Life sentence. Luerkens did say he was truly sorry for what happened. The judge also ordered luerkens to pay the estate of nnsey donald 150,000. So much of the concern todada centered on the 7yearold boy who witnessed the killing of his mother in april. Steve donald said today his grandson celebrated a birthday the day before the killing and he will always have those memories of his mothers death. Live in cedar rapids, chris earl, kcrgtv 9 news. A Missouri State trooper faces a charge of Involuntary Manslaughter for the drowning of a handcuffed iowa man. 20 year old Brandon Ellingson of clive died while he was in the custody of trooper anthony piercy. Ozarks. Thats where on may 31st, 2014, piercy was transporting ellingson by boat for a breathalyzer test when e eingson fell into the water and drowned. He was wearing a life vest, but it wasnt on securely and slipped off. The drowning led to questions about a decision that merged missouris water and highway patrols. A man driving by a vacant lot in cedar rapids last night rescued a homeless man whos clothing had caught on fire inside a tent. The fire happened next to Railroad Tracks by i avenue ananfirst street northwest. Firefighters say Matthew Geraghty and his son saw flames when they drove by. The rescuer rushed up and found 38yearold corey smock with his clototng on fire inside his tent. Geraghty took off his own coat and smothered the flames. Fire officials believe a candle oveurned inside the tent starting the` fire. Smocks injuries are listed as life threatening. Tonight at six, other Homeless People whove slept outside talk about the dangers of fire. We wanto remind you that wn you see news call newsline nine. That number is 3193659999. You can also send pictures and videos to newsroom at kcrg dot com. Justin snow to anything anywhere . Winds will finally back down for a little while, but with lighter winds and a clear sky, well have a cold night in the teens. Mostly sunny skies and a gentle wind from the southwest will send us back to the middle 30s for highs on saturday. Clouds increase on sunday and we may h he a few lilit showers develop late. Itll be quite mild with highs well into the 40s. A chance of showers ends early monday as temperatures slowly fall. T tperatures remain above normal leading up to christmas with another small rain chance on wednesday. To night mostly clear low 1218 winds nw 515 alo 13 dbq 12 iow 16 bruce a beth. Yesterday we learned that the mmicare and Medicaid Services delayed iowas effort to privatize Medicaid Services until march first. The original schedule had callefor the change to happen in just two weeks, on january first. But many patients and providers said that was just too rushed. The gazettes Chelsea Keenan has been following and reporting on this medicaid for some time, and she joins us today. Lets begin wiwi a new Development Concerning one of the four managed Care Organizations the state picked to today. You can ready more abou this del in privatizing medicaid in tomorrow mornings gazette. A company says it didnt do anything wrong, but today it agreed to a one point one Million Dollar settlement. The government says iowa hospice knowingly billed medicare for 34 patieies who were not eligigie for hospice benefits. It happened between 2007 and 2013. Us attorney kevin techau says the benefit is only for those who are terernally ill and only have sixixonths or less to live. A budget measure is on its way to the president s desk right now. The senate gave the measure its approval this morning. The yearend budget ckage combines morerehan one illion dollars in new spending with 680 billion dollars in tax government through september. President barack obama is set to sign the measure. That spending measure includes permanent funding of health care for september 11th survivors. Its something advocates have been fighting years for. Daniel moynihan drove down from new york to walk the h hls one last timemeust hours before the vote, in honor of his friend. Ray pfifer, was at every one of these rallies, but miksed the final one. Adtted to the hospital just days before. I was told if you scream loud and long enough, people will start to listen and i think these last twelve years coming to today. I dont ve to scream anymore. Words c ct describe the jobb and the relief in their lives right now. Five iowa representativ es voted no for the spending bill and just one voted yes. Congressmen steve king, david young and rod blum. As well as senators joni ernst and Chuck Grassley voted against it. Congressman Dave Loebsack the lone democrat was the only owa representative to support it. The Dubuque School district says state funding continues to cause budget concerns for School Districts in iowa. Administrators say they want the community to have a better understandin g of how state funding affects classrooms. The district is holding a speak up event at eight tomorrow morning at the dubuque districts administrative offices. Kcrg tv nines Dubuque Bureau chief katie wiedemannnnas been looking intoto this and joins us live. Katie, the Dubuque Schools superintenden t has been pretty vocal about funding cuts from the state. He has. For r veral years now. Last year, the district tried to get ahead of state budget cuts by offering an early retirement incentive for experienced teachers whos salaries are higher than new teachers. Rheingans said the Dubuque School district spends about 80 percent of its total budget on teacher and staff salaries. So they came up with the incentive to help reduce the number of dollars they were spending on teacher pay. That incentive included a one time, 15thousand dollar cash payout for the teachers who chose to retire early. Administrators say that incentive ended up saving the School District more than one Million Dollars. But last spring, governor branstad vetoed a bill that would have meant one point two Million Dollars in state funds for the dubuque district. So rheingans said, last years early retirement incentive really became a wash. Wed be in much worse shape had we not had the eatly retirement incentive but the early retirement incentive didnt have the positive impact wed hoped it would because we didnt r reive the supplemental state aid. This school year, the district is once again offering an early retirement incentive for those experienced teachers who are close to retirement. But this years incentive is much more basic. Its not available to quite as teachers and doesnt include that bonus pay out. Live in Dubuque Katie wiedemann, kcrg tvtv news. The plan was to bring dozens of jobs to independence. But now, one big Agribusiness Company is stepping back from its plans to build a new plant. Heres a penny just for you. Thats no penny. Thats a galaxy s 6 at u. S. Cellular this saturday. Whoa, thanks, grandma youre weleome. You can also get an lg g4 or an lg g pad f 8 8 with that pennnn nice isnt that just delightful . Pennies for everyone get penny doorbuster deals on great devices this saturdada starting at t 00 a. M. But with lighter winds and a clear sky, well have a cold night in the teens. Mostly sunny skies and a gentle wind from the southwest will send us back to the middle 30s for highs on saturday. Clouds increase on sunday and we may have a few light showers d delop late. Itll be quite mild with highs well into the 40s. A chance of showers ends early monday as slowly fall. Temperatures remain abve normal leading up to christmas with another small rain chance on wednesday. To night mostly clear low 1218 winds nw 515 alo 13 dbq 12 iow 16 tomorrow mostly sunny high h 238 winds sw 515 alo 33 dbq 31 iow 35 tomorrow night partly cloudy low 2531 winds s 1020 alo 28 dbq 25 iow 28 sundnd inc. Clouds, iso. Showers late high 48 low 28 monday chance of showers early high 43 low 29 wednesday chance of showers high 44 low 34 thursday mostly cloudy y gh 39 low 29 friday partly cloudy high 45 monsanan no longer plans t t build a 900illion dollar seed corn plant in independence. The Agribusiness Company has told the state that market changes led to the decisio documents from the Iowa Economic Development authority indicated the project would have created 47 jobs. But now monsanto wants to cancel a contract for seven and a half Million Dollars in job creation x credits. Farm income is s wn for the Third Straight yearrand thats prompting farmers to spend less money and forcing companies to lower profit expectations. Iowas seasonally adjusted Unemployment Rate continues to drop. Last month the rate fell to 3 point 4 percent. Thats down from 3 point 5 in october. The number of unemployed iowans also fell by 17 hundred people. That put it at 58 thousand, 700 in november. The Iowa WorkforceDevelopment Director says this months increase is quote the highest in several years and includes job gains in virtually all industries. One day after his arrest, Martin Shkreli has resigned as the head of turing pharmaceutic als. Yesterday feder agents arsted him on charges of securiries fraud. You may remember r kreli was called the most hated man in america after he jacked up the price of a life saving drug by five thousand percent. People wont have to stand out inthe cold when waiting for a cedar r pids transit bus. Its all because of the new ride crt app. Its shows the bus routes and tracks them in real time. If riders dont download the app,p,hey can text numbers displayed d each bus stop for up to date information on when the bus will arrive. Zach rife rides the bus every day to school and says he really likes the app. I think its really convenient and intuitive on how they provide this to bus riders. I think that its really going to up the level of the customer experience. We have a link on where you can download the app with this story on kcrg docom. Today a president ial campaign filed a federal lawsuit. Well explain why Bernie Sanders wants access to the Democratic National committee voter database. Stay with tv today Bernie Sanders president ial cacapaign filed a federal lawsuit to regain access to a Democratic National committee voter database. This week the dnc tem orarily barred the Sanders Campaign from having access to that database. Thats because sanders staff improperly accessed rival Hillary Clintons campaign data. The lawsuit says the campaign is now sustaining irreparable injury and financial losses. Sanders Campaign Manager jeff weaver said earlier friday the dnc was taking our campaign hostage by preventing it from accessing the data. He threatened the lawsuit if the party didnt back down. A new abc News Washington post poll Shows Hillary clinton keeping a commanding lead among the docratic president ial candidates. The poll of registered democrats haha clinton 31 points ahead of Bernie Sanders. Martin omalley had only five percent. But its interestinto point t that at this time in 2007, Hillary Clinton led barack obama by a similar margin. Also, even with clintons lead, 44 percent of democratic leaning voters say they think sanders is a more trustworthy candidate. Republican caay fiorina was in dubuque this afternoon. In the private event for mcgrawhill employees, fiorina explained how she worked her way up through the corporate world. She also said she would make the United States government work for the u. S people instead of the other way around. But with lighter winds and a clear sky, well have a cold night in the teens. Mmtly sunny skies and a gentnt wind from the souththst will send us back to the middle 30s for highs on saturday. Clouds increase on sunday and we may have a few light showers develop late. Itll be quite mild with highs well into the 40s. A chance of showers ends early monday as temperatures slowly fall. Temperatures remain above normal leading up to christmas with another small rain chance on wednesday. To night mostly clear low 1218 winds nw 51alo 13 dbq 12 iow 16 thank you for joining us for kcrgtv9 news at 5. Now we go t tnew york for abcs world news with david muir. Tonight, breaking news from right here in new hampshire. The political bombshell on the