Grand jury indicts Carthage man on child pornography, sexual exploitation of a minor charges

 A grand jury indictment of Uriah Behl, 39, Carthage, on charges of sexual exploitation of a minor and possession and distribution of child pornography was unsealed today in U. S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri.

According to the indictment, Behl persuaded a minor to "engage in sexually explicit conduct" to make a video.

He also allegedly received and distributed child pornography. Both crimes occurred between November 12, 2023 and February 18, 2024.

The charges appear connected to eight felony charges of invasion of privacy filed by the Jasper County Prosecuting Attorney's office in a case that was investigated by the Jasper County Sheriff's Office. Judge John Nicholas dismissed four of the charges.

From the probable cause statement in the Jasper County case:

On February 18, 2024 at 2030 hours, I Sgt. Calvin #349 was dispatched to an address outside of Carthage, Jasper County, reference a possible sexual offence. Upon arrival, I was contacted by eight victims who advised the suspect Uriah Behl had placed a cell phone in a community shower room and video recorded them while in a state of undress without their knowledge. 

The shower room is for community use but is a private area and has a locking door to insure privacy. 

Victim 1 advised she located the phone in the shower room recording and while checking the phone noticed videos with the other victims on the phone. The suspect Uriah Behl admitted to placing the cell phone in the room to capture a female while taking a shower. Mr. Behl was taken into custody at 2144 hours.

Grand jury indicts Carterville man on federal firearms charge

A grand jury indictment of a Carterville man on a firearms charge was unsealed today in U. S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri.

A criminal complaint was filed against Bobby Gene Elliott, 39, October 30 following his arrest by the Joplin Police Department on methamphetamine possession and weapons charges. 

According to the probable cause affidavit, the Joplin Police Department made a traffic stop at 7th and Schifferdecker and a search of Elliott's vehicle revealed two bags of methamphetamine, a pistol under the front passenger seat and an AR-15 style rifle with a 41-round magazine that contained 34 .223 caliber rounds.

The affidavit noted Elliott has a previous conviction for delivery of a controlled substance.

Jasper County Circuit Court records show Elliott is awaiting trial on a felony drug trafficking charge and driving while intoxicated in connection with a May 15 Joplin Police Department traffic stop. The probable cause statement indicates the police discovered methamphetamine in his vehicle.

Missourians vote to increase minimum wage, require paid sick leave

By Clara Bates

Missouri Independent

An effort to hike the state’s minimum wage to $15 an hour and guarantee paid sick leave won the support of Missouri voters Tuesday night.

Proposition A was approved by Missouri voters 58% to 41%.

(Photo- Daniel Tucker, a leader with the Missouri Workers Center, teaches chants customized to an initiative petition to raise the minimum wage and mandate paid sick leave outside of the Secretary of State’s office building in Jefferson City in May- Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

The approval follows a trend of Missourians using the initiative petition process to increase the minimum wage — and more broadly, of Missourians using that process to advance policies at odds with the beliefs of the state’s Republican dominated legislature.

Proposition A was backed by various unions and workers’ advocacy groups, social justice and civil rights organizations, over 500 state business owners and others.

Some business groups, including the state Chamber of Commerce, have opposed it, especially the guaranteed sick leave portion. But there wasn’t a coordinated opposition campaign.

The campaign in favor of the measure, called Missourians for Healthy Families and Fair Wages, raised nearly $6 million — including from out-of-state groups that don’t disclose their donors — and collected 210,000 signatures to have the issue placed on the statewide ballot.

The current minimum wage in Missouri is $12.30, which is equivalent to $492 per week, before taxes. The ballot measure would raise the state’s minimum wage to $13.75 next year and $15 in January 2026.

The increase would affect over 562,000 workers in the state, according to the Missouri Budget Project, or nearly 1 in 4 workers. The minimum wage would be adjusted based on inflation every year after 2026.

Voters approved a minimum-wage hike in 2006, with 75% of the vote, and again in 2018, with 62% of the vote.

And businesses will be required to provide one hour of paid sick time for every 30 hours worked, up to five days per year for small businesses and seven days per year for larger businesses. Small businesses are those with fewer than 15 employees.

The paid sick time provision will go into effect on May 1, 2025.

Without sick leave, proponents argue, workers have to choose between their financial and physical wellbeing — going into work sick or losing out on a needed paycheck.

Missouri will join 15 states that require employers to provide paid sick leave. The United States, unlike nearly every other country, lacks federal paid sick leave, so states, as well as cities, have taken the lead.

Some business groups raised alarm particularly with the sick leave provisions, saying the proposal constitutes government overreach in what should be the decisions of business owners.

At the same time, a coalition of hundreds of businesspeople in the state have signed on to support the ballot measure, arguing the policies help their bottom line, causing lower employee turnover, increased productivity and better health and safety conditions.

The ballot measure would change the state law but not the constitution, meaning the legislature could overturn it, but those on both sides of the issue told The Independent last month they see that as unlikely.

Missouri voters approve Amendment 3, overturn state’s abortion ban

By Anna Spoerre

Missouri Independent

ST. LOUIS — When Missouri on Tuesday became the first state to overturn a near-total abortion ban by the vote of the people, Desiree White cried happy tears.

Twenty-five years earlier, she and her husband chose to terminate a pregnancy they very much wanted after they received a diagnosis of a fatal fetal abnormality.

(Photo- Maggie Olivia, a senior policy manager with Abortion Action Missouri, embraces abortion-rights supporters after the race is called in favor of Amendment 3 on Tuesday in St. Louis- Anna Spoerre/Missouri Independent).

White, a retired professor of clinical psychology at Washington University who is now 66, was among a few hundred people who embraced, cried and cheered as the results were announced just before 10:30 p.m. at an Amendment 3 watch party in downtown St. Louis.

 

With all precincts reporting, Amendment 3 won 52% to 48%.

“We did not accept this nightmare thrust upon us,” Tori Schafer, deputy director for policy and campaigns of the ACLU of Missouri, told the crowd.

The PAC behind Amendment 3, called Missourians for Constitutional Freedom, raised more than $31 million this election, funding TV ads and other messaging across the state. Abortion opponents raised just a fraction of that amount, but had the support of many of Missouri’s top elected officials in spreading the word to “vote no on Amendment 3.”

“Our work to protect the safety of women and the dignity of life continues,” Stephanie Bell, with Missouri Stands with Women, said in a statement Tuesday, adding: “We will continue to fight and ultimately be victorious against the forces who see no value in life.”

When the amendment goes into effect in 30 days, abortion will become legal up until the point of fetal viability — generally seen as the point at which a fetus can survive outside the womb on its own, or around 24 weeks, according to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.

The amendment also protects access to other reproductive health care, like birth control.

Missourians have long lived with limited — or non-existent — abortion access.

This is in part because of the state’s long history electing anti-abortion lawmakers who over the last several years crafted some of the more restrictive laws in the country, known as TRAP laws, or “targeted regulation of abortion providers.”

The legislature in 2019 also passed a “trigger law,” meant to go into effect if Roe v. Wade fell. When the constitutional right to an abortion was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court in June 2022, Missouri was the first state to make virtually all abortions illegal.

While the amendment will go into effect in early December, abortion almost certainly won’t immediately become readily accessible across the state.

 

Leaders with Missourians for Constitutional Freedom have said many of the state’s existing TRAP laws, which made access nearly impossible prior to the abortion ban, will first need to be challenged in court. They said they plan to bring forward those challenges “soon.”

And they expect a hard-fought path to regaining abortion access.

“Anti-abortion, anti-democracy politicians are going to try to stomp us out,” Mallory Schwarz, executive director with Abortion Action Missouri, told the crowd after the results were announced. “They’re going to try and fight us in court, they’re going to file new attacks in Jefferson City.”

State Sen. Mary Elizabeth Coleman, a Republican from Arnold and a leading anti-abortion lawmaker, wrote on social media following Tuesday’s vote that she would “do everything in my power” to ensure Missourians have another chance to vote on abortion.

In response to Coleman’s post, Schafer said the ACLU of Missouri expects Missouri’s abortion-rights senators to “filibuster til the cows and the chickens come home.”

Last session, Missouri Senate Democrats used the filibuster to kill an attempt by Republican lawmakers to increase the threshold required to pass a citizen-initiated constitutional amendment that would’ve made it much more difficult to pass the abortion-rights amendment.

In Missouri, constitutional amendments require a simple majority to pass. In Florida on Tuesday, an abortion-rights amendment received a majority of votes but failed to meet the required 60% approval to pass.

Missourians for Constitutional Freedom formally kicked off a citizen-led initiative petition process to get abortion on the ballot in January.

 

The coalition, whose leaders include the ACLU of Missouri, Abortion Action Missouri and the state’s Planned Parenthood affiliates, emphasized the state’s strict abortion laws in the months leading up to the election.

A decade ago, more than 5,000 abortions were performed in Missouri, according to data from the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services. By 2020, that number dropped to 167 due to a series of “targeted regulation of abortion providers” laws enacted by the legislature, including a mandatory 72-hour waiting period between the initial appointment and a surgical abortion and mandatory pelvic exams for medication abortions.

Between June 24, 2022 and July 31, 2024, 74 abortions were performed in Missouri under the state’s emergency exemption, according to health department data.

The abortion-rights campaign saw overwhelming support across the state early on, turning in more than 380,000 signatures to the Missouri Secretary of State’s Office in May.

Those opposed to the amendment launched a mostly grassroots effort to fight the amendment with the help of anti-abortion lawmakers, churches and activists. Their messaging leaned heavily into claims that the amendment would legalize gender-affirming surgeries for minors, something legal experts have disputed.

Several different PACs created to encourage Missourians to “vote no” cumulatively raised a few million dollars to fight the amendment, including through radio ad buys, billboards and fliers, mostly relying on word-of-mouth to raise concerns with the amendment.

Susan Prinster, 72, a member of Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary Parish in O’Fallon, gathered with a few dozen other parishioners to pray the rosary on Tuesday afternoon, hours before polls closed across the state.

“I’m very scared,” Prinster said following the recitation of the rosary late Tuesday afternoon in St. Charles County as part of a larger effort across the Archdiocese of St. Louis to pray for the defeat of Amendment 3. “I don’t know where this thing came from.”

Prinster remembers the moment 52 years ago when she learned Roe v. Wade, a U.S. Supreme Court decision that protected the constitutional right to an abortion, was decided. She was holding her first child, still an infant, in her arms at her home in Missouri.



“It was awful,” she said, recalling how she looked down at her child as they swayed in a rocking chair.

Sylvia Kiphart, a retired preschool teacher who now serves as coordinator for Assumption’s “Pro-Life” program, said if Amendment 3 passes she hopes a new ballot measure is quickly introduced attempting to overturn it.



“We’ve got to stop them,” she said. “We’ve got to. We can’t keep killing babies.”

Carthage Ward 5 voters kick Tiffany Cossey off City Council

Carthage Ward 5 voters showed Councilwoman Tiffany Cossey the door today,

The results, which were announced moments ago at the Jasper County Courthouse, showed 730 voting yes on the recall, or 61.5 percent, with 457 voters or 38.5 percent voting for her to remain on the council.

Cossey's ultimately successful push to impeach Mayor Dan Rife and remove City Administrator Greg Dagnan and City Attorney Nate Dally (who resigned) led to the push to remove her from the council.

Republican Mike Kehoe wins Missouri governor’s race over Democrat Crystal Quade

By Rebecca Rivas

Missouri Independent 

Missouri’s next governor will be Mike Kehoe, a Republican who cruised to victory Tuesday night over Democrat Crystal Quade.

(Photo- Mike Kehoe, the Republican candidate for Missouri governor, thanks supporters as he steps onstage for his victory speech the night of the primary election in August- Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

The Associated Press called the race at 8:30 p.m. with 22% of precincts reporting and Kehoe leading Quade 52% to 46%.

“Our victory tonight, it’s a win for our cops, our firefighters, our farmers, and our job creators,” Kehoe told supporters Tuesday night. “It’s a win for students who deserve good schools and a brighter future. It’s a win for families who want safe streets and lower taxes. So, to all Missourians, this is your victory. Enjoy tonight because tomorrow morning, we get to work together for an even safer, stronger, and more prosperous Missouri.”

Kehoe has served six years as lieutenant governor after being appointed to the job by Gov. Mike Parson in 2018.

Kehoe’s biggest hurdle to becoming governor came during a contentious primary in August, when he beat out two fellow Republicans who boasted being more conservative on issues.

Leading up to the primary, Kehoe trailed Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft in most polls until the summer, when the $16 million campaign war chest he amassed enabled him to fill the airwaves, overwhelming opponents and surviving a late onslaught of outside spending.

He won the primary with just under 40% of the vote.

Kehoe’s message was that he was a more interested in governing than politics.

“Missourians are a little bit sick of hate politics,” Kehoe said in a July interview with The Independent.

However, Quade, who has served as Democratic leader in the Missouri House, cautioned voters not to view Kehoe as less “extreme” than his primary rivals.

 

“While folks may say that one (Republican candidate) is more moderate than the other, the reality is Lt. Gov. Kehoe would sign the same pieces of legislation that the extremists in Jefferson City would send him regardless,” Quade told reporters, following the annual governor’s ham breakfast at the Missouri State Fair in August.

Kehoe is the youngest of six children raised by a single mother in St. Louis. His mom worked three jobs to support the family, he said, and when he was old enough he got a job washing cars at a local auto dealership.

When he had enough money, he bought a struggling company that built ambulances, doubling it in size over the next five years to what is now one of the largest ambulance manufacturers in the world.

At the age of 30, he bought a Ford dealership in Jefferson City, putting down roots in the community and building the business over the next two decades. He sold the dealership in 2011.

He was elected to the state Senate in 2012 and was the chamber’s majority leader when Parson appointed him lieutenant governor in 2018. Kehoe won a full term as lieutenant governor in 2020.

As governor, Kehoe has vowed to eliminate the state income tax and develop a crime plan that can be rolled out when the legislature reconvenes in January.

Missouri voters pick Donald Trump over Kamala Harris

By Jason Hancock

Missouri Independent

Former President Donald Trump won Missouri’s 10 electoral votes for the third straight election on Tuesday, easily defeating Vice President Kamala Harris.

The Associated Press called the race at 8:50 p.m., with Trump leading Harris 51% to 47% with only 30% of precincts reporting.

 

In 2020, Trump won Missouri by 16 percentage points over Joe Biden. Four years earlier, he won by nearly 20 percentage points over Hillary Clinton.

Missouri’s status as a bellwether state ended in 2008, when voters narrowly rejected Democrat Barack Obama in favor of Republican John McCain. Democrats managed to win nearly every statewide office in 2012, but at the same time Republican Mitt Romney carried Missouri by nearly 10 percentage points and Republicans built a super majority in the state legislature.

Since then, the state has continued to steadily trend toward the Republicans, with every statewide office in GOP hands.

Josh Hawley defeats Lucas Kunce in Missouri U.S. Senate race

By Jason Hancock and Clara Bates

Missouri Independent 

U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley won a second term on Tuesday, overcoming a well-financed rival in a state that hasn’t elected a Democrat to statewide office since 2018.

(Photo- U.S. Senator Josh Hawley speaks to reporters at the governor’s ham breakfast at the Missouri State Fair in Sedalia on Aug. 15.-Annelise Hanshaw/Missouri Independent).

Hawley led Marine veteran Lucas Kunce 51% to 47% when the Associated Press called the race at 9:30 p.m

A former U.S. Supreme Court clerk and law professor at the University of Missouri, Hawley briefly served as the state’s attorney general before jumping into the 2018 U.S. Senate race against incumbent Democrat Claire McCaskill.

He survived a national Democratic wave that year and defeated McCaskill by six percentage points.

Since joining the Senate, Hawley has struck a more populist tone, abandoning previous opposition to anti-union “right-to-work” laws and minimum wage hikes. He also championed an unsuccessful push to expand the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act to cover individuals exposed to nuclear material left over from atomic bomb development in St. Louis.

It was his support for the RECA expansion that impressed Debbie Hedgepeth, who is retired and lives in Rolla. She said she supports Hawley because of “what he does for Missouri” and all he believes in.

“He is a man of faith,” she said, “and he’s done a lot for St. Louis, as far as the bill to clean the (nuclear) waste.”

Sam Coryell, who lives in Springfield, works in commercial real estate and say she attends the same church as the Hawleys when they are in Missouri, said Hawley “does a great job in the Senate of holding our leaders, both Republican and Democrat, accountable.”

Hawley was criticized in 2021 for expressing support for Jan. 6 rioters shortly before they stormed the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to overturn Joe Biden’s victory over Donald Trump. He was later captured on video running through the Capitol to escape the mob.

He has defended his decision to object to the certification of the 2020 presidential election, despite there being no evidence of wrongdoing that would have impacted the outcome of that race.

In his campaign for re-election, Hawley worked to paint Kunce as an extremist, highlighting the Democrat’s support for transgender rights and slamming his call for the country to transition off of fossil fuels.

 

Hawley also openly mocked Kunce after a reporter was injured by a bullet fragment at one of his shooting-range campaign events, releasing a television ad saying Kunce “can’t shoot straight” and calling him a “reckless liberal.”

In turn, Kunce hammered Hawley as an out-of-touch plutocrat, pointing out that Hawley’s campaign spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on private plane flights across the state after attacking McCaskill for the same thing in 2018.

Hawley also caught flak for reports that he only rarely visited Missouri during his six years in the Senate.

In the end, despite being outraised by Kunce, Hawley emerged victorious.

Parson signs executive order activating emergency response to flooding, severe weather

(From Gov. Mike Parson)

Today, Governor Mike Parson signed Executive Order 24-14 activating the Missouri State Emergency Operations Plan in response to flooding and severe weather. Parts of Missouri have already sustained flood and storm damage with additional impacts expected as river levels begin to crest and floodwaters recede.

“With several areas of Missouri already impacted by this week’s storms and heavy rainfall, we want to ensure state resources are available should further disruptions or damage occur,” Governor Parson said. 

“This action enables the state to be better prepared and ready to assist our communities with response and recovery. We urge Missourians to follow the direction of local authorities and emergency managers, use extra caution on the roads, and never drive into floodwaters.”

Executive Order 24-14 will expire on December 5, 2024, unless otherwise terminated or extended. To view Executive Order 24-14, click here.

Neosho man accused of chasing relative two blocks with a machete, threatening to kill him

No one knows why, according to the probable cause statement, but Km M. Narian (DOB 1966), Neosho, became upset during an argument about a fan Saturday, grabbed a machete and yelled at a relative, "I'm going to kill you."

Narian chased the relative two blocks but did not catch up with him, the probable cause statement said.

The Newton County Prosecuting Attorney's office filed a felony third degree domestic assault charge against Narian. Bond was set at $1,500 cash.

The case was investigated by the Neosho Police Department.