A missing Wisconsin veteran has been located in the Southwest. Early Tuesday morning, a Green Alert for 51-year-old Shane Helmbrecht was canceled after officers from the Pojoaque Tribal Police Department located Helmbrecht near Santa Fe, New Mexico. At the direction of authorities from Eau Claire County, Helmbrecht was released. Helmbrecht was last seen Friday at a group home in Tomah to which he was court-ordered after being found incompetent to stand trial in a 2016 homicide. Helmbrecht was free to come and go from that facility and there’s no word as to why he was in New Mexico or if he is expected to return to Wisconsin.
The investigation into Chippewa County's new sheriff involves risqué memes and what the sheriff says are political motivations. The county released a 100 page report into Sheriff Travis Hakes yesterday. The report focuses on texts between the sheriff and a 911 dispatcher, some of which included memes with sexual undertones. The report also looks into complaints that Hakes was often out of the office, and the report looks into complaints that the sheriff is a 'loose cannon.' Hakes says he was simply trying to be friendly with the dispatcher, and says many of the complaints are based on interoffice politics or just regular political differences.
A Winona man accused of killing his estranged girlfriend is being held on a three-million dollar bail. Adam Fravel appeared in court this morning for the first time since he was indicted by a grand jury in the death of Maddie Kingsbury, the mother of his two children. Fravel is facing a slew of charges, including first-degree murder with premeditation. A judge raised his bail to three-million dollars or two-million with conditions
Some of Wisconsin's Republican members of Congress are upset about how Speaker Kevin McCarthy lost his job. Western Wisconsin Congressman Derrick Van Orden, and Northwoods Congressman Tom Tiffany both took to Twitter yesterday to blast Florida Republican Matt Gaetz for the vote that pushed McCarthy out as speaker. Van Orden said Gaetz voted with every Democrat in the House to push McCarthy out, yet Gaetz claims that he's the conservative. Tiffany said Republicans had some concerns about McCarthy, but questioned whether they needed to remove him from the speaker's office.
There is another Democrat in the race for Congress in western Wisconsin. State Representative Katrina Shankland yesterday joined the field to eventually take on Republican Congressman Derrick Van Orden next fall. Shankland is the fourth Democrat in the race, former La Crosse County Board chairwoman Tara Johnson, business owner Rebecca Cooke, and Harvard Law School student Aaron Nytes are all also running. Van Orden is in his first term in Congress, and is considered a possible vulnerable candidate. Western Wisconsin 3rd Congressional District is a possible swing District in the state.
Investigators are trying to determine what happened to two men after their bodies were pulled from the St. Croix River yesterday. Deputies from the Minnesota side of the river responded to a call saying a fishing boat was going in circles near Hudson, Wisconsin. Members of the Washington County Dive Team found one man's body around noon yesterday, while the other was found about six hours later. Authorities say the two men will be identified after their families are notified.
The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR) Tuesday announced the village of Eleva is an applicant for funding through the Safe Drinking Water Loan Program (SDWLP) to improve its public drinking water system. The project includes the construction of a treatment plant for well #1 and well #2 in the village of Eleva. The Safe Drinking Water Loan Program has determined that the project will not result in significant adverse environmental effects, and no further environmental review or analysis is needed before proceeding with funding the project.
Firefighters from Eyota,Dover, Elgin and Rochester worked the scene of a fire off of County Road 9 near Eyota most of Tuesday afternoon. A large barn along with three nearby silos were damaged in the blaze while Firefighters were able to save a third farm building, which housed implement equipment. No one was injured and the cause of the fire remains under investigation.
Do not be surprised when your phone goes off this afternoon, or when an emergency alert interrupts our programming on WRDN . There is a national test of the Emergency Alert System scheduled for this afternoon. That means your phone will sound an alarm at 1:20 p.m., and TV and radio broadcasts will be interrupted 2 minutes later. Local emergency managers say the idea is to make sure the system is working if there ever were to be a national emergency or natural disaster.
The Brewers owner says he never imagined his ball club in another city. Owner Mark Attanasio told reporters yesterday he never considered going anywhere else. Attanasio 's comments came as Milwaukee began its latest postseason run, and come just days before hearing on the plan to spend taxpayer money to renovate American Family Field and keep the Brewers in town through 2050. That hearing, scheduled for Thursday, is the first in what will eventually end with a vote on a plan that would spend 600 million-dollars in taxpayer money on American Family Field. Brewers officials say they're hopeful that lawmakers can come to an agreement, and say it's their focus to stay in town until 2050.
New state data shows more than two-thousand hemp-based edibles shops have registered with the State of Minnesota. This is after a new law that started on Monday, which needs businesses with hemp-based edibles to register with the state. The data shows seven of the top ten ZIP codes of these businesses are located in the city of Minneapolis. Senator Lindsey Port says the law is to help keep track of the stores. She adds that they want to be certain these shops are selling safe products to buyers.
Wisconsin's school safety tip line is getting nearly double the calls. The Wisconsin Department of Justice says Speak Up, Speak Out got 3,754 tips in the most recent school year. That's 95 percent more than the year before. The state says bullying and vaping are the most reported tips in the last year.
There is a lawsuit that looks to end Wisconsin's absentee ballot witness requirement. A national Democratic law firm filed the suit yesterday, it says requiring a witness to verify absentee ballots violates the Voting Rights Act. Wisconsin requires anyone voting by absentee ballot to have a witness sign off that they indeed are who they say they are. Wisconsin is not alone, nine states require absentee ballot witnesses, and three states require absentee ballots to be notarized. Wisconsin's elections commission has not responded to the lawsuit.
Wisconsin's charter school program is getting more federal funding. The US Department of Education is awarding 58 million dollars in grants to Wisconsin's private charter schools. That five-year program is aimed at creating new schools and ensuring that current schools remain up to date on training and certification. Schools will have until June of next year to apply for grants.
The Mayo Clinic is joining a national effort to speed up solutions to healthcare problems. The Rochester-based health organization is part of a new network put together by the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health. The network will work to find new ways to prevent, detect, and treat diseases like cancer and diabetes. Officials with the Mayo Clinic say it was chosen to be part of the network due to its work to cure patients using data and augmented intelligence models.
A Republican state lawmaker is calling for an investigation after someone vandalized Wisconsin's police memorial again. State Rep. Barb Dittrich from Oconomowoc yesterday said someone scratched out the word service on the Law Enforcement Memorial on Capitol Square. This is not the first time that someone has vandalized the Law Enforcement Memorial, Dittrich says vandals broke the concrete during Madison's violent summer of 2020. Dittrich said she trusts that the state's Department of Administration we'll work to clean the memorial, and expects an investigation to try and identify the vandals.
A man who allegedly stole a pair of shoes that Judy Garland wore in the "Wizard of Oz" is expected to plead guilty in federal court in Duluth next week. A change of plea hearing for 76-year-old Terry Jon Martin is scheduled for next Friday. Investigators say he took the pair of ruby slippers during a robbery at the Judy Garland Museum in Grand Rapids in 2005. The FBI recovered the slippers in 2018 during an extortion investigation. Martin was indicted in May on the charge of stealing an object of cultural heritage from a museum.
The man who created the Green Bay Packers’ iconic “G” logo died over the weekend. John Gordon was an assistant equipment manager for the Packers as well as an art student at St. Norbert College in 1961. In a video made by St. Norbert, Gordon explains that his boss in the equipment department told him coach Vince Lombardi was looking for a logo that was “…a 'G' in a football shape." A day later, Gordon's sketch of the logo was approved. His contribution to Packers’ history earned him induction into the Packers Hall of Fame. Gordon later became an adjunct professor of art at St. Norbert. John Gordon was 83 years old
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