Mueser, an economics professor at the University of Missouri, said some stores might have to lower prices soon.

“In the short run, you might expect they [prices] would decline because they’ve ordered food that will spoil if it’s not sold, and so grocery stores will have an incentive to lower prices,” Mueser said.

Mueser said stores might order less food in the long run. Everything rests on how long the government is shutdown for.

Shaul said he’s worried that some customers who use SNAP won’t know that they don’t have money loaded until they reach the register.

“There’s going to be a large amount of people out there that have no idea, and they’re going to come into the store just like they normally did, in normal Saturday morning, push their cart to the checkout, and they’re going to be told they have no money,” Shaul said.

He said the grocer’s association has been reminding its retailers to talk with their employees and let them know that customers could become upset.

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