BALLWIN, Mo. – Vandalism in West County covered garage doors, signs, and even a pick-up truck in Ballwin near Oakwood Farm Lane and Reinke Road.

The suspect is a 19-year-old who lives one block away.

“It’s the most frustrating thing. You get a wake-up call in the middle of the night. You come out and see what happened and you don’t really see the full extent of it until the sun comes up,” Chris Conway said.

Conway’s fence is one of about a dozen examples of spray-painted vandalism.

He added, “I kind of feel a little pressure to get it cleaned up if I can, being the first house in our neighborhood. It’s just really frustrating and then some added pressure being on the corner here.”

Throughout the Oakwood Farms subdivision, you’ll see garage doors spray-painted “Blood” or “Blood Gang.” Some neighbors tried cleaning up the spray paint, but you can still see the images. Even landscaping lights and street signs are tagged.

“I walked through the neighborhood and found multiple homes that were vandalized,” Delia Overschimdt said.

The took pictures, including a now cleaned-up example that says, “Death to America.”

“It kind of made me nervous, sometimes in the evening I walk my dogs, so am I going to be safe walking through my neighborhood?” Overschmidt said.

They learned the suspect lives in the neighborhood – just ten houses down from one of the homes he vandalized.

“That was news to me. I thought it was maybe something from the city, but obviously, this young man’s got some issues and I hope he gets help,” Overschmidt said.

Court records show Ballwin police caught up with 19-year-old Daniel James Fleming Jr. the night he was allegedly vandalizing homes. It was Tuesday, Sept. 21.

An officer said the suspect was riding a bike and carrying a backpack of spray paint. He’s now charged with felony property damage.

An officer wrote in a probable cause statement, “The defendant admitted that he had been spray painting in the area. He said he had done so because he was bored. He falsely told police he was 16-years-old and provided false names and a false address before admitting his true identity and address.”

Conway said, “It hurts to hear that it was someone from our own neighborhood.”

He took time off from work to try wiping away the memory of what happened, adding, “We take care of our neighborhood. A lot of great people who live here and take care of their place and just sad to see.”

ST. LOUIS – A pre-trial conference over the Rams relocation lawsuit scheduled for this morning has been postponed. It is unclear as to why.

The Missouri Supreme Court refused to block an order Thursday morning from Judge Christopher McGraugh, who is presiding over this case. That order requires Rams owner Stan Kroenke, the NFL, and five other team owners to turn over financial records that could be used for a jury to determine punitive damages if this case goes to trial and Kroenke loses. For Kroenke, those records include other sports franchises, management groups, a winery, and other businesses as well as financial details about Kroenke’s wife Ann Walton Kroenke. She is a multi-billionaire heir to the Walmart fortune.

That legal blow for Kroenke came after Judge McGraugh rejected a motion by lawyers last week for Kroenke and the other defendants to dismiss the case altogether. Last month, McGraugh refused to move the case out of St. Louis.

The Rams moved from St. Louis to Los Angeles back in 2016. St. Louis City, St. Louis County and the St. Louis Regional Convention and Sports Complex Authority sued the next year. The suit alleges that the Rams and the NFL broke the league’s relocation rules and misled the public with the move. The suit also claims the Rams departure cost St. Louis City millions of dollars in amusement, ticket and earning taxes.

The civil trial in this case where monetary damages could be assessed is set to begin on January 1, 2022.

ST. LOUIS – From small-town Union, Missouri, to the winner of Fox’s Hell’s Kitchen season 20. Trenton Garvey, or Trent, as most people call him, had to keep a big secret for two years.

“It’s amazing, it’s insane. I’m super grateful. It’s a relief to finally let everyone know. I feel like I’ve lived a double life,” Garvey said.
He’s been working as the executive chef of the Blue Duck in Maplewood for about three years. He started at the original The Blue Duck location in Washington, Missouri, before getting this position.

He’s spent three years with an hour commute to and from work each day. Now, as the winner of Hell’s Kitchen, he’s taking his talents west to Las Vegas as part of his prize package from Hell’s Kitchen.

“My role is going to be head chef out there, so I’m going to be running the pass, helping run the kitchen and really just learning the ropes, and put myself in the learning position, which I’m really excited about, (and) understanding the structure the new facets of a $20 million a year restaurant,” Garvey said.

He said the support from the community has been overwhelming. He was in Las Vegas while The Blue Duck had a watch party for the season finale. He said the show hadn’t aired in Las Vegas yet, but he saw videos from his restaurant in Maplewood and couldn’t hold back the tears.

“I was like outside crying and tearing up. It’s just so incredible how many people have reached out. I just want to cook. I just want to make food. And I love to get to touch so many people by doing it, and getting to share that awesome journey with them because I didn’t expect to make it that far. Then when I won, I was like oh my god, this is not what I expected, but I’m so grateful for it.”

When Garvey found out his door was the one that opened on the show, signifying he was the winner, he also had a surprise under his belt. He proposed to his longtime girlfriend Macee on the show.

As the dinner bell rings in Vegas, so do wedding bells. The two have been engaged for two years since the show was originally filmed, but they could never tell anyone exactly how they got engaged, until now. 

With a big move to Las Vegas and a new job on the horizon, they haven’t set a wedding date yet but plan to soon.

“With all of the awesome money that comes along with the show, that’s also going to help catapult the wedding dreams for her because she wants it simple but I’m like you deserve an awesome wedding. So, I’ve been waiting to be able to provide something really incredible for her,” Garvey said.

Garvey and his fiancée Macee came back to The Blue Duck for a meet-and-greet Thursday night with fans.

“I’m just so happy he won, but from episode two or three, I was like there’s no way he won’t win. He’s obviously the best,” James Kathriner said.

He and his girlfriend are big fans of the show and frequent The Blue Duck at least weekly.

“It’s definitely upsetting that he’s leaving but I know The Blue Duck can handle it,” Caila McLaughlin, a fan of the show said. “I’m just hoping to get a picture with him and get his autograph so I can hold onto that when he leaves.”

While Garvey is moving to Las Vegas, he said his dream is to still come back to St. Louis and open a restaurant of his own, where it all started eventually.

“Now it’s just going and learning, gaining as much knowledge as I can from Gordon Ramsay, and the restaurant group. And then I just want to just keep moving forward,” Garvey said.

“Maybe open up a restaurant out there, and then just keep making it back to St. Louis is what I’m excited about.” 

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Thursday endorsed booster shots for millions of older or otherwise vulnerable Americans, opening a major new phase in the U.S vaccination drive against COVID-19.

CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky signed off on a series of recommendations from a panel of advisers late Thursday.

The advisers said boosters should be offered to people 65 and older, nursing home residents and those ages 50 to 64 who have risky underlying health problems. The extra dose would be given once they are at least six months past their last Pfizer shot.

However, Walensky decided to make one recommendation that the panel had rejected.

The panel on Thursday voted against saying that people can get a booster if they are ages 18 to 64 years and are health-care workers or have another job that puts them at increased risk of being exposed to the virus.

But Walensky disagreed and put that recommendation back in, noting that such a move aligns with an FDA booster authorization decision earlier this week. The category she included covers people who live in institutional settings that increase their risk of exposure, such as prisons or homeless shelters, as well as health care workers.

The panel had offered the option of a booster for those ages 18 to 49 who have chronic health problems and want one. But the advisers refused to go further and open boosters to otherwise healthy front-line health care workers who aren’t at risk of severe illness but want to avoid even a mild infection.

The panel voted 9 to 6 to reject that proposal. But Walensky decided to disregard the advisory committee’s counsel on that issue. In a decision several hours after the panel adjourned, Walensky issued a statement saying she had restored the recommendation.

“As CDC Director, it is my job to recognize where our actions can have the greatest impact,” Walensky said in a statement late Thursday night. “At CDC, we are tasked with analyzing complex, often imperfect data to make concrete recommendations that optimize health. In a pandemic, even with uncertainty, we must take actions that we anticipate will do the greatest good.”

Experts say getting the unvaccinated their first shots remains the top priority, and the panel wrestled with whether the booster debate was distracting from that goal.

All three of the COVID-19 vaccines used in the U.S. are still highly protective against severe illness, hospitalization and death, even with the spread of the extra-contagious delta variant. But only about 182 million Americans are fully vaccinated, or just 55% of the population.

Eaton police officers shot a man after he fired at them Friday morning, according to a new release from the Weld County Sheriff’s Office.

Authorities say they were responding to a disturbance in progress in the 1200 block of Aspen Court at 1:28 a.m. Friday. Eaton police officers were dispatched after callers said they could hear an argument between a man and woman.

When the police officers arrived at the scene at 1:32 a.m., they encountered a man with a gun, authorities said.

The man fired multiple rounds at officers, the news release said.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration are botching the communication of another vital order for public health and it is infuriating to watch.

However, that doesn’t mean that we should get out ahead of the CDC or the FDA and ignore their painstakingly cautious approach to booster shots for Pfizer and Moderna vaccines.

Gov. Jared Polis’ heart is in the right place with his advice to older Coloradans that they lie to pharmacists to get their booster vaccine even if they don’t strictly meet the existing CDC or FDA guidelines for eligibility. But we cannot join him in calling for Coloradans to ignore the guidance set forth by this nation’s health experts.

That being said, we are frustrated and perplexed by the rollout of booster vaccines.

A CDC advisory panel said on Thursday that Pfizer boosters should be offered to people 65 and older, nursing home residents, and those between 50 and 64 who have underlying health problems. That is a far narrower distribution of the booster shot than what President Joe Biden has advocated for, and it puts us behind other nations like Israel and Great Britain where the third round of shots are going out to the general population.

We share Polis’ concerns that the CDC and the FDA are letting practical and not health considerations drive their decisions. Much of the opposition to recommending vaccines for a larger swath of the population centers around the fact that millions of Americans still don’t have their first vaccines and neither do people in most of the world, particularly poorer countries. We think those concerns are valid, but misplaced. The FDA and the CDC must focus on three things: Saving lives, preventing hospitalizations, and whether it is safe to get a third shot.

Polis and Dr. Richard Zane from the University of Colorado Health both told The Denver Post editorial board that the science behind the safety and efficacy of a booster shot as clear.

“We’ve been very unequivocal about the value of boosters and third doses. The data is without ambiguity. The experience is without ambiguity and we’re talking to you from the front lines,” Zane said, noting that UC Health has already provided many employees working in its hospitals with booster shots or third doses. “It has really been twofold: complete immunity for those who couldn’t mount a complete immunologic response and then protecting society, protecting health care workers, protecting first responders, protecting the workforce to be able to deliver health care, to deliver education, to be able to continue to recover economically.”

When the FDA approved the Pfizer booster shot on Wednesday, the board did have concerns about the size of the test study noting that only 300 people participated in the trials. But otherwise, the board did not express reservations about the safety or efficacy of the third shot at least six months from the first two.

So we’re left puzzling why the CDC and FDA wouldn’t open up the boosters to a broader segment of the population other than for reasons unrelated to health and safety. Only 55% of the nation has received their vaccines, but that is by choice, not because of a limited supply. Those who feel they need the booster shots should not have to lie to get the added protection.

The CDC should remember how poorly trying to ration supplies worked when it discouraged mask-wearing in early 2020 trying to preserve masks for first responders and health care workers. The backlash from that decision is still haunting us as we try to persuade folks to mask up.

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Friday will be a lovely fall day ahead of a weekend warmup with potential record daily high temperatures.

Gonna be a nice autumn day out there. Mostly sunny skies, light winds, and slightly cooler (near normal) temperatures, #COwx pic.twitter.com/30gcOlYyJv

— NWS Boulder (@NWSBoulder) September 24, 2021

According to the National Weather Service in Boulder, Denver will touch 77 degrees under sunny skies. The seasonal day will have light winds before cooling off to 49 degrees under the stars.

Saturday is forecasted to warm up to 85 degrees, nearing a record high of 91 degrees, recorded in 1998. It will be sunny and dry before cooling off to 52 degrees.

The desperate evacuation from Afghanistan jarred our conscience for good reason. For me, it’s because my own family was left behind in Vietnam after Saigon fell in 1975. We eventually fled on a boat and resettled in the United States. I was only 3 years old. Today, I’m a proud
American and work in our community as a physician. Even though I never served in the military, war has shaped my life story. What I’ve learned is that the power of America is not in our military might, but it is in the mighty hearts of the American people.

In the 1970s, courageous men and women from World Vision responded to the flood of Vietnamese refugees pouring out in rickety boats. This Christian humanitarian organization sent a ship to assist the refugees. While the world dismissed families like mine as a political problem, the World Vision crew saw us as human beings. Out in the South China Sea, they rescued my family, provided for our needs, and brought us to safety. The heroes of this rescue mission were also the countless Americans who donated financially. They helped a group of people most of them would never meet.

When my family was being resettled in America, a small Lutheran church in Fort Smith, Ark., welcomed us. They greeted us at the airport with warm smiles and nods that needed no translation. They drove us to our new home and paid the rent for six months. Volunteers brought donated furniture, clothing, and food for my family. They also enrolled my older siblings into schools, signed us up for social services, and helped my father find a job. We don’t remember most of the volunteers’ names, but we’ll never forget their compassion.

Over time, our neighbors invited us to church. I could not understand what the elderly men and women taught during Sunday School. But their faces communicated clearly how much they cared. In elementary school, my teachers had to spend extra time with me because I struggled
with English. My friends’ parents drove me to football practice and academic competitions when I couldn’t get a ride. When I applied to college and didn’t have a typewriter, the school’s secretary typed my handwritten scribbled mess. When I got into Harvard but had no money, scholarships paid for it. This pattern of kindness and generosity continued for years until I graduated from medical school.

As a skin cancer surgeon, I have the profound privilege of caring for our veterans. I’m particularly fond of Vietnam veterans because we are all products of the same war. This horrific trauma hijacked and forever changed our lives. For many, the losses are so great that we are still grieving decades later. We all suffered, but we are also survivors. All is not lost, and our friendships today are proof of that. War is never final.

My life story has been shaped by Americans who did not speak Vietnamese or understand my culture. They did not have all the answers to a “refugee problem.” They only saw my family as individuals with needs. And they did what they could. They cared, and they responded. These Americans did not have military or political authority, so they exercised the greatest power we possess as humans. And that is the power to love their neighbors…even when they are strangers. My journey from the ashes of war eventually evolved into an adoption story, when the compassion of America made me one of her own.

Even though military engagement in Afghanistan is over, we can still help the survivors. In the coming weeks, Afghan airlift evacuees will be settled here in Colorado. My medical practice, churches, businesses, and neighbors are partnering with Lutheran Family Services Rocky
Mountains. We hope to welcome them with the same kindness that my family received. Together, we can write our collective story with the enduring faith that good will always prevail.

Perhaps one of these Afghan children could find a safe home, grow up, and become a doctor in our very own community. Wouldn’t that be an incredible story?

Dr. Vinh Chung, is a former refugee and proud American. He is a surgeon at Vanguard Skin Specialists. His memoir Where the Wind Leads is available everywhere books are sold. To find out how you can help welcome refugees to Colorado, visit Lutheran Family Services Rocky Mountains.