Category: kmiz-local-news

Matthew Sanders

COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)

Prosecutors charged a Columbia man Friday with having dozens of images of child pornography on his cellphone.

Daniel S. Carinder, 24, remained in the Boone County Jail on Friday afternoon on a $250,000 bond after an initial arraignment.

The investigation began in early April with a report to a Boone County deputy that Carinder had child pornography in a Telegram messaging app account, according to a probable cause statement. Screenshots allegedly showed lewd pictures of teen girls sent to Carinder by another app user.

Investigators seized Carinder’s phone on May 1 and found 40 images of naked girls in sexual situations from toddler age to 14 years old, the statement says.

A bond hearing is set for Thursday.

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Matthew Sanders

COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)

A crash Thursday evening in Sedalia claimed the life of a man on a Ducati motorcycle.

The Sedalia Police Department says in a news release that the crash happened at about 6:30 p.m. at West Broadway Boulevard and South State Fair Boulevard. A Dodge Charger that was turning left at the intersection collided with the Ducati, driven by a 19-year-old Sedalia man, according to the release.

The motorcyclist was thrown from his bike and rushed to a hospital, but died, the release says.

The 61-year-old driver of the Dodge told police he was not hurt, according to the release.

Police are still investigating the crash.

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Matthew Sanders

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (KMIZ)

Some employees’ personal health information was possibly taken as part of a data breach of the Missouri Department of Conservation’s systems in February, the agency said Friday.

MDC initially alerted employees and the public about the breach in February. At the time, officials thought no personal information was part of the breach, according to a news release sent Friday.

But a further analysis in April showed some of the stolen files contained personal health information, the agency said Friday. The information was likely related to the department’s employee health plans.

The breach affects current and former members of the health plan, and the department can’t be sure what pieces of data were taken for each individual. However, the data could include contact information, health plan enrollment information and other sensitive material such as Social Security numbers, the release says.

MDC says current and former health plan members should:

Monitor health care benefit statements, bank accounts, credit cards and other accounts for suspicious activity;

Contact their health provider or health plan if they find services they didn’t use on their health benefits statements;

Contact their financial company (banks, credit card companies) if they notice suspicious activity on accounts;

Contact law enforcement if they believe they’re victims of criminal fraud.

MDC says it will provide free credit monitoring to those affected.

Anyone who thinks their information could be part of the breach should contact 800-392-3111 or PrivacySupport@mdc.mo.gov.

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Matthew Sanders

COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)

A man from Las Vegas suffered serious injuries when a tractor-trailer hit him motorcycle Thursday afternoon.

The Missouri State Highway Patrol says the 63-year-old was riding his Harley-Davidson Roadking near the 185 mile marker in Montgomery County when the crash happened at about 1:45 p.m. A truck driven by a 59-year-old Illinois man rear-ended the motorcycle as the bike was slowing for an emergency vehicle ahead, the patrol report states.

The motorcycle rider was taken by ambulance to St. Joseph Hospital in Lake St. Louis with serious injuries. He was wearing a helmet, the report states.

The truck driver was not injured.

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Matthew Sanders

COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)

A prisoner at Moberly Correctional Center was charged Friday with animal abuse and harassment for allegedly hanging his ex-girlfriend’s dog by its leash last September.

Brian P. Wadley, 42, was charged with felony animal abuse and harassment in Boone County. He’s serving a four-year sentence in Moberly on charges including receiving stolen property, leaving the scene of a crash and drug possession, according to online prison records.

Court documents say he was homeless and living in the woods when he was arrested for a probation and parole violation.

Wadley is accused of sending videos via his cellphone of the woman’s brown Chihuahua mix hanging from a leash and collar, according to a probable cause statement. Wadley allegedly said in the videos that he was punishing the dog for the woman’s behavior.

Wadley allegedly admitted to sending the messages to the woman because he was mad at her. He told a Columbia Police Department officer that he had left the dog tied to a tree. It wasn’t clear from court documents whether the dog survived.

No hearings have been scheduled.

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Matthew Sanders

COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)

President Donald Trump hosted Elon Musk in the Oval Office on Friday for a news conference to mark the end of Musk’s White House job.

Musk is leaving the administration following his time as a “special government employee” who headed up the DOGE effort in Washington. Trump and Musk took questions from reporters, and Trump presented Musk with an award for his work.

Watch the entire event in the media player.

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Lucas Geisler

COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)

The Columbia Fire Department is asking for 12 new firefighter positions as part of its budget next year.

The request from CFD to the city manager’s office calls for 12 new Firefighter I/II positions at a total cost of $1.1 million. Chief Brian Schaeffer told ABC 17 News he feels the department needs 48 new firefighters to staff CFD to the proper level for the city.

Schaeffer said he wants the department to be able to staff each vehicle with four firefighters. Right now, most vehicles are staffed with three people. Having four allows each unit to deploy two teams of two at each call for tasks like searches and rescues, and bring them in line with National Fire Protection Association standards for staffing.

FY 26 Fire Cover Sheet 5-27Download

“We can rescue people faster, we can suppress fires faster, we can cut and extricate people from vehicles faster,” Schaeffer said. “Everything works in a four-person complement and that’s where we’d like to get to.”

The request for greater public safety staffing also extends to the police department. Columbia Police Chief Jill Schlude requested 51 new sworn police officers in fiscal 2026. Schlude said she does not expect to get 51 new officers in one budget but requested the number to publicly state what she and command staff think the department needs to be fully staffed for a city of Columbia’s size and population.

Columbia Professional Firefighters Union president Zachary Privette said he was supportive of adding more firefighters to get to the NFPA standards. CFD can handle four-person crews as long as no one is off work.

“The 12 that he’s requesting right now is going to get us to where we can get four people assigned every day with three-person minimums,” Privette said. “But in order to get us to that four-person minimum, that means every truck in the city has four people on it, we’re going to need closer to 48 or 50 people.”

City departments are in the midst of requests to the city manager’s office for the fiscal 2026 budget. Each request comes with a list of ongoing costs and “new decision items,” or new jobs and equipment the department would like in the next year. The requests are either pared down or incorporated fully into the city manager’s proposed budget for the city council. The fiscal year starts on Oct. 1.

Including the new decision items, the fire department is requesting a $35.1 million budget, which is $3.7 million more than the current fiscal year’s.

Schaeffer’s first listed non-personnel item is $70,000 to help supply and stock the new Fire Station 10 on the east side of Columbia. All staff hires have been made for that station, and he expects the building in the El Chaparral neighborhood to be ready by the start of 2026. It will serve the growing neighborhoods on the east side of town, including Old Hawthorne and The Brooks.

The department is also requesting a one-time spend of $25,100 for new boating equipment. Schaeffer said CFD is close to wrapping up a “facilitated learning analysis” of the water rescue that killed Assistant Boone County Fire Protection District Chief Matt Tobben. Schaeffer said that the process has revealed some needs CFD has for boats and boating equipment.

“We’ll be needing equipment, training and additional policy work in anticipation of [the analysis],” Schaeffer said. “We know that we have two old boats that have been identified years ago, in dire need of repair. And so we’re anticipating that coming out of the facilitated learning analysis and preparing ourselves for that purchase.”

City manager De’Carlon Seewood said he expected to roll out the proposed budget in July.

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Madison Stuerman

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (KMIZ)

Lincoln University announced the hiring of its first director of the new Security Sciences Institute on Friday.

The university hired Adrian S. Petrescu as the SSI director, according to a news release.

Petrescu’s role will be to oversee the certificate program and related activities, recruitment and advising students in the programs.

The release states Petrescu’s experience includes a law degree from Creighton University, a doctorate from the University of Pittsburgh and two master’s degrees from his home country of Romania.

“Petrescu’s extensive background in interdisciplinary sciences, journalism, management, public policy, law and international relations will serve Lincoln well at the institute,” a spokesperson for the University said in the release.

Petrescu will also develop a plan for SSI partnerships within the professional community of applied security sciences.

“The institute shall and will serve as a hub of active research and training and learning for the community of applied security sciences professionals in Missouri and the region and nationally,” Petrescu said in the release.

The Security Sciences Institute was launched this spring and focuses on emergency medical technician (EMT), cybersecurity, geospatial information systems (GIS), and mental health for first responders certificate programs.

The new building is currently under construction and is expected to be open in Fall 2026.

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Ryan Shiner

BOONE COUNTY, Mo. (KMIZ)

Firefighters returned to a house fire early Friday morning after battling the flames throughout the night. Firefighters initially responded to a house fire on Thursday night in northern Boone County, just south of Highway 124, between Harrisburg and Hallsville.

The Boone County Fire Protection District was called at 9:30 p.m. to a home in the 14300 block of North Old Number 7. The fire appeared to increase in size around 10:40 p.m. Around 40 firefighters responded to the fire and there were no casualties, according to Boone County Fire Protection District Assistant Chief Gale Blomenkamp.

Fire crews left the scene around 5:15 a.m. Friday and returned just before 6 a.m. to find more smoke coming from the home.

Before fire crews left the scene, crews were battling hot spots for several hours, according to Blomenkamp. He says they believed they had most of the hotspots put out, but there was one area that was a concern and would be monitored.

Blomenkamp spoke to ABC 17 News on the scene, explaining how difficult it was to put out this house fire due to limited water supply from a lack of hydrants in the area.

“Water supply up here is limited and so we were using a tanker shuttle operation to keep water flowing to the fire. At one point we had 6 tankers bringing water and we actually had a pause in our firefighting operations because we did lose water supply at that point,” said Blowmenkamp.

Blomenkamp said crews were able to get their water trucks refilled and back to the scene and were able to maintain operations from that point forward.

Blomenkamp further explained the difficulty to fighting this house fire, expressing that it was similar to dealing with four separate structure fires. “A lot of separate hidden attic spaces and fake dormers that are on the front of the structure. Those are very difficult to extinguish,” said Bloemnkamp. “The roof was on fire by the time we really arrived and got to work. So when the roof’s on fire, it’s hard to put that out from below.”  

An ABC 17 News reporter on scene when the firefighters returned saw eight Boone County Fire Protection District trucks, one Columbia Fire Department ladder truck and a Boone Health EMS ambulance.

The cause of the fire is still under investigation.

Flames were still coming out of the home at 10:30 p.m. An ABC 17 News photographer saw three firetrucks, seven service vehicles and an EMS vehicle.

This story is developing. Check back for updates.

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Mitchell Kaminski

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (KMIZ) 

The Jefferson City Police Department will add a second community resource officer to enhance support for the city’s homeless population and bolster mental health outreach efforts.

Jefferson City’s current community resource officer focuses on mental health outreach and connecting unhoused individuals with available resources. They also work to balance the needs of the unhoused with the concerns of residents and businesses.

During Thursday’s Public Safety Committee meeting, Police Chief Eric Wilde announced that the department had named a second community resource officer to address the increasing number of mental-health-related calls.

“We noticed over time that increased calls for people with mental-health issues had been increasing for years,” Wilde said. “So we had a unique opportunity to appoint someone as a community resource officer who was tasked with going out, interacting with those individuals, and getting them directed to resources before they had the opportunity to commit a crime or become the victim of a crime.”

During the meeting, Wilde said that the current volume of mental-health calls is right there with traffic accidents.

“We were getting a lot of positive results in the first year. Our community resource officer service, over 480 people in our community, and we were finding that about 70% of those that we lined up resources for, we weren’t seeing them again,” Wilde said. “So we thought that we have enough need in this community to add a second officer too, to that effort.”

The addition reflects Jefferson City’s ongoing efforts to provide more resources for its homeless population. Last June, the Jefferson City Council approved a resolution creating a task force to focus on homelessness. The task force includes representatives from law enforcement, community recreation, legal professionals, and local organizations such as Room at the Inn and Habitat for Humanity.

“The homeless population that we have is concentrated in downtown, which is Ward 2. And that’s just because I think that’s where most of the resources are. And that’s where in the winter there is the shelters,” Ward 2 Councilman Mike Lester said. “A big component of being homeless is a lot of the individuals have mental-health issues and Officer (Marika) Hit has been a great resource for them (and) for the city to help the individuals hook up with resources that might help them and to certainly (in as many) cases as possible, keep them out of being in jail, which doesn’t help anybody.”

Officer Marika Hit, named Jefferson City’s first community resource officer, has held the position for a little more than a year. Hitt also serves on the task force.

During one of the taskforce’s meetings on Oct. 10, Hitt said from Oct. 1, 2023-Oct. 1 2024, there were 481 cases of unhoused individuals being assisted with mental health resources.

Brian Vogeler, director of the Center of Hope Shelter, praised the role of the community resource officer program in assisting those in need.

“I’m seeing individuals who have been unhoused and dealing with issues since I started are now housed and now doing good and, you know, and maintaining and things like that. So I think it’s really good for Jeff City,” Vogeler said.

“The police kind of help us handle some situations. And where, previously, it might have been a situation where they might have, you know, thrown an individual in jail. So now they can send the officer down and talk to them a lot of times, get them help, but they’re needy. And so I think it’s a very valuable resource,” Vogeler said.

Wilde said the current demands in Jefferson City were stretching Hit thin, prompting the decision to add a second community resource officer. Vogeler noted that since the introduction of the community resource officer, there has been a significant positive change in the community, and he believes a second officer will further benefit the city.

“Jeff City has some individuals who may have mental-health concerns. And I think before, they wanted to try to find the best outcome for them. But they really weren’t sure what that was. And then the police force added the resource officer and it just really it really did make a huge difference because those individuals who were needing that extra help,” Vogeler said. “Because sometimes you don’t always know where the resources are or how to get a hold of those resources.”

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