Tag Archives: Des Moines

F3 Tornado Rolls Through Central Iowa

 

Important Takeaways:

  • Official: 7 Dead After Large Tornado Roars Through Central Iowa
  • Madison County Emergency Management Director Diogenes Ayala said 25 to 30 homes were badly damaged by the tornado.
  • “This is the worst anyone has seen in a very long time”
  • The National Weather Service in Des Moines tweeted later Saturday that initial photos and videos from the damage around the community of Winterset suggested it was at least an EF-3 tornado, capable of causing severe damage
  • Officials reported a number of homes were damaged, roads were blocked by downed lines and tree branches were shredded by the strong winds.
  • At one point, power outages affected about 10,000 in the Des Moines area.

Read the original article by clicking here.

Suspect in fatal ambush of two Iowa police officers captured

By Brian Frank

DES MOINES, Iowa (Reuters) – Police in Iowa said on Wednesday they have captured a man suspected of killing two police officers hours earlier as they sat in their patrol cars in what authorities called separate and unprovoked attacks.

Scott Michael Greene, who is 46 and white, was taken into custody after police named him as their suspect in the ambushes, a police spokeswoman in Urbandale, Iowa said. (For live coverage of the Iowa police shootings click here:

Police said they found the first slain officer’s body about 1:06 a.m. (2.06 a.m. ET) in Urbandale, an affluent Des Moines suburb, and the second about 20 minutes later about two miles (3 km) away, in Des Moines. Police declined to release the names of the officers awaiting notification of their families.

It was unclear what provoked Wednesday’s attacks, Des Moines police department spokesman Paul Parizek told a news conference prior to Greene’s arrest, adding that “we may never know.” But it appeared the suspect had a recent run-in with police.

A 10-minute video posted on YouTube last month by a user calling himself Scott Greene showed an interaction with officers following an incident at a sports stadium in which he described holding up a Confederate battle flag during the playing of the U.S. national anthem. He is heard claiming that he was assaulted.

Reuters was unable to immediately confirm whether the video was made by the suspect, whose face does not appear in it. It records a male voice arguing with police over the incident.

The Confederate flag is a racially charged symbol for its association with the pro-slavery South in the U.S. Civil War.

(Reporting by Brendan O’Brien in Milwaukee and Gina Cherelus, Dave Ingram and Michael Flaherty in New York; Writing by Scott Malone; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn and Will Dunham)