Suspect gets 63 months for methamphetamine charge

Topeka A Lawrence man was sentenced Thursday in U.S. District Court for conspiracy to manufacture methamphetamine.

Judge Sam A. Crow ordered Mark A. Gentry, 42, to spend 63 months in prison without parole followed by three years of supervised release.

Gentry pleaded guilty March 22 to the charge. Eric Melgren, the U.S. attorney for Kansas, said federal and local law enforcement officers searched Gentry’s house Aug. 13, 2001, and found items used to make methamphetamine.

Gentry admitted conspiring with another person to manufacture methamphetamine, Melgren said.

Northwest Lawrence endures second night of power outage

For the second evening in a row, Westar Energy customers in northwest Lawrence were without power on Thursday for several hours.

The latest outage, which affected about 2,674 customers at its height, was caused by “catastrophic mechanical failure” in a breaker at the Lawrence Hill substation, Westar spokesman Terry Wilson said. The failure occurred at 4:52 p.m., he said, and crews had restored power to most customers by 9 p.m. He expected all power to be back up by 10 p.m.

Westar engineers will be investigating the outage today, Wilson said, to see whether it’s related to a Wednesday outage that affected 1,400 Westar customers in the same area, roughly between Iowa Street and Kasold Drive, Peterson Road and Saddlehorn Drive. That outage, which lasted about two hours for some customers and was first thought to be caused by high winds, occurred after two power lines went down.

Anyone still without power is asked to call (800) LIGHT-KS.

Suspect indicted on charges of porn, sexual phone calls

A Leawood man accused of making sexual phone calls to high school athletes in Lawrence and elsewhere in the Midwest while posing as a college recruiter was indicted Thursday by a federal grand jury in Topeka.

James Riccardi, 42, is charged with one count of possessing child pornography on May 6, and two counts of using a telephone to attempt to persuade, induce, entice and coerce an individual younger than 18 years of age to engage in sexual activity on Jan. 24 and May 23.

Riccardi was previously charged on June 13 by criminal complaint with possessing child pornography.

If convicted, Riccardi faces a maximum of five years in federal prison, without parole, for possessing child pornography and a maximum of 15 years for the other two counts.

Riccardi is now in federal custody.

The case was investigated by Leawood Police and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service.

Journal-World Web sites selected award finalists

World Online, the Internet division of The World Company, recently was selected as a finalist in three categories of the Newspaper Association of America’s Digital Edge Awards.

The Journal-World Web sites named as finalists for “Edgies” are as follows:

Most Innovative Use of Digital Media News for “The September 11 Attack America Responds” site at americaresponds.ljworld.com

Best Classified for hometown.lawrence.com

Best Vertical for kusports.com

The Edgies will be awarded at the annual new media “Connections” convention in July in Denver.