RENVILLE

New London, Minnesota, crash involving semi leaves at least one dead

Staff reports — Thu, 28 Dec 2023 00:08:46 GMT

NEW LONDON, Minn. — Law enforcement responded on Wednesday morning to a fatal two-vehicle crash that temporarily shut down traffic on U.S. Highway 71 west of New London.

The driver of a semitractor suffered non-life-threatening injuries. The Minnesota State Patrol has not yet released complete information about who suffered a fatal injury in the crash at the intersection of Highway 71 and Minnesota Highway 9.

According to the crash report from the State Patrol, a 2016 Ford Escape driven by an 80-year-old male from Cambridge was eastbound on Highway 9 while a 2023 Freightliner was northbound on Highway 71 when the vehicles collided at the intersection in Kandiyohi County.

The driver of the Freightliner was identified as Bruce John Feldman, 67, of Renville, according to the Minnesota State Patrol. No treating health care facility was listed in the report.

The driver of the Ford Escape and a 76-year-old female passenger, also from Cambridge, were not named in the report. Information on both is expected to be released on Thursday.

Feldman was wearing his seat belt and alcohol was not involved, the report said. Road conditions were reported as wet at the time of the crash, reported at approximately 11:08 a.m. Wednesday.

The Kandiyohi County Sheriff’s Office, New London Ambulance and Fire and Lakes Area Responders assisted the Minnesota State Patrol at the scene.

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Severe thunderstorm cause brief tornado touchdowns in west-central Minnesota

Shelby Lindrud — Sun, 07 May 2023 18:50:22 GMT

RENVILLE, Minn. — Brief tornado touchdowns were observed in Yellow Medicine, Renville and Kandiyohi counties Saturday evening as a severe thunderstorm cell moved across the region.

Tornado warnings were issued by the National Weather Service -Twin Cities/Chanhassen as the storm passed through.

According to the NWS, video evidence shows a tornado briefly touching down around 5:42 p.m. four miles east of Granite Falls. The tornado damaged a shed. Law enforcement then reported a brief tornado touchdown at approximately 6:23 p.m. about 6 miles north of Renville. A tornado was then spotted around 6:34 p.m. in an open field 2 miles southeast of Prinsburg.

The NWS also said a trained spotter reported quarter-sized hail around 6:22 p.m. southwest of Prinsburg.

A second severe thunderstorm went through Kandiyohi County across the 7 p.m. hour, with downpours and large hail reported as the main threats.

The forecast calls for a chance of rain and thunderstorms through Wednesday with highs in the 70s.

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Woman charged with murder in west-central Minnestota overdose death

Shelby Lindrud — Thu, 14 Jul 2022 21:57:22 GMT

OLIVIA, Minn. — A 19-year-old has been arrested in connection with the fentanyl overdose death of a Renville County woman on Nov. 13, 2021.

Deja Denise Padilla, of Montevideo, was arrested Wednesday and made her first court appearance Thursday in Renville County District Court. She has been charged with murder in the third degree, for allegedly supplying the fentanyl that caused the fatality, and with third-degree controlled substance crime for allegedly selling narcotics.

Bail was set at $500,000 with no conditions, or $300,000 with conditions at Thursday's hearing. She was custody in the Renville County Jail as of Thursday. Padilla's next court date is July 27.

According to court documents, around 12:14 a.m. Nov. 13, 2021, the Renville County Sheriff's Office responded to a 911 call reporting an overdose at a home southwest of Renville. The caller was later identified as Padilla. She reported an unconscious but still breathing female at the residence. Padilla also told law enforcement she was no longer at the residence but had received the information from someone still there.

When law enforcement arrived, they spoke to the home's owner, who said only he and his girlfriend were in the home and no one was having a medical emergency, court documents said. Deputies left the scene, but were called back an hour later when another caller reported an unconscious female at the residence.

Deputies arrived, located the woman in an upstairs bedroom and administered naloxone

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an antidote to opioid overdose

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and started CPR. Despite those lifesaving efforts, the woman, identified only as A.L. in court documents, was declared dead.

A later search of the residence found small amounts of marijuana, methamphetamine and other drug-related items such as needles, but nothing in the bedroom where the woman had been found. No heroin or fentanyl was found at the scene, the criminal complaint said.

The man who had first said there was no one having a medical emergency in the home later told deputies that he had forgotten A.L. was upstairs. He said once he remembered, he went upstairs and found her unresponsive. He and another man called 911 and started CPR, he told law enforcement.

A preliminary autopsy summary from the Midwest Medical Examiner's said white powder wrapped in paper was found in A.L.'s bra. That powder tested positive for fentanyl. The final autopsy, released in January, said A.L.'s cause of death was the toxic effects of methamphetamine and fentanyl. Fentanyl, a DEA Schedule II synthetic morphine substitute, is 80 to 200 times as potent as morphine and is fast-acting, the toxicology report said.

During the investigation, through text messages from Padilla's cellphone, interviews with various people and social media posts, law enforcement learned that Padilla had allegedly been buying and selling methamphetamine. It was also uncovered during the investigation, that on Nov. 12, 2021, Montevideo Police Department officers responded to an overdose call. At the apartment an unconscious female was found, called M.M. Officers successfully administered Narcan to M.M. and she later told law enforcement that she had purchased a gram of heroin from Padilla prior to her overdose. Another interview subject told law enforcement that she knew of five overdoses allegedly attached to drugs sold by Padilla, the court documents said.

According to the criminal complaint, Padilla has pending drug cases in Kandiyohi and Yellow Medicine counties, was convicted of a drug crime in Brown County and, as a minor, was convicted of a drug crime in Chippewa County. The complaint also noted that a check of the Minnesota Trial Court Public Access showed eight active arrest warrants against her in five counties.

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Minnesota education commissioner visits migrant school in Olivia to hear students' stories

Linda Vanderwerf — Wed, 13 Jul 2022 15:05:00 GMT

OLIVIA, Minnesota — Spending part of the school year in Texas and part in Minnesota has its challenges, both with different required classes and some subjects taught in different grades.

But students at the Migrant Education Program at BOLD High �� in Olivia find some good, too. They have friends in both places, and there's less violence in Minnesota.

Students shared their stories with Minnesota Commissioner of Education Heather Mueller when she visited the program last week.

Students in the program come from the BOLD, Buffalo Lake-Hector, Renville County West and Willmar school districts. The program is there to help students avoid gaps in their learning as their families move.

About 72 students from preschool through high school attend school on campus, said director Jane Sanchez, and another 30 are served in other ways.

The school operates Monday through Friday and will end July 20.

The students’ families work in agriculture. Many live in Texas and move north for work in summer and fall. The same families have come to the area for many years.

Sanchez said she has known some of the high school students since they were in kindergarten.

Mueller said she wanted information about how the program serves students and families.

The students told her graduation requirements differ between the states, and teachers present information differently.

Sometimes credits don’t move easily from one state to the other, they said, and some classes are taught in different grades.

For example, Algebra I is a junior high class in Minnesota but a high school class in Texas. Texas does not require students to study American civics, but Minnesota does.

Junior high students told Mueller there is less violence and fighting in the Minnesota schools and communities, and they like having lots of friends in both places.

One junior high boy said summer migrant school “keeps my brain sharp; when I don’t study in the summer, I forget things.”

At the migrant school, he said, “people support me.”

Senior Leo Silva smiled slightly and said, “It’s perfect,” when Mueller asked him about the school. “The teachers are friendly and everyone’s nice,” he told her.

Mueller said it’s important that the migrant program meet both students’ and families’ needs.

“Life takes people all over, and continuing to be flexible is important,” she said. “The system shouldn’t get in the way of a student’s path to graduation.”

Officials at the Department of Education have discussed ways of offering varied paths to graduation, Mueller said.

“We don’t have cookie-cutter students,” she added. “I don’t want anything in the K-12 system to inhibit you from what you want to do next.”

Maria Silva said her family has been working in the area for many years. She said the summer program has been good for her children — and now her grandchildren.

Alex Silva, 13, an eighth-grader, translated for his grandmother and also answered Mueller’s questions.

Maria Silva said the program helped keep her family members on track to graduate, and it gave them positive experiences.

“They did not fall behind, and they came to school because they didn’t want to be in the sun,” she said.

Alex said he appreciates the summer school. This summer he’s receiving help to prepare for the advanced classes his school in Texas wants him to take after he did so well on his standardized tests.

He’s been moving ahead in math and reading Shakespeare and Homer, Sanchez said.

Minnesota teachers take more time to help students understand what they’re learning, Alex said, while in Texas teachers tend to move on more quickly.

Mueller said she was glad to hear that the students and families were finding things they liked in Minnesota. It's important to find ways to ease the migrants’ transition between the school systems.

It's her hope that some of the migrants may eventually decide to put down roots in Minnesota, she added.

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Minnesota seeing more big rain events, less extreme cold

Tom Cherveny — Sat, 19 Mar 2022 12:52:00 GMT

RENVILLE, Minn. — Starting Wednesday afternoon and continuing into the night, the rains fell.

One day later, the August 11, 2016 headline in the West Central Tribune summed up the flooding that resulted throughout much of Willmar as a “1,000 year event.”

Expect more of them.

Pete Boulay, climatologist with the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, said we are seeing an increasing frequency of mega-rainfall events.

Boulay, and Todd Peterson, of the Sand County Foundation in Des Moines, Iowa, were featured speakers at the Hawk Creek Watershed Project’s annual meeting on March 9 in Renville.

Boulay said the state has been seeing temperatures rise by an average of one-half degree each decade.

Despite last year’s drought, Boulay said our weather has otherwise been trending wetter and warmer. The change is most pronounced since the 1970s. Our weather in the 1950s and 1960s was more benign or consistent, he said.

While variability and big swings remain the Minnesota norm, there are obvious trends based on more than 100 years of weather data.

During the winter, we are seeing fewer cold extremes. He pointed to the records kept by the Opjorden family at their home outside of Milan since 1897. Luther Opjorden, who continues the practice his grandfather started, records fewer days with low temperatures of minus-30 or minus-40 degree temperatures compared to his father or grandfather.

That might seem like a good thing, but Peterson and Boulay both noted that those bitter cold days are beneficial to agriculture and forestry in the state. They help keep in check a wide variety of pests, especially invasives like the Emerald Ash Borer.

We experienced some of our wettest years from 2010-2019. Areas in the Hawk Creek watershed recorded a “surplus” of moisture over the norm ranging from 30 to 50 inches during this time frame.

Our recent drought began showing itself in late 2020, but a surplus of moisture in the ground helped carry crops through the season. The drought we experienced from late 2020 and through 2021 until fall was the worst since 1987-89, according to Boulay. One of the worst droughts ever was the “one hit wonder” in 1976, which was followed by the 1987-89, 2012 and 2021 droughts.

Moisture levels in western Minnesota are recovering. Soil moisture and stream flows are back to normal, although lake levels have not yet fully rebounded from the 2021 drought, according to Boulay. Parts of eastern Minnesota are still drier than the norm. He also pointed out that to the west into South Dakota, the drought conditions continue.

Peterson, with the Sand County Foundation, said the changing climate adds to the urgency needed to adopt farming practices that reduce erosion and benefit soil health. He said we continue to lose our topsoil at 23 times the rate that soil can be formed by natural processes. Mega-rain events and other trends exacerbate the soil losses. In Iowa, the rate of topsoil loss has actually increased.

In the last 40 years, we have been losing an average of five tons of topsoil per acre per year on cultivated ground. That amounts to the thickness of a dime per year. Stack 40 dimes on top of one another and the loss is put into perspective. “We’ve lost half of our topsoil, folks,” said Peterson.

The Sand County Foundation was founded by conservationist Aldo Leopold, and focuses on working with the owners of private lands. Roughly 50 percent of the land in the U.S. is private and 70 percent of that is in agricultural use, he pointed out.

Three-fourths of the sediment the Mississippi River carries as its leaves Minnesota for the Gulf of Mexico comes from the Minnesota River basin, he said.

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