Serving the Mt. Morris area since 1967
MT.Times MORRIS December 21, 2017 Volume 51, Number 10 - $1.00
Wrestlers Compete
Santa Letters
New Preserve
Hawk wrestlers have a strong showing at Stillman Valley meet. B1
Area school children send their wish lists to St. Nick. C1-12
The Byron Forest Preserve buys Bald Hill and the surrounding acres to create a preserve. A3
City and county agree on street By Vinde Wells vwells@oglecounty news.com
Lani Morris was one of 31 Oregon High School basketball players who unloaded Rock River Center vans filled with donations for Earth Angels on Saturday. Photo by Earleen Hinton
OHS basketball players wrap for Earth Angels Thirty-one basketball players from the Oregon High School’s girls program helped Earth Angels get their gifts unloaded and wrapped on Dec. 16. Freshmen, sophomores, juniors, and seniors helped unload donated gifts from Rock River Center collection vans and then wrapped the gifts at the Mt. Morris Senior Center from 9 a.m. to around 12:30 p.m. Rock River Center vans picked up donated items at drop sites throughout Ogle County. Gifts were distributed this week. Linda “Granny” Straith, Forreston, spearheads the Earth Angels program collecting toys and donations for Christmas gifts for needy families in Ogle County. For more information about Earth Angels, contact: Olivia Lambrigtsen wraps a donated gift for the Earth Angels program on Saturday. Photo by Earleen Hinton Earth Angel, P.O. Box 188, Forreston, Ill. 61030.
Polo family was minutes from home when tragedy struck Donations are sought for Johnson family
Services
Services for Sarah Rose Johnson and her son, Oliver Daniel Michael Johnson, are from 3 to 7 p.m. Wednesday at Faith Discovery Church, with the funeral at 10:30 a.m. Thursday at Crossroads Community Church. Burial will be in Fairmount Cemetery in Polo, followed by a luncheon at Crossroads. A memorial has been established.
By Kathleen Schultz kschultz@saukvalley.com Sarah and DJ Johnson and 4-year-old Kylia were just minutes away from their Polo home when they hit a patch of ice in the snowstorm Dec. 11, and slid into the path of an oncoming pickup truck. Sarah and the baby boy she was expecting died as a result, and DJ and Kylia were critically injured. They were on their way back home from a 35-week check-up with their Sterling obstetrician. “Sarah Rose Johnson, only 26 years old and 35 weeks pregnant, was lost to us forever, and Oliver, the baby boy whom Sarah was so proud to bring into the world for DJ, before breathing his first breath and despite the effort of multiple physicians, followed his mother to the golden shores beyond,” her brother-in-law, Robert
Sarah and DJ Johnson and their daughter, Kylia. Photo supplied
“Robby” Shaw, wrote in a posting on the GoFundMe site he and the family have established to help DJ, 27, and Kylia recover. “This fragile, beautiful family was not and could not have been prepared for this tragedy,” Shaw wrote. “With the hard road already ahead, we do not believe that they should be further hindered by funeral and medical expenses out of their reach. Please help us do the little that we can to make their days ahead just a little bit
In This Week’s Edition...
easier.” The Johnsons were northbound on state Ill. 26 around 3:45 p.m. when DJ lost control of their 2013 Dodge sedan on the icy road and crossed into the southbound lane, where a 2008 GMC pickup driven by Dan Ditzler, 29, also of Polo, hit the sedan’s passenger side. They were three miles south of town. All were taken to KSB Hospital, where Ditzler and three children – girls, ages 5 months and 2 years, and
Church News, A5 Classifieds, B6-B8 Entertainment, A6 Fines, B4
To donate
A GoFundMe account has been established to help DJ and Kylia recover. Go to www.gofundme. com and search for the Sarah and Ollie Memorial Fund to donate. a boy, 5 – were treated for minor injuries. Sarah, who was in the passenger front seat, was pronounced dead at KSB; DJ and Kylia were transferred to
Marriage Licenses, A4 Public Voice, A7 Property Transfers, B4 Sheriff’s Arrests, B3
Turn to A2
Social News, A4 Sports, B1, B2 State’s Attorney, B4 Zoning Permits, B5
The long-debated question of closing one block of a city street for construction of a new Ogle County Jail is finally settled. Both the county board and the Oregon City Council approved an intergovernmental agency agreement Tuesday evening that transfers jurisdiction over the 100 block of South Sixth Street in Oregon from the city to the county. This means the county board can move forward with its plans to close the block and connect the new jail to the existing judicial center across the street. The last hurdle will be securing approval to close the block from the Illinois Department of Transportation. The plan, which faced fierce opposition from some Oregon residents including two city commissioners, has been under discussion for more than a year. Preliminary plans call for
the breaking ground for the new 180-bed jail, with an estimated price tag of $28 million, in the fall of 2018. Tuesday night, the county board approved the agreement first, by a vote of 22-1, with board member Lee Meyers, of Byron, casting the only no vote. Kim Whalen, of Hillcrest, did not attend the meeting. The city council approved the agreement by a 3-2 meeting with commissioners Jim Barnes and Tom Izer voting no, as they did in a previous vote last June. Mayor Ken Williams, and commissioners Terry Schuster and Kurt Wilson voted yes. Before the vote, Barnes made an impassioned plea to his fellow commissioners to reject the agreement. “If we vote in favor of this, we are yielding to the county board without even an argument, let alone a fight,” he said. “We are selling out Oregon to the county. We are not doing justice for most of the citizens of Oregon…I Turn to A3
Defense wants reports excluded in Mongan trial By Vinde Wells vwells@oglecounty news.com Defense attorneys presented motions in Ogle County Court Tuesday to exclude some reports from the evidence that can be presented during the upcoming trial of an Oregon man charged in a fatal boating crash. Rochelle attorney David Tess, who is representing Marc Mongan, 47, asked Judge John Redington to exclude the 149page report and videos from the Illinois Department of Natural Resources, which was the investigating agency in the crash which took the life of Megan Wells, 31, Rockford.. She was killed on June 24, 2016 on the Rock River three miles north of Oregon when a johnboat Mongan was operating struck her as it went over the back of the pontoon boat she was riding in, throwing her overboard. Mongan has been charged with one count of aggravated driving while under the influence of alcohol, a Class 2 felony; three counts of reckless homicide, all class 3 felonies; and three counts of reckless conduct, all Class 4 felonies. His trial is set to begin Feb. 14. Tess argued that the IDNR report and videos should be excluded because they have been disseminated to the public, and that could make crossexamining witnesses more difficult. By law, he said, such investigative records are not to
be released when making them public could interfere with the case. He pointed out that prosecutors and defense attorneys are prohibited from doing so. The IDNR released the reports and videos to Wells’ family members after they filed a Freedom of Information Act request. Tess said the reports were subsequently posted on the Internet. “It’s clear they have been disseminated by the IDNR,” he said. “It is our position that this was done purposely.” Tess argued that the IDNR, a state agency, should have denied the FOIA request. Special prosecutor David Neal, from the Illinois State’s Attorney’s Appellate Prosecutor’s office, agreed that the posting on the Internet might make it harder for the court to select a jury. However, he said the IDNR had simply released the records to the victim’s family. “It’s the people’s position that the evidence should come out,” he said. “It’s our interpretation that the IDNR acted appropriately under the law.” Redington took the motion under advisement and said he will rule on it in about 10 days. He denied a motion presented by Tess’ partner attorney Russell Crull to bar autopsy reports and photos, as well as the coroner’s report and inquest from the evidence presented at trial.
Deaths, B5 Donald F. Gallup, Marlene L. Gaul, Jeromy D. Marth, Richard L. Otten
Published every Thursday by Ogle County Newspapers, a division of Shaw Media • www.oglecountynews.com