Green Bay News

RHINELANDER, Wis. (AP) – Oneida County aid agencies say they’re collecting donations for three young children of a northern Wisconsin couple who was killed earlier this week.

Police say 17-year-old Ashlee A. Martinson killed her mother, 40-year-old Jennifer Ayers, and her stepfather, 37-year-old Thomas Ayers. Officials say she locked her siblings, ages 2 to 9, in a room with food before she fled to Indiana with a 22-year-old man.

Martinson has been charged with two counts of first-degree intentional homicide, as well as three counts of false imprisonment. The children are being cared for by social services.

The Tri-County Council on Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault is serving as the collection point for donations for the children, Daily Herald Media reports. Cash, toys and books are being accepted but not clothing or personalized items.

Checks made out to Tri-County Council will go to the three children. The donations program was announced Thursday.

Authorities say the three young girls and the couple’s bodies were found at a town of Piehl residence while responding to a 911 call Sunday morning. Thomas Ayers was shot to death and Jennifer Ayers died of knife wounds, Oneida County sheriff’s officials said.

A possible motive has not been released by investigators.

If you would like to help, you can mail your donations or drop them off.

Mailed donations:

Tri-County Council, P.O. Box 233, Rhinelander, WI 54501

Drop-off donations:

Administrative Offices of Tri-County Council

3716 Country Drive, Suite 1, Rhinelander, WI 54501

Between 8:00 a.m. and 4:00 p.m. Monday through Friday

ST. PAUL, MN (WCCO-TV) – A Minnesota family has filed a lawsuit against a restaurant for what they call a fatal mistake.

They say they were told that the establishment’s pancakes were dairy-free.

Their son, Scott Johnson suffered from a severe dairy allergy since birth. He’d had scares before. Small traces of dairy would be enough to send him to the emergency room.  That’s why his family says eating at a restaurant became rare and would always be done with caution.

But on a weekday morning last June, the girls wanted to treat their mom and brother to breakfast at Bemidji’s Minnesota Nice Café.

The family’s lawsuit explains, what they say, happened next.

Scott’s mom, Cindy, asked the server if the restaurant gluten free pancakes were also dairy free.  The server said, after checking with the cook, they were.

Cindy then told the server the grill would have to be cleaned before her son’s pancakes were made.

His mom and sisters then watched Scott eat two pancakes, thinking they were fine.

He had just finished and he said they have to go now.

Scott forgot to bring his epipen and nebulizer to the restaurant, the tools he’d used before to open his lungs and help him through an allergic reaction.

When the Johnson’s got home, it became clear they weren’t working. Cindy called 911.

Doctors told his parents their son had suffered such a severe anaphylactic reaction, his heart had failed.

Scott died three days later.

The Johnson’s are sharing their story with the hope it will stop something like this from happening again and to help people realize just how serious allergies can be.

RUBY, Alaska (AP) — A blind dog is helping musher Kelly Maixner find the Iditarod finish line in western Alaska.

The 5-year-old, 50-pound sled dog named Laura has a cornea disease called pannus, Anchorage television station KTUU reported.

Maixner first noticed the dainty-faced Alaskan Husky’s eyes were becoming cloudy about two years ago. Veterinarians told him she is “fairly blind,” and she often seems confused, Maixner said.

“Sometimes I have to throw snacks on the ground extra hard so she can hear where it falls,” he said.

But Laura is comfortable running in every spot on Maixner’s sled team — except lead. When the pediatric dentist puts her in front, she relies on the other dog sharing the lead position to guide the way.

Laura is a favorite of her handlers. Maixner said she’s not only a reliable runner, but a cheerleader for the team as they make the trek from Fairbanks to the old gold-rush town of Nome.

This is Maixner’s fifth Iditarod attempt. He scratched from competition late in the race last year, but he’s aiming to finish in the top 10 this year with Laura’s help.

 

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — State wildlife officers resuscitated a 66-inch sturgeon and cited the man who pulled the fish from the Sacramento River.

Janice Mackey of the Department of Fish and Wildlife said Thursday that officers spotted the suspected poacher along the river near Clarksburg last week.

The man hooked a very large fish and drove off with it in the bed of his pickup truck.

The officers immediately pulled the man over and brought the large, untagged fish back to the riverbed, where they rocked it back and forth, moving water over its gills.

After 20 minutes, the fish gained the strength to swim away.

Fishing for white sturgeon, which are native to California, is highly regulated. They can live to 100 years old.

 

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) – State wildlife officers resuscitated a 66-inch sturgeon and cited the man who pulled the fish from the Sacramento River.

Janice Mackey of the Department of Fish and Wildlife said Thursday that officers spotted the suspected poacher along the river near Clarksburg last week.

The man hooked a very large fish and drove off with it in the bed of his pickup truck.

The officers immediately pulled the man over and brought the large, untagged fish back to the riverbed, where they rocked it back and forth, moving water over its gills.

After 20 minutes, the fish gained the strength to swim away.

Fishing for white sturgeon, which are native to California, is highly regulated. They can live to 100 years old.

DALLAS (AP) – Dallas police say a 17-year-old man has been charged with murder in the shooting of an Iraqi man as he took photos of his first snowfall.

Maj. Jeff Cotner said Friday that police do not believe the suspect, Nykerion Nealon, knew Ahmed Al-Jumaili, or his ethnicity. Al-Jumaili was shot March 4 and died the next day.

Cotner says Nealon told police he had been hunting for people he thought had shot at his girlfriend’s nearby apartment complex that evening. Police are investigating whether gangs were involved.

Al-Jumaili fled violence in his homeland and had been in Dallas just three weeks when he died. Muslims in the area feared he was targeted because of his ethnicity.

Nealon is held at the Dallas County jail. Online jail records don’t list his attorney.

SAN DIEGO (AP) — A baby gorilla who had to be delivered through an emergency cesarean section and had some rocky early days has celebrated her first birthday at San Diego Zoo Safari Park.

The gorilla known as Joanne received a yam cake and a cardboard doll house for her birthday on Thursday. She was given her own special cake, that included pureed yams, while the rest of her troop shared a bigger one.

KSBW-TV reports she still subsists mostly on the milk of her mother, 19-year-old Imani, but was seen digging into her cake.

The scene was less cheerful a year ago when Joanne had to spend her first 11 days in a veterinary hospital with pneumonia before she was reunited with her mother.

 

WASHINGTON (AP) – Saturday is the day when love of math and a hankering for pastry come full circle. Saturday is Pi Day, a once-in-a-year calendar date that this time squares the fun with a once-in-a-century twist.

Saturday is 3-14-15, the first five digits of the mathematical constant pi: 3.141592653.  The best times to celebrate are at 9:26 and 53 seconds, morning and evening. The next time that happens is in March 2115.

“It’s a portal into this magical mysterious world of mathematics,” said University of California Berkeley mathematician and author Edward Frenkel. “Pi is special.”

Pi is the constant used to calculate the area of a circle, as in pi times the radius squared, but it appears all over other parts of mathematics. It “is kind of a basic atomic building block” for math, said Temple University mathematician and author John Paulos, who was interviewed at precisely 3:14:15 p.m.

In some places, Pi Day is celebrated with the edible type of pie.

“It’s a real exciting moment for math enthusiasm,” said Nathan Kaplan, a Yale University math professor, who called it a time for people to “remember how much fun they found some of the stuff in school.”

When challenged, Kaplan acknowledged that most people don’t really recall math as fun. He blamed that on the way we were taught it: “There’s fun stuff out there in the quantitative world.”

One interesting aspect of pi is that it is irrational, which means the decimals after 3 go on to infinity with no repeating patterns. Yet in 1897, a bill before the Indiana legislature tried to round it up to 3.2. It fell flat.

“We cannot change it. It’s not subject to opinion or taste or time,” Frenkel said. “How many things like this in the universe mean the same thing to everyone through time and space?”

This pi story goes full circle, with exactly 314 words.

OCALA, Fla. (AP) – Police say a drunk, pregnant Florida woman driving with two 18-month old children in her SUV crashed into the back of another car.

Ocala police on Wednesday arrested 28-year-old Angel Nicole Oliver after she recorded blood-alcohol levels of 0.228 and 0.236, about three times the legal limit. No one was seriously injured in the crash.

A police report says Oliver is six months pregnant. It also says the toddler twins were not properly restrained in the vehicle.

Oliver did not immediately return a phone message seeking comment.

The children’s father has taken custody of them, and the Department of Children and Families was notified.

The police report says Oliver’s car smelled of alcohol and officers found beer containers inside.

Police say Oliver acknowledged drinking three beers and failed a field sobriety test.

CAMP LEJEUNE, N.C. (AP) – Military officials have released the names of seven special forces Marines who were killed when a Black Hawk helicopter crashed into the waters off Florida during a routine training mission in dense fog.

Those killed were all stationed at from Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. They were identified Friday as: Capt. Stanford Henry Shaw III of Basking Ridge, New Jersey; Master Sgt. Thomas Saunders of Camp Lejeune; Staff Sgt. Liam Flynn of Queens, New York; Staff Sgt. Trevor P. Blaylock of Lake Orion, Michigan; Staff Sgt. Kerry Michael Kemp of Port Washington, Wisconsin; Staff Sgt. Andrew Seif of Holland, Michigan; and Staff Sgt. Marcus Bawol from Warren, Michigan.

All were from the 2nd Special Operations Battalion of the Marine Corps Special Operations Command.

Four Louisiana National Guard soldiers also died in the crash. Their names have yet been released.

MADISON (AP) – A report commissioned by U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin’s office blames her constituent services team for mishandling a report on overmedication problems at a Tomah Department of Veterans Affairs hospital, but also acknowledges that senior staff members made mistakes.

The review, done by Perkins Coie, a Seattle-based law firm, found that Baldwin’s office ineffectively communicated constituent concerns about the Tomah hospital, but did not intentionally sit on the report. Baldwin’s office released a 5-page summary of the findings Friday.

The constituent services team failed to take proper action in passing on complaints of painkiller overprescribing practices to senior staff members, the report said, and all staff members took too long in reacting to constituent concerns.

“The bottom line is this: Senator Baldwin’s staff took some important steps to investigate the abuses at Tomah VA, but then missed numerous chances to follow up and press for action,” the report said.

Baldwin said she accepts that her staff erred, and said her office would redouble its efforts to improve communication.

“There were missed opportunities for my office to move forward more swiftly,” she said Friday. “And I take responsibility for that.”

The review singled out Baldwin’s deputy state director of constituent services, Marquette Baylor, for missteps in communicating on the Tomah case although it did not name her. Baylor did not immediately respond to phone messages Friday. She was fired in January.

“Tomah played a role in that, but it was a much bigger issue with her role as a case work supervisor,” Baldwin said.

The Tomah facility came under scrutiny in January when reports of narcotic overprescribing practices and retaliatory behaviors surfaced. The hospital is under investigation by the VA, the VA Office of the Inspector General and the Drug Enforcement Administration.

A preliminary VA report Tuesday said patients at the hospital have a higher likelihood of receiving high doses of narcotics including opioids than those at other VA hospitals. The report also found a culture of fear among employees that compromised patient care.

Jason Simcakoski, a 35-year-old Marine, died of an overdose in the hospitals’ inpatient care unit in August.

The review released Friday also says Baldwin’s senior staff members believed the VA Office of the Inspector General would solve the problems at the medical center. The inspector general’s report released last year concluded there was no proof of wrongdoing and the majority of allegations against the facility were not substantiated.

“Accordingly, they did not make it a priority to independently verify the OIG’s representations that the concerns about prescription practices were being addressed,” the report says. “In retrospect, this was a mistake.”

LA CROSSE (AP) – Police say the body of a man has been recovered from the Mississippi River in downtown La Crosse.

First responders were called to the river about 8 a.m. Friday where the body was found. La Crosse Police Sgt. Randy Rank tells WXOW-TV it appears the body may have been in the river awhile. Rank says they are working with the Winona County Sheriff’s Department to identify the person.

MADISON (AP) – A 19-year-old biracial man who was unarmed when killed by a white Madison police officer was shot in his head, right arm and torso, according to preliminary autopsy reports released Friday.

The report from the Dane County Medical Examiner did not say how many times Tony Robinson was shot on March 6, but it he died from “firearm related trauma.” The results of toxicology tests aren’t expected for several more weeks.

• Click here to read the full report

Robinson was fatally shot by police officer Matt Kenny after Kenny was summoned to a call that the young man was jumping in and out of traffic and had assaulted someone. Authorities said the officer heard a disturbance and forced his way into an apartment where Robinson had gone, and fired after Robinson assaulted him.

There have been numerous peaceful protests since the shooting, often drawing about 1,000 people, and a memorial with flowers and written messages has been set up at the scene of the shooting. Robinson’s funeral is scheduled for Saturday.

The Wisconsin Department of Justice is investigating the shooting under a state law that requires an outside agency to look into any fatal police shootings. Attorney General Brad Schimel has declined to go into any details about the shooting, saying releasing information in bits has caused turmoil in other racially charged officer-involved shootings around the nation over the last year.

But Schimel has said he hopes to have the bulk of that investigation done and submitted to the local district attorney in two weeks.

Division Administrator Dave Matthews asked people to be patient, stressing that the investigation is massive. Authorities have said they’re looking at what every witness was doing in the hours leading up the shooting.

Kenny wasn’t wearing a body camera, but agents are examining video recordings from squad cars that arrived after the shooting and from devices people were carrying, he said. Matthews called the time it will take to review all the recordings “daunting.”

___

Associated Press writer Kia Farhang contributed to this report.

PEORIA, Ariz. (AP) — The Milwaukee Brewers will have to find a new way to celebrate for the next few spring training games. The team has banned high fives to avoid the spread of pink eye.

Catcher Jonathan Lucroy and pitching coach Rick Kranitz became the latest victims Thursday. They will be staying home for 48 hours in hopes of stopping the spread of the annoying and highly contagious malady.

“We’ve been going through it for a while and it seems like a couple of more show up every day,” manager Ron Roenicke said.

The team won’t high five until the outbreak is over. The Brewers play the Mariners Friday afternoon.

EAU CLAIRE (AP) – Chancellors at the University of Wisconsin’s Eau Claire and Whitewater campuses are making cost-cutting plans to deal with a proposed $300 million reduction in state funding for the UW System, even though the Legislature has yet to consider the cuts included in Gov. Scott Walker’s budget.

The Eau Claire Leader-Telegram reports UW-Eau Claire Chancellor James Schmidt says the university will offer voluntary separation incentives to about 325 eligible faculty and staff.

UW-Whitewater Chancellor Richard Telfer tells the Janesville Gazette that he will not fill 41 positions that are either open or will be vacant because someone is planning on leaving. Twelve of the 41 positions are full-time faculty jobs that affect 71 classes. Telfer says it would cover about $2.4 million of the projected $6.4 million in anticipated funding losses.

APPLETON – City leaders are looking for the public’s input to help shape the future of a main community park.

A public input session has been scheduled for 6 p.m. Tuesday at the Scheig Center in Appleton Memorial Park. City leaders say they have hired landscape architecture and engineering firm Rettler Corp. to modernize the park. The city’s plan is for the firm to take a look at existing facilities and suggest ideas for improvements and new facilities to meet current and future needs. The city also hopes to better integrate the Scheig Center and surrounding gardens within the park.

The Tuesday night forum is scheduled to include a short presentation from Rettler Corp., then the public will have a chance to offer feedback.

After the open house, Rettler Corp. is expected to prepare a preliminary master plan for the park based on input from the community. It is expected to be presented to the Appleton Common Council in late April, with a final master plan possibly adopted in late May or early June.

Appleton Memorial Park, on the city’s north side, includes softball diamonds and soccer fields, a pavilion, walking trails and playground areas. It is home to the Memorial Park Gardens – the former Gardens of the Fox Cities. The city’s Independence Day fireworks display is also held at the park.

• Click here for a park map and more meeting information

KENOSHA (AP) — The story of three Kenosha middle school basketball players defending a cheerleader who has Down syndrome is attracting a lot of attention.

The three players had heard mean-spirited comments directed at cheerleader Desiree Andrews coming from the crowd during a game last year at Lincoln Middle School. During a timeout, Chase Vazquez, Scooter Terrien and Miles Rodriguez walked off the court to address the comments.

Desiree’s father, Cliff, tells the Kenosha News his phone has been ringing “nonstop” since the story surfaced, including calls from talk shows and news outlets. He says Desiree is “on cloud nine” with all the attention, but he says the story is really about the boys’ standing up against bullying.

Since the incident, the gym at the school has been dubbed “D’s House” in Desiree’s honor.

GREEN BAY – The Green Bay man whose disappearance led to a Silver Alert has been found dead.

Green Bay police say a person who lives in the Suring area found Philip Jeanquart’s vehicle on their property around 5:30 p.m. Thursday. Jeanquart was not in the vehicle, but his dog was. Authorities looked for Jeanquart and found his body in some nearby woods.

Investigators have not determined how Jeanquart died, but they say there’s no indication of foul play.

Relatives and friends of Jeanquart, 68, had been pleading for help finding him since Tuesday. He was last seen around noon that day. Authorities said he suffered from dementia.

A statewide alert was sent using the state’s Silver Alert system.

FOX 11 is following this story and will have more information as it becomes available.

GREEN BAY – Whether your are Irish, or just “Irish for a day” St. Brendan’s Inn in Green Bay has a whole menu of magnificent March cocktails!   Bartender Brian Boyea showed us how to make the following three drinks.

Irish Coffee 1 teaspoon brown sugar, 1.5 oz Irish Whiskey, Coffee to the rim of the glass and then finished off with fresh made whipped cream. Celtic Lemonade 1 oz. Boru Irish Vodka, 1 oz. Celtic Honey Liqueur, Fill to to the top with lemonade and garnish with a lemon wedge. St. Brendan’s Inn Grasshopper Martini 1 oz. whiskey, 1 oz. Kahlua, 1 oz. Green Creme de Menthe, and 2 oz. Irish Cream shaken and strained into a martini glass garnished with chocolate syrup.

AMASA, Mich. (AP) – The Michigan-made hardwood floor for the NCAA Tournament’s Final Four will be hitting the road to Indianapolis.

Connor Sports is planning its annual tour starting Monday. The floor that will be used for the men’s games at Lucas Oil Stadium will make stops following finishing work in in Idaho Falls, Idaho.

The tour runs through March 27. Stops before Indianapolis include Shelley, Idaho; Salt Lake City; DeKalb, Elk Grove Village and Chicago, Illinois; and Valparaiso and Fishers, Indiana.

• Click here for tour details

Connor Sports makes the floor in the tiny town of Amasa, located in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. The floor for the women’s Final Floor also is made there and will stop in Greensboro, North Carolina, on March 27 before being delivered to Tampa, Florida.