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News 08.09.16

9 August 2016 News


Three men are safe after their boat sank in Lake Puckaway. Green Lake County Sheriff’s Sgt. Jeffrey Kiener says a call came in around 7:40 a.m. Saturday from a man stating his boat began taking on water. The three individuals in boat were unable to bail the water out fast enough and the motor would not start. Kiener says when rescue personnel arrived at the boat, it was overturned and all three men were in the water with life jackets on. The men were brought to shore, checked for injuries and released. Kiener says the presence and proper use of life jackets more than likely prevented loss of life due to drowning. Markesan ambulance, and water rescue personnel from the Princeton and Markesan Fire Departments assisted the Green Lake County Sheriff’s Office at the scene.

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A West Bend man is in custody and is suspected of breaking into a number of storage units in Mayville. Captain Ryan Vossekuil says the Mayville Police Department has taken numerous burglary reports. He says in the reported cases, the suspect picked the locks on the units without damaging them. He then placed the locks back onto the storage units, making it difficult for the victims to realize that their unit had been tampered with. Vossekuil says a large amount of stolen property has been recovered, valued at over $30,000. Several items have already been returned to their owners, but a large amount of recovered property has not yet been reported stolen. Authorities are asking that any residents that have storage units in the Mayville area to check if they have had property stolen, and if they believe they may be a victim of this crime, contact the Mayville Police Department at (920) 387-7903. The Fond du Lac County Sheriff’s Office, Washington County Sheriff’s Office, West Bend and Mayville Police all assisted in the case.

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A Hartford man accused of sexually assaulting a 12 year old girl is bound over for trial. Probable cause was found at a preliminary hearing in Dodge County Circuit Court for 51 year old Steven Baran. He’s charged with five counts of 1st degree sexual assault of a child. Baran is accused of sexually assaulting the girl multiple times when he lived with her family in Hustisford in 2008. The victim told authorities that Baran threatened her and threatened to kill her parents if she told anyone about the assaults. An arraignment hearing has been scheduled for August 31st.

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A Janesville pharmacist is set be arraigned in federal court this month on charges he cheated Medicaid and Medicare out of $1 million. A federal grand jury in Madison issued a 46-count indictment last week accusing 55-year-old Mark Johnson of submitting claims to the programs for reimbursement for medication he didn’t provide, lying in his responses to a 2013 Wisconsin Department of Health Services audit and creating fake physician prescription orders to support his false claims. The indictment says he made the fraudulent claims between early 2008 and early 2014. Johnson made an initial appearance in federal court in Madison on Friday. He’s due to be arraigned Aug. 30. His attorney, Stephen Meyer, says he assumes Johnson will fight the allegations.

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An off-duty New York City policeman is credited with alerting Wisconsin law enforcers about online threats to kill an officer. Officer Gregory Santora contacted police in Madison, Wisconsin after spotting a Periscope video on Saturday. Santora says he was “scared” to see a crying man arming himself and “implying that he was going to live-stream the shooting” of police officers. The suspect said he was going to the place where police killed a man last year and shoot the first officer he saw. Instead, he encountered an officer who was expecting him and arrested him. Wisconsin’s Dane County sheriff’s office says that Raynarldo Glenn was awaiting a court appearance. There was no immediate information on an attorney who could comment on his behalf.

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Biologists have determined low oxygen levels caused fish kills in the Mississippi River around La Crosse. Environmental officials from Wisconsin and Minnesota along with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service have been investigating reports of dead fish from roughly Trempealeau to Genoa. The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources issued a news release Friday say the kills are due low levels of dissolved oxygen in the water. Hot weather exacerbates such conditions because hot water holds less oxygen and speeds up decay of vegetation and other organic matter, a process that consumes oxygen. The news release says oxygen levels near zero have been noted recently in backwaters near La Crosse. Recent rains have flushed the oxygen-depleted water into other parts of the river.

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