DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — A popular, elderly sea lion known has died at the Blank Park Zoo in Des Moines. The Des Moines Register reports that Pupper died Thursday. She was 29. Preliminary results of a necropsy show she suffered a chronic health condition. The zoo says in a statement that Pupper received care related to her age, but did not display any symptoms of pain.

Born at the zoo in 1989, Pupper exceeded the median life expectancy for sea lions in human care by six years. She was the oldest sea lion in the zoo’s Hub Harbor Seal and Sea Lion Pool.

BETTENDORF, Iowa (AP) — Iowa Department of Transportation officials are giving tours of the new $322 million bridge being built to connect Bettendorf to Moline, Illinois.

Danielle Alvarez, project manager of the new Interstate 74 bridge, told the Quad-City Times that she recently led a tour aboard a ferryboat on the Mississippi River for residents interested in the bridge construction. Alvarez covered the planning, design and ongoing buildout of the bridge, which will feature two four-lane spans.
The bridge is a primary piece of the $1.2 billion Interstate 74 corridor project.

Residents reserved their seats months in advance for the tour organized by River Action Inc., which has become a popular local attraction. River Action Program Manager Laura Morris said the group added four additional outings in September, which sold out in about a week. The group plans to offer additional guided tours of the water-based construction site next year.

The Iowa Department of Transportation awarded a contract last year to Wisconsin-based Lunda Construction to build the bridge. Construction started last summer and is expected to complete at the end of 2020. Construction crews are working at the site six days a week to stay on schedule. “We will work every day we can,” Alvarez said. “We don’t have a choice when we only have three-and-a-half years to get the project done.”

Until then, residents traveling from Illinois to Iowa for work or school can expect longer commute times, particularly next year. The Iowa-bound span of the existing bridge connecting the cities will be reduced to a single lane next year. Bettendorf resident Joyce Holland learned about all of the new changes on a tour with Alvarez in June. “I just think it’s interesting we have a bridge being built in three-and-a-half years, and this gal can give us all the answers about it,” Holland said. “It’s great for our area.”

BROOKLYN, Iowa (AP) — The father of slain Iowa college student Mollie Tibbetts in an opinion piece spoke out against using his daughter’s death in support of “views she believed were profoundly racist,” a call that comes after President Donald Trump and others seized on the suspected killer’s immigration status to argue for changes in U.S. immigration laws.

Authorities have said the University of Iowa student was abducted while she was out for an evening run in Brooklyn, Iowa, on July 18. The man charged in her death, 24-year-old Cristhian Bahena Rivera, is also suspected of being in the U.S. illegally. Trump and other politicians quickly noted that element of the case and called for changes to immigration law .

Rob Tibbetts wrote in the opinion piece published online by The Des Moines Register on Saturday that while he supports debate on immigration, some politicians and pundits went too far in using his daughter’s death to promote political agendas. He said his stepdaughter is Latina and argued that the suspected killer “is no more a reflection of the Hispanic community as white supremacists are of all white people.”

“Do not appropriate Mollie’s soul in advancing views she believed were profoundly racist,” he wrote. “The act grievously extends the crime that stole Mollie from our family and is, to quote Donald Trump Jr., ‘heartless’ and ‘despicable.'”

The quote comes from a Friday opinion piece by Trump Jr . that criticized the media and Democrats for not playing up the suspect’s immigration status. “Despite what some Democrats may wish in the depths of their hearts, Mollie was murdered by an illegal alien and her murder would never have happened if we policed our southern border properly,” the president’s son wrote.

Recorded phone calls citing Mollie Tibbetts’ death in a push for white supremacist views began Tuesday, just days after her funeral. The robocalls cited comments Rob Tibbetts made in defense of Latinos during her funeral. The calls question whether his daughter would feel the same if she were still alive and describe Rivera as “an invader from Mexico.”

“She may not be able to speak for herself, but I can and will,” her father wrote in the opinion piece. “Please leave us out of your debate. Allow us to grieve in privacy and with dignity. At long last, show some decency. On behalf of my family and Mollie’s memory, I’m imploring you to stop.”

ST. LOUIS (AP) — Supporters of a mentally challenged woman convicted in two states in the 1994 kidnapping and killing of two elderly women say she was actually a victim of the men involved in the crime and are pushing for her release. They’ve persuaded one state — Missouri — to grant Angel Stewart parole. But things are more complicated in Iowa, where Stewart is serving a life-in-prison sentence that does not include the option for parole.

Stewart, now 45, was convicted in two states because one of the victims abducted in Des Moines, Iowa, was driven just across the state line to Missouri and killed. Two men, Steven Bradley and Garland Shaffer, were convicted of first-degree murder and are serving life terms in Iowa.

A suburban St. Louis-based advocacy group for women in need of legal assistance, the WILLOW Project, took up Stewart’s case, saying Stewart was abused and tortured by those men, was not directly involved in the crimes, and went along only out of fear. They also cite her IQ, estimated at 65, saying she was unable to defend herself to police after her 1994 arrest.

“She essentially lost her whole life for something she didn’t do because she couldn’t tell her own story in a way understandable to people,” Anne Geraghty-Rathert, director of the Webster University-based WILLOW Project, said. Advocates are now preparing a clemency request to Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds. A spokeswoman for the Republican governor said the request has not yet been received and declined further comment.

Stewart was 19 when she and her 1-year-old son began sharing a Des Moines apartment with Bradley, Shaffer and a 16-year-old runaway, Angel Chamberlain. Bradley was 32 at the time, and Shaffer was 68. It didn’t take long before the men became abusive, Geraghty-Rathert said. The young women were beaten and padlocked inside the apartment.

An 82-year-old woman who lived near the apartment, Phyllis King, grew concerned and contacted Stewart’s mother. Shaffer went to King’s house to confront her. When he did, another neighbor, 79-year-old Clara Baker, threatened to call police. Shaffer admitted that he abducted both women at gunpoint. He strangled Baker and dumped and her body was dumped along an Iowa interstate highway, hidden beneath an abandoned chair in a ravine.

Later, Shaffer drove King across the state line and beat her to death with a board, dumping the body in a wooded area near Kahoka, Missouri, court records show.
Bradley, Shaffer, Stewart and Chamberlain were arrested at a motel in Osceola, Iowa, in June 1994. Chamberlain was jailed briefly in a juvenile facility and later released.
Stewart said she went along with the men only out of fear for her life and her son’s life. But facing a potential murder charge and told that could mean the death penalty in Missouri, she agreed to plead guilty to kidnapping in both states.

John Sarcone has been county attorney in Iowa’s Polk County since 1991, and he prosecuted Stewart. He believes prison is “where she belongs.” “They were involved in the process,” Sarcone said of Stewart and Chamberlain. “They could have saved these women, and they didn’t. Years later it’s very easy to make the claim you were forced into it, but those poor ladies never had a chance.”

Geraghty-Rathert said she is hopeful Stewart will soon be freed based in part on the growing acceptance about how an abuser can coerce a victim. “The public is beginning to believe that there are stories like this out there,” Geraghty-Rathert said.

Firefighters from Anita are on the scene of a fully engulfed semi-tractor trailer fire. The truck is located on Interstate 80 westbound at mile marker 70. The driver was out of the vehicle and safe. Be prepared to slow down if you are approaching the area. The fire was reported at around 8:35-a.m. Firecrews reported the blaze was out at 8:49-a.m.