Month: July 2021
The Greene County Sheriff’s Office is mourning the loss of one of their hairiest members.
The GCSO announced Saturday that K-9 Deputy Stark died after emergency surgery. He had a twisted stomach and spleen. Stark survived the surgery but died from cardiac arrest while early in his recovery.
Deputy Stark was a 5-year-old German Shepherd who joined the department in 2017 from Czechoslovakia.
A GCSO spokesman said that Stark was one of the hardest working of the K-9s in the unit. He was responsible for multiple narcotics arrests, apprehended dozens of criminals, and located multiple missing persons. Stark was also one of the K-9s that represented the department on Live PD.
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Man Charged in Domestic Shooting
A Springfield man could spend the rest of his life in prison after being charged in connection with a domestic shooting Friday.
Elijah Ballard, 24, is facing three counts of third-domestic assault, one count of second-degree domestic assault, first-degree assault and armed criminal action.
Greene County Deputies responded to an incident at a home ear South Strasburg Avenue and West Meadowmere Street for a domestic assault. The men involved had left the home before deputies arrived, but engaged in a confrontation near Farm Roads 123 and 146. One man was shot and Ballard escaped into a wooded area.
The victim was treated for minor injuries at an area hospital and is in stable condition.
Ballard is in the Greene County Jail without bond.
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Guaranty Bank Robbed
A lone robber carried out a bank robbery at Guaranty Bank on Saturday.
The robber walked into the location at 2109 North Glenstone in Springfield around 11:30 a.m. and demanded cash.
Witnesses say that he stated he had a weapon.
The suspect is described as a white male in his mid-50s, plaid polo shirt and a possible bruise around his right eye.
He fled on foot with an unknown amount of cash.
Anyone with information about the robber is asked to call the Springfield Police Department at 864-1810.
Storms have brought heavy rain, continuous lightning, and some damaging wind gusts to southwest Missouri Saturday evening.
Most of the severe thunderstorms have been in the eastern Ozarks, including parts of Wright, Texas, Howell, Shannon and Oregon Counties.
A Severe Thunderstorm Watch remains in effect until 11:00 p.m. Saturday for all areas east of the Interstate 49 corridor.
A Flash Flood Warning is in effect until 1:45 a.m. Sunday for southeastern Dallas, southern Laclede, northern Webster and northern Wright Counties.
The National Weather Service says by 7:30 p.m. Saturday, between one and three inches of rain had fallen in these areas, with additional amounts of up to two inches possible. This includes the Marshfield, Conway, Niangua and Grovespring areas.
A total of 2.73 inches of rain were measured in Niangua at 8:15 p.m.
A Flash Flood Warning is scheduled to expire at 10:00 p.m. Saturday for Hickory, east central St. Clair, southwest Camden and southern Benton Counties.
We’ve had reports of a power line down across the road off Fort and McConnel in Nixa, with a traffic light down at Main and Highway 14.
A significant number of power outages have been reported in the Nixa area as a result of that storm.
Trees were reported down on Highway MM northeast of Mountain Grove, with trees down in the Grovespring area as well.
Another report of downed trees occurred on Highway U south of Bryant Creek in eastern Douglas County.
The threat for severe thunderstorms increases across southwest Missouri Saturday afternoon through the evening hours.
The National Weather Service says the severe weather potential has been upped from a slight to an enhanced risk with increasing chances for damaging winds.
The enhanced risk area is along and south of a Pittsburg, Kansas to Springfield to Gainesville line.
Large hail to the size of golf balls will be possible in the more intense storms, especially with any supercells that develop.
Forecasters say damaging winds up to 70 miles per hour could end up being the biggest threat if storms develop into line segments. .
The tornado threat is low.
Frequent cloud to ground lightning is likely, and flash flooding will also be possible, mainly in isolated locations.
Those severe thunderstorms may develop as early as 2-3 p.m. across southeast Kansas and western Missouri and then move southeast through southern Missouri during the evening hours.
Stay up to death with the latest severe weather warnings on 93-3 A-M 560 KWTO.
Emilee Kuschel, KOLR
SPRINGFIELD, Mo. – Deputies are searching for a man believed to have shot someone during a domestic disturbance early Friday afternoon, July 9th.
The Greene County Sheriff’s Office says the suspect may be armed and should be considered dangerous.
However, police believe the shooting is a singular incident and the public is not currently at risk.
As KOLR-10 reports, at about 1 p.m. on Friday, July 9th, deputies arrived at a home near the Rutledge-Wilson Farm Park where the scene was unfolding.
Emilee Kuschel, Mike Landis, KOLR
SPRINGFIELD, Mo. – The Springfield-Greene County Health Department is planning a new approach to help Southwest Missourians get vaccinated against COVID-19.
With the national vaccination rate at just over 55 percent of adults, Greene County is sitting much lower at around 39 percent.
Health officials in Greene County say they plan to take a more personal approach to vaccinations, connecting with community leaders, faith organizations, and neighborhood groups.
As KOLR-10 reports, they hope this will help the community connect with the message on a personal level.
We all know the cost of prescription drugs is too high, and there’s no question that Congress needs to work to lower prices. President Trump leaned hard into this issue and asked Congress to send him drug pricing reform that he could sign into law. House Republicans introduced H.R. 19, the Lower Costs More Cures Act, a package of bills that were all supported by both sides of the aisle. Unfortunately, Speaker Pelosi unilaterally spiked efforts to pass it and instead introduced her staff’s own partisan drug pricing scheme, H.R. 3, which is a radical attempt to expand government control. Work hard on a bipartisan bill – get to an agreement then have the rug jerked out from under us. A recurring theme in Speaker Pelosi’s Washington.
H.R. 3 would impose price controls for hundreds of drugs selected by the Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary. The prices would be set on an international reference price based on six foreign countries. HHS would then ‘negotiate’ a price below this reference price, to be determined entirely by the HHS Secretary. Manufacturers will then have to offer that price across the entire commercial market. If a drug manufacturer declines to accept the price, then the federal government will confiscate 95% of all gross revenue from the drug. That’s the United States Government mind you and yes you read that right – confiscate!
This heavy-handed government intervention will stifle innovation and limit access to life-saving medications. We know this because that’s what has happened in the countries that have set these same government price controls. We’ve heard story after story of patients in these countries being denied care because lifesaving drugs aren’t available. New cancer drugs are delayed by as much as two years in these countries. On average, 54% of new drugs introduced since 2011 are available in these same countries. It’s 100% in the United States. If we mimic the drug pricing schemes of these foreign countries, we will see this number decline.
In fact, the rate of medical innovation in European countries with similar price controls shows that their system is flawed. Before many European countries adopted this pricing scheme, Europe was beating the United States in research and development by nearly 25%. Now, the United States leads Europe by 40%. If Speaker Pelosi’s partisan drug pricing plan becomes law, we can expect research and development of new drugs to decline drastically in the United States.
Make no mistake H.R. 3 is a heavy-handed government takeover of the pharmaceutical industry. We were on our way to finding a bipartisan solution that would have lowered drug prices and ensured the United States continued to lead the world in innovative drug treatments. Speaker Pelosi’s introduction of H.R. 3 effectively killed any bipartisan progress that was made and turned this into a partisan issue overnight. I fully support lowering the cost of prescription drugs, and there is no question that Congress needs to work to lower prices. I hope that my colleagues can buck their party and continue to work with the other side of the aisle to find a solution that lowers drug prices without stifling innovation. One sure way to lower drug prices to zero cost is to stop all innovation of drugs and run the drug companies out of business. No drugs, no cost, the math is simple.
For more information on my activities in our district and in Washington, I encourage you to follow my Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/Rep.Billy.Long and my Twitter page at https://twitter.com/USRepLong. You can also subscribe to my weekly newsletter, “Long’s Short Report,” by visiting https://longforms.house.gov/newsletter-and-email-updates-form