The Wabash River at Mt. Carmel is expected to finally fall back below flood stage on Sunday, but local authorities are still reminding residents to stay away from floodwaters. At Monday’s City Council meeting, Mayor Joe Judge said a new problem has arisen…
The admonishment comes after a driver drove onto the levee during a snowy day this past January.
Mt. Carmel motorists will have to contend with a second major road project this year. The city council on Monday approved spending $485,000 to resurface College Drive from 13th Street to Park Road. City engineer Dave Dallas told commissioners that the project will be mostly paid for with Rebuild Illinois funds that have been accumulated over last couple of years. He said the monies have to be spent in the next few months, so work on College Drive will begin soon. The project involves milling the old asphalt and replacing it with new asphalt.
Public works director Mike Gidcumb also told the council that Mt. Carmel Stabilization Group and HSI have been awarded the bids for the summer road maintenance. Stabilization will do the chip and seal work in late June and the fog sealing after the 4th of July holiday. The bids came in at $148,000, about $17,000 below original estimates.
Work has already started on Mt. Carmel’s biggest 2025 road project, the resurfacing of 9th Street.
One side says it aims to shut the industry down, the other maintains it’s about public safety
By JADE AUBREY
Capitol News Illinois
jaubrey@capitolnewsillinois.com
SPRINGFIELD — For over 65 years, Bernice and Frank Monteleone have been raising minks on their farm in Elgin. The couple bought their first mink in 1959 — a red female who was pregnant at the time. She quickly produced seven babies, or kits.
“Before then, I had never seen a mink before in my life,” Bernice Monteleone said.
The couple traded those kits for minks from a neighboring farmer and began to breed them. That one female mink led the family to raise around 30,000 minks at the height of their production. In turn, the farm financially supported all the couple’s children and their families throughout the 1970s and 1980s.
“It has been a really wonderful way of life,” she said. “We’ve raised six kids here and a bunch of grandkids, and they learned good work habits and things like that from it, too. We really enjoyed that kind of life.”
Although the industry has self-imposed guidelines farmers adhere to in order to sell their pelts legally, mink farming is not regulated at the federal level or in Illinois.
But a bill in play in Springfield could change that. House Bill 2627, sponsored by Rep. Joyce Mason, D-Gurnee, would regulate the mink industry at the state level, creating mink farm licensing and requirements. But proponents and opponents have two vastly different opinions on what the bill really aims to do.
“This is not a ‘save the minks’ bill,” Mason said in a House Public Health Committee hearing earlier this session. “It is not one of those bills. It is a bill that is very much about public health. It does not intend to close mink farms or provide any undue burden to them.”
Mason testified during the hearing alongside Chris Green, executive director of the Animal Legal Defense Fund, and Marc Ayers, Illinois director of the Humane Society of the United States, who all warned of the potential public health risks mink farms pose.
But Bernice Monteleone and Challis Hobbs, executive director of Fur Commission USA, disagree. They say the bill’s main goal is to ban the mink industry, and that the requirements outlined in the bill are impossible for farmers to adhere to.
“I don’t know if it’s ignorance, or if, in my opinion, it is them trying to push us out of business,” Hobbs said in an interview. “Because these same proponents tried to pass a bill last year to ban us, so that’s what it looks like.”
What the bill would do
Hobbs and Monteleone’s opinion, the bill is yet another attempt to shut the industry down.
“There’s not much doubt in my mind that they’re just trying to get rid of it,” Hobbs said, referring to the mink farming industry. “When I read these things and how they’ve written this bill, obviously, it’s not someone who’s been in agriculture or they just want to put us out of business.”
But Mason maintains the bill’s intention is to protect public health.
“This isn’t even about mink welfare, it’s about health,” Mason said in an interview. “My goal is not to shut them down at all. It's just to make sure that they're not breeding viruses.”
HB2627 is supported by the Animal Legal Defense Fund, the Humane Society of the United States, and the Animal Welfare Institute. It is opposed by such groups as the Fur Commission USA, the Illinois Farm Bureau, and the Illinois Trappers Association.
The bill passed a House committee in March but was never called for a vote in the full House before an April 11 deadline. However, if passed into law, HB2627 would create a mink farming license, requiring farmers to disclose their location, the number of staff they employ, and the number of minks they house.
“To our knowledge, only four fur farms exist in this state, just four,” bill proponent Marc Ayers, Illinois director of the Humane Society of the United States, said in committee.
However, Monteleone said she’s not sure there are even that many fur farms in the state.
“I'm not even aware of four, to be honest with you,” Monteleone said. “We used to communicate quite a bit before, but the industry has gotten much smaller.”
Hobbs said the transparency of farm locations poses a safety risk to farmers. They say the locations of mink farms are kept relatively secret on purpose – to protect both mink farmers and their animals from anti-fur activists, who often break into farms and set caged minks free. Hobbs said minks usually die within 24-48 hours of their release and that activists have released over 50,000 commercially raised minks in the past few years.
“Our concern is, if they do this and those extremist activists get their hands on that information and attack them, it’ll be terrible,” Hobbs said. “It's going to hurt the farmers. It's going hurt the animals and hurt the environment.”
The bill also requires farmers to pay an annual license fee of $1,000, which would be used for two annual inspections of mink farms, among other things. It also sets several requirements that farmers must meet if their minks show signs of infection.
One of those requirements would be that farmers test enough of their minks weekly for COVID, bird flu or any other “potentially harmful virus.” Farmers would also have to test all their staff for viruses as well.
Those testing requirements, Hobbs said, would put a large financial burden on small mink farmers. According to him, the industry voluntarily participated in a national USDA program where they tested minks and farm employees for viruses. Between the costs of labor and sample collection from that program, they estimated the testing would cost farmers over $160,000 per year.
If any of the minks or workers on a farm test positive, the bill would require farmers to quarantine all their workers and separate their minks from one another by six feet. Hobbs said this separation would be “impossible” to achieve on any commercial farm – as commercially raised minks live in rows of small wire cages, placed side by side.
“They want you to separate the mink six feet apart. You can't. There's no livestock where you can do that,” Hobbs said. “I promise you, if this bill was proposed for any other industry, you’d have every powerful lobbyist group there in two seconds, because the regulations on this are crazy.”
Another provision would mandate that farmers euthanize their minks “if euthanasia of the mink is necessary for disease containment.” Currently, poultry farmers who have to euthanize their birds due to bird flu are eligible for reimbursements through the USDA’s indemnity program. In an interview, Mason said she expects the Illinois Department of Agriculture would also reimburse mink farmers who have to euthanize their minks.
Green, of the Animal Legal Defense Fund, pointed out that the federal law regulating animal farming exempts minks from the classification of “farm animals,” which are under authority of the USDA.
Green served as the executive director of Harvard Law School’s Animal Law & Policy Program until 2023. He was the main author of a 170-page report that assessed the rates and risks of animals spreading diseases to humans in the United States, including among minks raised on farms.
“Because fur-bearing animals are not considered livestock, producers are not eligible for indemnity payments from the USDA if their animals are culled because of a disease outbreak,” the Harvard report read. “As a result, producers have little incentive to report disease outbreaks for fear of financial losses.”
Hobbs said the industry has been in talks with the federal Department of Agriculture about potentially developing an indemnity program for mink farmers, but “it didn't look like there was too much appetite for it.”
Another concern Monteleone and Hobbs share is that licensing would be overseen by the Illinois Department of Public Health. They say the Illinois Department of Agriculture would be better suited to oversee the issue.
Minks and infectious diseases
Minks are part of the mustelid family of animals, which includes other carnivorous mammals like badgers, wolverines, otters, weasels and ferrets. The New York Times Magazine reported these animals have respiratory systems that are like humans – so similar that scientists often use them as subjects in experiments designed to study respiratory diseases like coronaviruses.
In the committee hearing, Mason said that fact is extremely relevant now, especially with bird flu infection rates on the rise.
“In the case of mink, we know that they also had COVID before it was transmitted to humans,” she said. “They are now experiencing avian flu, and they are very likely to become vectors of future diseases, which could lead to pandemics.”
So far, the CDC has only confirmed one case of an American mink with bird flu, but the history of minks contracting and spreading COVID is what worries Mason.
During the pandemic, humans infected many different types of animals with the virus, including captive minks living on mink farms. But the CDC says that only four types of animals gave the virus back to humans – and minks were one of those animals.
Although the CDC maintains that the current public health risk for humans is low, the concern is that interaction between the seasonal flu virus and the bird flu virus might create a new strain that could start human-to-human transmissions. This would likely increase the risk of another pandemic, officials said.
Read more: Illinois health officials taking bird flu precautions despite assessing no ‘active risk’ to humans
“The real concern is that as these diseases move through these populations and jump from species to species to species again, especially with minks’ respiratory system being so similar to ours,” Green said. “If one of those deadly mutated versions gets to mink, then it's highly likely that it's going spread to humans.”
Since minks are naturally independent and free-roaming animals, Green said being kept in a cage is very stressful for them. And because higher rates of stress have been proven to lower immune responses, he said that leaves the animals more susceptible to disease.
But John Easley, a Wisconsin-based veterinarian who specializes in minks, disagrees. He said minks have been bred to thrive in and adapt to commercial farm settings since the 1940s.
“In most cases, I don't feel that the animals are under stress, undue stress, compared to any other animal that's raised in a commercial setting,” he said in an interview.
Hobbs, the Fur Commission executive director, said Green and Mason are making a bigger deal about the risk of the bird flu spreading in minks than necessary.
“You can go to the CDC and USDA websites and it will literally say that mink farms did not play a significant role in spreading COVID-19,” Hobbs said. “The bottom line is that the health authorities are saying that we are low risk. Maybe the proponents are saying that we're not, but that's kind of where we differ.”
He said Fur Commission USA is currently working with United States Department of Agriculture to develop a bird flu vaccine for minks, just as it worked with the department to develop a COVID vaccine for minks during the pandemic – which Easley said approximately 92% of the U.S. commercial herd received.
Minks, Denmark and COVID
Since U.S. mink farms aren’t regulated, there is no state or national database that discloses where farms are or how many minks they house. When an outbreak of coronavirus occurred in mink farms in Wisconsin, the state government was unaware how many farms were in the state and had no direct way to reach them. The Wisconsin State Veterinarian had to contact Fur Commission USA to get in touch with the state’s mink farmers.
According to the Harvard study, 18 fur farms across four U.S. states experienced an outbreak during the pandemic. One mink farm in Michigan experienced an outbreak that resulted in a small number of workers testing positive for a strain of the virus the CDC said, “contained unique mink-related mutations.”
The New York Times Magazine reported that in Denmark, more minks were infected with COVID than humans during the pandemic. The virus mutated in the minks, resulting in a new strain that infected workers on the farms, which prompted the Danish prime minister to order a mass slaughter of the country’s roughly 17,000 commercially farmed minks.
A CDC webpage about minks and COVID states there is no evidence that minks played a “significant role” in the spread of the virus to humans, but that “there is a possibility” the minks spread the virus to workers. It also notes mink-to-human COVID-19 transmission was reported in Europe and data suggests it might have also happened in the U.S.
But the virus wasn’t confined to minks on mink farms. Minks regularly escape farms or are released by anti-fur activists. Those escaped minks then infect wild minks and other animals they encounter, allowing the diseases to spread and mutate among other wild animals.
In August 2020, the CDC identified coronavirus outbreaks on mink farms in Wisconsin, Utah, Michigan, and Oregon. That month, the CDC launched a wildlife investigation near two Utah mink farms that had experienced outbreaks. The report says officials captured and tested 102 mammals – including 78 rodents, 11 presumed escaped minks, two presumed wild minks, five raccoons, and six skunks.
Although no wild animals tested positive for the coronavirus, all 11 escaped minks tested positive and the potential of escaped minks spreading the disease to the wildlife population was labelled by the CDC as “concerning.”
How mink farms currently operate
Mason said the main goal of her bill is to create state-level regulations for the mink farming industry to ensure farmers take precautions to contain potential viral outbreaks.
Although she acknowledged the industry has self-made regulations, she said her concern is that there’s no way to enforce those regulations.
Monteleone and Hobbs disagree.
Hobbs explained that a professional certification organization – who certifies audit systems for all types of animal farms, including audits for mink farms – certified the Fur Commission’s industry standards and audit tool, which spans 130 pages. The Fur Commission then took the standards from that tool and created the Humane Care Certification Program, which they use to certify mink farms.
Since the regulations aren’t mandated at a state or federal level, the Fur Commission’s program is voluntary for mink farmers. But Hobbs explained that farmers have virtually no other options than to go through the organization if they want to sell any pelts they raise, as American mink farmers can only sell their pelts through two international auction houses that will only buy pelts from farmers who are certified.
“As of today, just over 96% of the mink pelts produced in the U.S. comes from these certified farms,” Hobbs said.
Fur Commission USA essentially serves as a middleman between the auction houses and mink farmers: communicating the industry standards to farmers, setting up contact between third-party auditors and farmers, and administering the certifications to farms that meet all the regulations and requirements.
Monteleone echoed Hobbs’ statements, saying any pelts farmers want to sell through the auction houses must have approval from Fur Commission USA before the houses will buy them.
Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state government coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.
A wild American mink. (Photo provided by IDNR)
Illinois expanded release options for certain youth offenders in 2023
By BEN SZALINSKI
Capitol News Illinois
bszalinski@capitolnewsillinois.com
SPRINGFIELD — The Illinois House shot down legislation Thursday that would have allowed some people incarcerated for crimes they committed when they were under 21 to become eligible for release.
In a rare rebuke of a Democrat-sponsored bill, a bipartisan coalition of lawmakers voted against House Bill 3332, causing the bill to fail on a 49-51 vote. Bills require 60 votes to pass the House, and numerous Democrats voted against the bill or skipped the vote. The bill was declared “lost,” meaning it cannot be recalled later.
The bill would have allowed people sentenced for crimes they committed when they were under 21 to be eligible for a parole hearing after serving 10 years in prison. Those sentenced for murder would be eligible for parole after serving 20 years, while those sentenced for murdering a victim who was under 18 years would be eligible for parole after serving 30 years.
"This bill would create a pathway for people sentenced as children and young adults to show that they have been rehabilitated and potentially return home and give back to their communities,” bill sponsor Rep. Theresa Mah, D-Chicago, told the House.
Mah declined to comment Friday on the bill’s failure.
Read more: Illinois banned life sentences for young offenders—but not for those already behind bars
Gov. JB Pritzker signed a law in 2023 that makes anyone sentenced to life in prison while they were under 21 eligible for release after serving 40 years behind bars — but only for people sentenced after June 1, 2019. Mah’s bill aimed to make that law retroactive and provide an opportunity for parole for all people incarcerated for crimes they committed before they were 21.
Illinois previously became one of the first states to abolish parole for crimes committed after 1978. Anyone sentenced for crimes committed between 1979 and early 2019 is not eligible for parole, but state law provides other mechanisms that allow people to have their sentence reduced, such as for good behavior in prison.
Mah’s bill immediately drew heavy criticism from Republicans who objected to creating a path to freedom for people convicted of violent crimes. Rep. Patrick Windhorst, R-Metropolis, argued that people serving decades-long sentences for convictions before they turned 21 are likely in prison for murder or major sex crimes.
"With respect to victims, we need to give them finality in the criminal justice system,” Windhorst said. “They should not be having to come back to court to relive the loss they suffered either being a victim of crime or the family of a victim of a murder. There needs to be finality, and we should not be reducing sentences for murderers and those guilty of criminal sexual account.”
Rep. John Cabello, R-Machesney Park, who works for the Winnebago County Sheriff’s Office, recalled serious crimes he investigated in his law enforcement career.
"Murder is brutal. It is final for one person; it’s a lifetime for their family,” Cabello said. “We can’t allow this yet.”
Mah attempted to ease concerns of her Republican colleagues, stating that the bill would merely create an opportunity for someone to receive a parole hearing and would not guarantee anyone will be given a hearing or released from prison.
"It’s not an automatic resentencing or a release,” Mah said. “All these cases come up for review by a judge. The victim’s families are also included in that process.”
Progressive Democrats voiced support for the bill even as many others in their party voted against it or skipped the vote.
"These are people who have spent decades working to be better in the most unimaginable and heinous situations you could dream of, locked behind bars still committed to reforming themselves,” said. Rep. Will Guzzardi, D-Chicago.
Mah argued that studies show youth offenders have lower rates of recidivism, and the legislation would give people in prison a reason to rehabilitate themselves.
"This is essentially a way to create fairness in our system that provides incentive for rehabilitation,” Mah said.
Similar legislation has also failed to gain traction in Springfield. A bipartisan bill in the Senate in 2023 stalled after passing committee.
Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state government coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.
Rep. Theresa Mah, D-Chicago, rushes across the House floor shortly after her bill failed — a rare embarrassment for a lawmaker in the legislature’s supermajority. (Capitol News Illinois photo by Andrew Adams)
The bill’s future is uncertain as it draws fierce opposition from homeschool families, a threat against its sponsor prompting a police investigation and shaky support from Democrats.
By MOLLY PARKER and BETH HUNDSDORFER
Capitol News Illinois
news@capitolnewsillinois.com
A bill that would tighten homeschooling regulations in Illinois missed a key deadline on Friday. But its sponsor, Rep. Terra Costa Howard, said it’s still alive — and she’s working on changes recommended by fellow lawmakers to get it passed.
“We recognize that there’s some more changes that need to be made and so we want to be respectful of the process,” Costa Howard, D-Glen Ellyn, told Capitol News Illinois. “I want to pass a bill that we can be proud of. And even though I’m proud of the bill now, I want to be able to take into consideration some of the other suggestions that have been made.”
The proposal, amended twice in recent weeks, would require parents to file a declaration of intent with their regional office of education. If a truancy investigation arises, officials could ask for schoolwork or lesson plans.
Costa Howard introduced the bill after a Capitol News Illinois and ProPublica investigation last summer revealed Illinois' lack of oversight in cases where children weren’t receiving an education. Illinois has some of the loosest homeschooling laws in the country, and multiple truancy officers told reporters that when they investigated a truancy case and parents claimed they were homeschooling, the investigation came to a grinding halt, even if concerns remained.
In the worst cases, children disappeared from school and endured abuse or neglect at home for years before authorities became aware.
The bill has become one of the most divisive issues at the Capitol this session, drawing thousands of opponents led by two Christian homeschooling organizations: Illinois Christian Home Educators and the Home School Legal Defense Association.
On Thursday, Will Estrada, in an upbeat message on the Home School Legal Defense Association’s Facebook page, shared news that the bill’s sponsors “did not have the votes currently on the floor to move the bill.” The organization's chief legal counsel called it “hard to overstate how significant this news is.” Estrada congratulated homeschooling families for their efforts, adding, “The good news is your phone calls, your efforts, your talking to your friends, your continuing to get the word out to the legislators in Springfield, your voices are being heard.”
However, Estrada cautioned that the stall “doesn’t mean the battle is over.”
On Saturday, Estrada joined Illinois Christian Home Educators Executive Director Kirk Smith in a Facebook video message from a homeschooling conference in Peoria. They urged their followers to tone down their efforts during the legislative break that coincides with Passover and Easter.
“We have kind of a change of strategy,” Estrada said.
“We want to limit the activity politically this week,” Smith added. “We encourage those who may have friends who are representatives to reach out to them lovingly during this time. But let’s give the legislature a little time to catch their breath.”
Though both organizations have stressed their members to communicate their opposition politely with lawmakers, Costa Howard says these organizations have stoked fear, amplifying fringe voices.
Since introducing the bill, Costa Howard said she’s been inundated with hostile calls and emails, even including a letter she perceived as a death threat. The anonymous letter, addressed to Costa Howard at her legislative office in Lombard, referenced HB2827 — the Homeschool Act -- contained five lines:
It’s all over the country. We all know.
It starts here and must end here.
If we have to break the 6th Commandment, so be it.
God said “Do Not Kill,” but also said “Smite thine enemy.”
We’re watching ….
Costa Howard turned the letter over to police, who she says are investigating it in her home district.
The bill has also drawn opposition from minority communities. Pastor Chris Butler testified against the bill last week when the amended version came before the House Education Policy Committee.
“I am here today as somebody who grew up in Chicago public schools,” Butler said. “I am here today sitting next to somebody who taught in Chicago's public schools. And we too have grown up, and we too have something to say about the education that we received, and it is why people in our generation have stepped up and said, we must do something different.”
He argued that any regulation would impede minority families from homeschooling to escape failing public schools and encouraged opponents to continue filing witness slips opposing the bill and speaking out against it.
Editorial boards at The Chicago Tribune and The Wall Street Journal have also opposed the bill. The Tribune said the bill “overreaches,” while the Journal raised privacy concerns about the information homeschool families could be required to provide on the forms.
The anonymous letter to Costa Howard was postmarked from a mail distribution site in Kearny, New Jersey, on March 24 — three days after the editorial appeared in the Wall Street Journal. The return address was listed simply as The Rancher, East Coast.
Under Illinois law, threatening a public official is a Class 3 felony. The Lombard Police Department declined to comment, but did provide, under a Freedom of Information Act request, a copy of the report that contained the typewritten, unsigned letter.
Costa Howard also alerted the Illinois State Police regarding the letter. An ISP spokesman said the agency assesses potential threats and determines needed actions based on the findings of the assessment, which may include further consultation and, if necessary, makes recommendations to enhance security.
Despite the vitriolic communication, Costa Howard said she is pressing forward because of those who’ve also reached out to say they were victims of inadequate homeschooling and want more protections in the law.
The bill missed a procedural deadline on Friday for non-budget bills to clear their chamber of origin. But lawmakers can request an extension, which Costa Howard has done.
“The one thing I’ve learned about Springfield is don’t ever count something out,” she said.
Rep. Amy Elik, R-Alton, disagreed.
“This bill was doomed from the beginning,” Elik said from the House floor Friday after Costa Howard made a brief speech about the bill.
Costa Howard says changes to the bill have already been made to address concerns, and that she’s working on more. The amendment that passed a House committee on Wednesday, April 9, provided more specific details for the declaration form, ensured that an online version would be available, and clarified that a truancy investigation would be required to compel families to turn over homeschooling portfolios.
Another change addresses concerns from private schools, which had opposed having to provide a list of students to the Illinois State Board of Education. Under the change, private schools would only need to verify a student’s attendance record if asked in a truancy investigation.
Costa Howard said she remains open to negotiations on the bill’s finer details but believes passing new safeguards is critical to protect children from parents who claim they are homeschooling, but don’t follow through.
“I do not back down from bullies,” Costa Howard said. “And there are victims that have reached out to me constantly thanking me because it has also allowed them to raise their voices and feel that they could speak out about the experiences they’ve had as well.”
Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state government coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.
Rep. Terra Costa Howard, D- Glen Ellyn, speaks to a House colleague shortly after making a speech on April 11, 2025, in favor of her bill creating new homeschool oversight in Illinois. (Capitol News Illinois photo by Andrew Adams)
On April 15, 2025, at 1:21 a.m., Gibson County Central Dispatch received a 911 report of a two-vehicle T-bone accident with injuries on State Road 168 near County Road 500 West. Deputies Levi Sims and Sgt. John Fischer was dispatched to the scene, and upon arriving, they began investigating the accident. While speaking with one of the drivers, a 27-year-old Charli Sullivan of Grayville, Illinois, Deputy Sims detected the odor of alcohol. At that point, he began a roadside DUI investigation. At the inquiry's conclusion, he placed Ms. Sullivan into custody and transported her to the Gibson County Jail where she was charged with Operating a Vehicle While Intoxicated
All criminal defendants are to be presumed innocent until and unless proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law.
On April 14, 2025, at 1:38 a.m. Gibson County Deputy Wes Baumgart conducted a traffic stop on a Silver 2013 Chevy Silverado in the Diplomat parking lot located at 1733 S. State Road 57 after observing an equipment violation on the vehicle. Upon approaching the vehicle, Deputy Baumgart identified the driver as 22-year-old Thomas Knight of Dixon, Kentucky. While speaking with Mr. Knight, Deputy Baumgart observed multiple clues that the driver may be under the influence of alcohol. At that point, he began a roadside DUI investigation. Once the investigation was completed, Deputy Baumgart placed the driver into custody and transported him to the Gibson County Jail. Upon arriving at the jail, Mr. Knight was charged with Operating a Vehicle While Intoxicated-Prior.
Oakland City Officer Michael McGregor assisted Deputy Baumgart in his investigation.
All criminal defendants are to be presumed innocent until and unless proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law.
On April 12, 2025, at 7:48 p.m., Gibson County Central Dispatch received a report of a male walking in the roadway carrying a liquor bottle on State Road 64 near the State Road 65 intersection north of Owensville. Deputy Wyatt Hunt was dispatched to the area, where he located the male who attempted to hide the liquor bottle inside his jacket upon seeing Deputy Hunt. At that point, Deputy Hunt began a welfare check on the person. During the investigation, the male, who was later identified as 52-year-old Jason Reavill of Mount Carmel, attempted to give Deputy Hunt a fake identification in an attempt to conceal his identity. After a brief investigation, Deputy Hunt placed Mr. Reavill into custody and transported him to the Gibson County Jail, where he was charged with Public Intoxication and False Informing.
Deputies Loren Barchett and Quinten Might assisted Deputy Hunt in his investigation. Owensville Town Marshal Rodger Leister also assisted in the investigation.
All criminal defendants are to be presumed innocent until and unless proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law.
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Meeting at City Hall.
