(Creston, IA) – Police in Creston arrested a man Monday on an outstanding warrant for Eluding. Authorities report 45-year-old Johnnie Todd Lovell, of Creston, was arrested in the 400 block of N. Walnut Street. He was transported to the Union County Jail, posted a $1,000 cash or surety bond, and was released.

(Red Oak, IA) – The Red Oak Police Department reports a man from Nebraska was arrested early this (Tuesday) morning (Dec. 2nd, 2025), on felony and other charges. Authorities say Red Oak Police officers conducted an investigation into a man who claimed to be 20-years-old, and was staying with a minor child. The man gave police a fake name, but officers were able to determine his identity as 22-year-old Jauson Ray Schriner, of Adams, NE.  Schriner is on the State of Nebraska’s Sex Offender Registry.

Jauson Ray Schriner (Nebraska Sex Offender Registry photo)

He was wanted on a warrant out of Nebraska for Probation Violation, where he was previously arrested and convicted for posing as a teenager online, in order to have sex with a 13-year-old. Schriner was arrested in Red Oak, on a Class-D Felony charge of Grooming, a Simple Misdemeanor charge of Providing False ID to law enforcement, and an Aggravated Misdemeanor charge of Sex Offender Registry Violation/1st offense. He was also arrested for being a Fugitive from Justice.

Additional charges are pending. Red Oak Police extend thanks to the Lincoln and Beatrice, NE, Police Departments for their help in the investigation. Red Oak Police are also reminded the public about the dangers that social media can pose.

(Radio Iowa) – Communities across Iowa are decking out their town squares for the year-end holidays with a host of colorful parades, winter festivals, and nighttime tree-lighting ceremonies. Later this week, Pella will host its Kerstmarkt, the town’s Dutch Christmas Market. Pella merchant Alie Muller-Heit says the downtown will be filled with an array of local artisans and specialty vendors. “And then we also have our Tour of Homes, which we have been doing in Pella for over 60 years. The whole weekend is enchanting,” Muller-Heit says. “It’s Thursday, Friday, Saturday, this weekend and with the Tour of Homes, you get an opportunity to see four different houses that are all done up for Christmas.”

Visitors will be able to sample authentic Dutch food along the Molengracht, an area inspired by outdoor markets in the Netherlands. “We have carriage rides downtown and just this last week we had what we call our Tour of Stores, and it’s when we turn on Christmas for the season,” Muller-Heit says, “with the kids singing Christmas carols and Santa comes and lights up our big tree that’s on our Tulip Tour and it’s huge. It’s a favorite for all the kids in Pella.” Muller-Heit owns Thistles Flower Market, which has been in downtown Pella more than 40 years, offering flowers as well as home decor and locally-made candles. Within the shop, she’s recently opened Garden Square Chocolatier, with a focus on selections from a dozen gourmet truffles, four each in floral, traditional and seasonal flavors, all crafted in-house.

Photo by Garden Square Chocolatier

“We’re really proud of the chocolate that we’re creating,” Muller-Heit says. “We’re working with French chocolate and we temper it. We heat it up so that it gets melted, and then we cool it on down and heat it just to the right temperature so it becomes a tempered chocolate. That gives it that shine and that strength to have different fillings on the inside of the truffles.” The store-within-a-store is also selling a line of five artisan candy bars, including one in coordination with an East Coast company that makes stroopwafels, a thin, two-layer cookie of sweet baked dough held together by syrup filling.

“We wanted to do something that had stroopwafels in it,” she says. “It’s one of my favorite Dutch specialties, and so they actually send us their Stroopwafle Crumble, the ones that didn’t turn out to full stroopwafles that they could sell, and we’re putting that in a dark chocolate candy bar with our homemade caramel in it as well. It’s called our Dutch Bar.” There’s also a bar called Iowa’s Gold, containing white chocolate, brown butter ganache, corn and soybeans. The store is housed in the same historic 1897 red-brick building which Muller-Heit says once sparked her childhood love of chocolate milk shakes and soda shop memories with her grandmother.

OMAHA, Neb. —The man accused of hitting and killing an Iowa woman in 2016 Omaha crash has changed his plea in the case. KETV in Omaha reports Eswin Mejia has entered a plea of guilty to a charge of Failure to Appear, and No Contest to a charge of Motor Vehicle Homicide, in connection with the death of 21-year-old Sarah Root, who was a recent college graduate studying forensics.

Prosecutors said Mejia caused the crash that killed the young woman in January, 2026 near 33rd and L streets in 2016.  Authorities said Mejia was driving drunk and street racing when he rear-ended Root’s car at a stoplight. Mejia, who was in the country illegally, was not put on an immigration hold. He posted $5,000 of his bond and vanished.

Prosecutors said his blood alcohol level was 0.179%, and at the time of impact, he was driving 71 mph while Root was traveling at 3 mph. She was coming to a stop near 33rd and L streets.

Mejia is scheduled to be sentenced on Jan. 12. He faces up to 20 years in prison for motor vehicle homicide and two years in prison for flight to avoid arrest.

(Atlantic, IA) – Firefighters in Atlantic were dispatched to a car fire in a parking lot at 1300 E. 19th Street, early this (Tuesday) morning. The blaze was reported at around 1:45-a.m. Crews were on the scene just minutes later, but by the time they arrived, the vehicle was fully engulfed in flames. The blaze was extinguished just after 2-a.m. Firefighters remained on scene for a short while, handling clean-up operations.

A cause of the fire was not immediately known. No injuries were reported.

(Radio Iowa) – Communities in northwest Iowa are waiting for FEMA to approve buyouts for properties that were damaged by flooding in the summer of 2024. Tom Van Maanen — the city administrator in Rock Valley — says his community is asking for federal funding to help buy and demolish just over 12 dozen homes. “For the homeowners, this has been a very long and painful process ’cause they’re paying mortgages in homes they don’t live in,” Van Maanen says.

Under FEMA’s buyout program for homes in flood zones, 75 percent of the funding comes from the federal government, the state provides 10 percent and 15 percent comes from the local community. Rock Valley is seeking 40 MILION dollars from FEMA to support buying 145 homes, but FEMA asked for more information about a few of the properties.

This home in Rock Valley was destroyed by flooding in the early morning hours of June 22, 2024. (2024 file photo by Iowa Public Radio’s Sheila Brummer)

“It’s been quite a journey for a small-town local government having to go through the gauntlet that is FEMA funding. It has been a challenge, but we’ve worked with some very good people along the way and we’ve made a lot of progress,” Van Maanen said. “…We’re really looking forward to being able to contact the homeowners and say: ‘Hey, our project has been approved. We’re going to move forward.’ And we’ll be working on a timeline that’s up to us so we can help them.”

State officials say Sioux County as well as the cities of Spencer, Rock Rapids, Hawarden, Correctionville and Sioux Rapids have submitted buyout requests to FEMA. Estherville and Cherokee are still finalizing their applications and have until the end of the year to submit the paperwork to FEMA. Once a property is purchased under this program, the parcel becomes public land and made into a park or water retention area.

(Radio Iowa) – An investigation by the state auditor’s office has found a state contractor that provides outpatient mental health and addiction treatment services in southern Iowa misused tens of thousands of dollars in federal grant money.

Crossroads Behavioral Health Services has offices in Creston and Osceola. The Iowa Department of Health and Human Services asked the state auditor’s office to review the non-profit after learning it had failed to pay a subcontractor based in Atlantic nearly 200-thousand dollars.

The investigation found Crossroads deposited federal grants, opioid settlement funds and other payments into a single bank account and didn’t separate payments based on which program the money was supposed to support. Auditors reviewed two years’ worth of records and found 11 checks written on the Crossroads account bounced and 77 checks generated more than five-thousand dollars in overdraft charges.

The report recommends that the Iowa Department of Health and Human Services increase financial oversight of the agencies it designates as regional providers of mental health and addiction services to Iowans.

(Des Moines County, IA) – One person died and another was injured during a head-on crash early  this (Monday) morning, in southeast Iowa’s Des Moines County. The Iowa State Patrol reports the crash happened at around 2:10-a.m. on U-S Highway 34 at mile marker 255.

The Patrol says a 2002 Chevy S-10 pickup was traveling east in the westbound lanes of Highway 34, when it struck a 2012 Hyundai Sonata. The collision resulted in the driver of the pickup being ejected from their vehicle. The names of the crash victims have not been released at this time.

The crash remained under investigation.

(Radio Iowa) – State Climatologist Justin Glisan says the heavy snow we got this weekend bumped up what had been a dry November. “If we take the rain we had and then combine that with the liquid equivalent of the snowfall that we had at the end of the month, preliminarily we’re coming out at at about one-point-six (1.6) inches of moisture and that’s about a quarter inch below average,” he says. Glisan says the preliminary average snowfall is eight inches for November, which puts the month into record territory.

“If that holds, around that eight inch mark, it’s about five-and-a-half inches above average, which would put us in the top ten snowiest Novembers in 138 years of records,” Glisan says, “which is kind of astounding, giving that it was basically snowfall over 36 hours. So it was a very potent system that came through.” The average November temperature is 37 degrees, and early on it looked like we’d be well above that.

“Mid-month we had temperatures in the 60s and 70s and then we kind of nosed nose dove towards the end of the month. Overall though, we were about three degrees above average for November,” he says. Glisan says there’s good and bad to having a snowpack. One of the good things is a shallow frost depth. “And a more shallow frost depth gives us a higher potential as we melt in late winter and early spring of infiltrating that melted snow pack into the profile versus it running off,” he says.

He says getting more runoff into the ground will help those areas that have been dryer than normal. There’s also a negative to having snow on the ground. “Of course having a snowpack on the ground also produces colder temperatures, so you know, depending on what you like, I think we have a variety out there for everybody,” he says. The forecast is calling for varying amounts of snow and colder temperatures this week to keep that snowpack in place.

(Radio Iowa) – A new poll ranks Iowa number-one nationally when it comes to people’s experience with the health care system. The poll conducted by Gallup and the non-profit West Health asked nearly 20-thousand Americans their opinions on their state’s health care costs, quality and access. Iowa ranked highest but only received a C-plus overall, while the nation averaged a C. West Health C-E-O Tim Lash says the overall low grades reflect a growing frustration with the health care system.

“In the top 10 states, on average, one in five individuals are saying they are not getting the treatment that’s recommended because they can’t afford it,” Lash says. “In the bottom 10, it’s 40-percent, but neither are acceptable.” He says some of Iowa’s investments in rural health and Medicaid expansion helped, but the state still barely got a passing grade.  “Iowa performing better than the bottom states shows us there are things you can do to do better,” Lash says, “but we need to do more of that.”

The survey found one in four Iowans reported distance to medical professionals delayed or prevented receiving care in the past 12 months, while more than 50 percent said long wait times for appointments affected their care. Also, more than one in ten reported either cutting back on driving, borrowing money or skipping pills in order to afford care or medication.