SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (KELO AM) - Nine ball in the corner pocket and a four-inch cut to the back of the head with a pool cue.     

Officer Sam Clemens says that was the strategy employed by 25-year-old Tyson Joseph Hart against an acquaintance early Saturday morning at Lucky’s in downtown Sioux Falls.

Clemens couldn't say what sparked the incident but added that both men had been drinking.  He says the pair have been friends for a long time.

Hart left the scene before police arrived and was arrested at his home Saturday night just before eight.  He's charged with aggravated assault.

The victim is a 24-year-old man from Alexandria.

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (KELO AM) -The Sioux Falls School Board tonight considers how to best deliver the summer school program.

Board President Kent Alberty says four years ago over 500 students were in classrooms and last year there were less than 200 students taking face to face instruction.

Alberty says in 2011 there were 195 students taking coursework online and last year 380 students were received instruction online.

Summer school includes students that are struggling and those in extracurriculars that miss classes.

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (KELO AM) - There may be news this week on the sale of Kenny Chesney tickets and the staff at the Denny Sanford PREMIER Center reminds fans there are a limited number of tickets available.

Director of Sales and Public Relations, Rick Huffman, says there are presales and he’s heard the complaints.  He says agents and the artists offer presale tickets.  He says there are also online benefits for some tickets.  He says being early in line at Ticketmaster is beneficial too.

He says if 5,000 fans buy just two tickets each that will sell out the show.  Chesney is expected to sell out quickly.               

Huffman says there are still tickets for Nickelback at the Denny next Tuesday.   

Sioux Falls, SD (KELO-AM) The company that lost out on the ambulance contract for Sioux Falls says the people should decide who they want to use for non-emergency calls.

MED-Star, based in Brandon, is starting a petition drive to get the issue on the ballot before city voters. MED-Star CEO Jay Masur says this is not a question of sour grapes over not getting the city contract; it's a question of freedom of choice.  Masur says he doesn't have a problem with Sioux Falls requiring residents to use one service for emergency calls, but non-emergency calls should be competitive.

MED-Star has 6 months to collect 6,000 signatures. In early February, Sioux Falls City Council awarded the lucrative ambulance contract to Texas-based Paramedics Plus.  

Pierre, SD (KELO AM) - A $10,000 Powerball ticket was sold in Brandon for the February 21, 2015 drawing. The lucky ticket holder matched four of five white ball numbers and the Powerball to pick up the game's third prize.

Winning numbers are 10, 14, 18, 34, 51, Powerball is 26 and the Power Play is 2. The odds of winning $10,000 playing Powerball are 1:648,976. The owner of the ticket is advised to sign the back of it immediately and put it in a safe place before contacting the Sioux Falls Lottery office at 605-367-5840 or the Pierre Lottery office at 605-773-5770. Winners have 180 days to claim their prize.

Powerball is played in 44 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. The jackpot currently sits at $70 million for the next drawing on Wednesday, February 25, 2015.

SIOUX FALLS (KELO AM) - Lee Greenwood came to Sioux Falls Saturday to perform in the Washington Pavilion packed with veteran patients and area veterans.  The event was the third Valentines for Veterans concert in Sioux Falls.

"This was our third concert," said Brenda Stevens, Sioux Falls VA’s Chief of Voluntary Service.  "There were five other VA-sponsored concerts going on around the country to say thank you to veterans for their service."

Stevens added that the concept for Valentines for Veterans began with two employees at the Northern Arizona VA Healthcare System.  Concerts have been held by other VAs around Valentine’s Day ever since.  

Greenwood entertained the audience with his hits to include his McDonald's Jingle.  He ended the concert with his icon song "God Bless the USA.”

After the concert, Greenwood went to visit patients at the VA Medical Center who couldn't attend the concert.  

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (KELO AM) - The Senate Judiciary Committee today defeated a bill aimed at repealing South Dakota’s requirement to have a permit to carry a concealed handgun.

Lobbyist for South Dakota Gun Owners Travis Lasseter says permits provide a false sense of security.

He said that if you saw the flash of a pistol under someone's coat and because there's a permit law you might assume that the person is a law-abiding citizen

Retired Circuit Judge Senator Arthur Rusch says he’s seen too many people get in trouble because they had a gun in their pocket.  He says some believe that a gun is a magic wand and if they wave it around they can get people to do exactly what they want they want them to do "which is not true."

The Committee sent the bill to the 41^st day.

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (KELO AM) - After joy-riding in a stolen vehicle this morning, Sioux Falls police say three teenagers took a 10-year-old boy to Garfield Elementary where they were arrested.

Officer Sam Clemens says police followed the stolen Land Rover until it stopped to let the boy out.

Clemens says a 14-year-old girl was driving, a 13-year-old boy was in the passenger seat and a 14-year-old girl was in the backseat.  He says detectives suspect the boy stole the Land Rover last night after the owner left the keys in the console.

He says police approached the vehicle with guns drawn not knowing what to find inside.  That forced Garfield to shelter in place for a short time.  The 10-year-old boy is the driver's cousin

The teens were arrested for possession of a stolen vehicle.

BROOKINGS (KELO AM) - When it comes to describing a scenario, a picture is worth a thousand words—and may also help save thousands of lives. Thanks to research at SDSU, public health officials can use satellite data to anticipate outbreaks of West Nile virus in South Dakota and malaria in the highlands of Ethiopia.

Yi Liu, associate professor of computer science, collaborated with senior scientist Michael Wimberly of the Geospatial Sciences Center of Excellence to create a web atlas that gives public health officials a "heads-up" as to where and when mosquito-borne diseases might strike.

Researchers combine remote-sensing data—including temperature and rainfall—with sophisticated software modeling. The advance warning helps health officials put the disease-fighting resources and people where they are needed most.

Building a software frameworkThe collaboration began in 2009 when Wimberly asked Liu to help build a web atlas with which his team could disseminate their maps. Using her experience as a software engineer, Liu and her students developed the framework of the web atlas to support specific products.

One such product allows Wimberly and his team to use the framework to post maps that are part of Epidemiological Applications of Spatial Technologies or EASTweb.

Improving product performanceWimberly and his team used to rely on ArcGIS, a common commercial software, and Python programming code to make the maps available online. "They didn't have a product to handle the entire process," Liu said. Six undergraduate students and four graduate students have worked on the project during the last five years.

Liu and her students studied what had been done to get "a good picture of the typical way of processing the images."

After one year, Liu and her team automated the process of downloading online remote-sensing archives and processing them. This enabled scientists to compute and summarize environmental indices, which can then be saved to a database.

The computer science team replaced Python code with Java programing language, but retained ArcObjects, a component of ArcGIS. Java provided what Liu called "a nice user interface," but "the performance was not stable."

Supported by a Joseph P. Nelson scholarship, undergraduate Isaiah Snell-Feikema replaced the ArcObjects with a Geospatial Data Abstraction Library, GDAL, open source product in summer 2011.

"The performance is great," Liu noted. "We improved the execution time to 1/10th of what it was before."However, the interface still used one piece of third-party software—a Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) re-projection tool. When computer science graduate student Jiameng Hu took over the project, she replaced that module with a GDAL product to increase performance stability and reliability.

"The open-source approach yields a more robust software application that is more stable and easier to modify than earlier versions that were dependent on commercial geographic information science software libraries," commented Wimberly.

Making framework accessibleLast summer, Liu and her team modified the software code so it can handle different online archive formats. "We're dealing with multiple institutions that aggregate data from different satellite missions," Wimberly explained.

The U.S. Geological Survey Center for Earth Resources Observation and Science archives data from and MODIS missions. Other data, such as global precipitation, are available through the Goddard Space Center. These data are archived in a variety of file formats.

"The software now allows us to plug into these different archives and easily set up the technical details for the particular file format and access methods," Wimberly noted. Scientists can easily pull weather data from one place and vegetation indices from another.

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (KELO AM) - The Senate Local Government Committee today defeated a bill tying legislator’s pay to across-the-board increases to state employee’s salaries.

Senator Troy Heinert, after speaking to a school administrator in his hometown of Mission, offered a different take on legislative pay.

Heiner says the administrator told him to give themselve a $30,000 salary and then maybe the legislature would be more diverse.

Heinert says the legislature should make the tough decision about a pay raise with a two-thirds vote.

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (KELO AM) -The House State Affairs Committee today advanced a bill allowing craps, roulette and keno in Deadwood.

A neighbor to the south, Representative Mike Verchio of Hill City, urged others on the panel to vote against the measure.  

Verchio says the vote that passed in November was not to allow the games but to let the legislature consider giving Deadwood the games.  He calls the effort a "great sales job."

The measure was sent to the House with a do pass recommendation.

While the measure allows the games, an casino would have to replace an establshed game, like poker or slots, with one of the new ones,  Legislators say that's not an actual increase in games.

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (KELO AM) - TRIP, a Washington D-C based nonprofit that researches transportation, says current South Dakota roads and bridges face mounting challenges.

TRIP’s Rocky Moretti says South Dakota has the nation’s fourth highest share of structurally deficient bridges.

Moretti says the South Dakota Department of transportation is putting $6 million into local (township and county) bridges but that would take forty years to complete.  During that time other bridges are slipping into deficiency.

Moretti says $27 billion in goods are delivered from South Dakota sites and another $28 billion in goods are shipped to South Dakota annually, mostly by truck.

Legislators are wrangling over transportation bills and have two weeks to iron out a compromise.

The Sioux Falls Area Chamber of Commerce hosted TRIP at a news conference this morning.

Sioux Falls, SD (KELO AM) - On Wednesday, February 25, 2015, around 9:30 a.m., police were called to 928 North Minnesota Avenue for a shooting that happened the day before.

A 23-year-old man said two men tried to rob him on Tuesday, February 24, 2015, between 2 – 2:30 p.m. The two men armed with handguns showed up at the victim’s house and demanded cash. There was a scuffle between the victim and suspects, and the victim was shot in the left leg. The suspects then ran from the house without taking anything.

The victim did not report this to police until Wednesday morning. He was taken to the hospital by ambulance for his injury. 

The suspects were both black men. One was around 6’2” tall, thin build, with a scar on the right side of his head. The other suspect was around 5’9” tall, and weighed around 225 pounds. Both suspects were wearing bandannas.  The victim said both suspects spoke with an African accent.

If anyone has information, please call police at 367-7212, or Crime Stoppers at 367-7007.

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (KELO AM) - Sioux Falls police don’t know why the victim of a home invasion, who was shot in the leg, waited a day before reporting the incident.

Officer Sam Clemens says the single round caused a lot of damage.  Clemens says the bullet entered the victim's thigh just above the knee, exited the back of the thigh and lodged into his calf.  He suffered three wounds from one shot.

The victim said he couldn’t stand the pain any longer and called police.

The victim says two suspects demanded money, there was a scuffle, the gun fired and they fled.

Minneapolis, MN (KWSN)- Minnesota Vikings running back Adrian Peterson, disciplined by the National Football League for hitting his 4-year-old son with a switch, had his suspension overturned on Thursday after a federal judge ruled in favor of the union in a lawsuit.

U.S. District Court Judge David Doty ruled that NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell acted beyond his authority in November when he suspended Peterson until at least April 15.

Courtesy: Reuters Media

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (KELO AM) -Today’s civic lesson is what’s a concurrent resolution?

It’s what the Senate Education Committee advanced directing the South Dakota Department of Education to ensure students are well-versed in civics and government.

President and CEO of the Chiesman Center for Democracy in Rapid City, Rob Timm, says statistics reveal a substandard civic education.

Timm says less than 25% of America's 4th, 8th and 12th graders are proficient in civics.  He says 12th grade scores are actually dropping with more than 1/3 of students scoring below basic proficiency.              

While the Department of Education supports the resolution it’s non-binding, lacking the force of law. The definition of concurrent resolution.

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (KELO AM) - The challenges for big-name concert tickets seem insurmountable:  presales from e newsletters, artists, managers, fan clubs, credit cards and then there are scalpers and speculators.

Rick Huffman with SMG says spending the night in line won’t assure you tickets but bring your personal devices.

Huffman says you can stand in line with your phone, tablet or notebook trying to get tickets online while you're waiting in line.              

Huffman says SMG sells the majority of available tickets but adds that if everyone gets only two tickets the Denny is sold out after less than 6,000 buys.

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (KELO AM) -  Law enforcement coalitions are offering $3,000 for information leading to the conviction of the suspect who threatened a Sioux Falls policeman with a handgun at Tuthill Park New Year’s Day.

Detective Rob Forster says law enforcement is a tight knit group.

Forster says the safety of officers, deputies and trooper is paramount.  He says law enforcement agancies all stick together.  He says the goal is to make the community safe for everyone.              

The South Dakota and Sioux Falls Fraternal Order of Police and the Minnehaha County Deputies Association pledged the funds.

Sioux Falls, SD (KELO AM) - While the replacement of the 12th Street bridge has been postponed until 2016, the capital dollars budgeted for that project now can be invested in other street construction projects. Several additional projects to keep our roads smooth and increase traffic capacity have been added to this year’s capital program. 

• Intersection improvements at 22nd Street and Minnesota Avenue
• Intersection improvements at 11th Street and Second Avenue downtown
• Widening and reconstruction of Solberg Avenue from 49th Street to 57th Street

Two major factors resulted in a lack of bids on the 12th Street bridge project: the aggressive schedule and contractor availability. The 12th Street bridge carries 25,000 vehicles a day, and the aggressive replacement schedule limited the number of contractors able to complete the work on time. Other large bridge projects under construction this summer in the region further reduced contractor availability. In order to make the project more attractive to bidders next year, Phase 1 of the project will be bid separately and completed this year. That work will include relocating utilities, constructing two large retaining walls, installing the access roads on each side of the railroad, and installing the storm sewer. The actual replacement of the bridge structure will be done in 2016.

“The reality is that only a handful of contractors in our region specialize in building bridges, and their workloads already were full with other projects,” says Chad Huwe, City Engineer. “By completing the first phase this year and rebidding the rest of the project in the fall, we can make sure to have a contractor on board for the next construction season.” 

The City of Sioux Falls has 49 structures in the National Bridge Inspection Program. Each bridge is inspected at least every two years and more frequently if the bridge is in poor condition. During the inspection, each structure is assigned a sufficiency rating from 0 to 100. The sufficiency rating is based on structural adequacy, safety, serviceability, functionality, and essentiality for public use. If the load-carrying capacity of the 12th Street bridge is reduced during the 2015 inspection, load limits may need to be posted to maintain safe travel over the bridge until it can be replaced.

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (KELO AM) - Temperatures of -4 early this morning didn’t deter a Brookings woman and a Plankinton man from outdoor intimacy.

Officer Sam Clemens says a policeman was patrolling a north Sioux Falls motel parking lot.

Clemens says the officer saw the woman performing oral sex on the man outside in the parking lot

Turns out, the man had a motel room at that location and the woman had a room at another motel.

Both were charged with public indecency.