NEWTON, Iowa (Gray News) – A firefighter in Iowa claimed a $1 million Powerball prize on Monday after winning in Saturday’s drawing, according to the Iowa Lottery.

Trent Baker, 37, was one of seven people nationwide who were just one number away from the jackpot. His ticket matched the first five numbers but missed the Powerball number.

Someone in Portland, Oregon, won the $1.3 billion jackpot.

Baker said he realized he was a winner when he woke up early for work Sunday morning and opened the lottery app on his phone to check the ticket he bought the night before.

“I saw a 1 and a bunch of zeroes and I wasn’t quite sure what it was right away, if it was a million, if it was a billion,” Baker said. “At that moment, it was panic mode.”

Baker said he called his mom at 6:45 a.m. to share the news, but she didn’t believe him.

“I called my mom and was like, ‘I just won the lottery!’” he said. “And she was like, ‘No you didn’t.’ And I could tell she didn’t believe me. And I was like, ‘I wouldn’t call you at 6:45 in the morning if I didn’t win the lottery!’”

Baker took his ticket to a gas station where the worker confirmed it was a $1 million winner.

Baker said he made it to work on time and told his fellow firefighters about his big win.

He said his fire department has an unwritten rule that if one of them makes the news in any way, they owe the department ice cream.

“… if you get caught in the media, if you get pictures or video in the media and you’re easily identifiable, that you owe the department ice cream,” Baker said. “And, I owe a lot of ice cream.”

He plans to use the money to pay off his student loans and then invest the bulk of it.

“I’m 17 years away from retirement. This could help impact my retirement even more,” he said. “I don’t want to squander it and have to try to work harder for it all over again. That was kind of my motivation behind it: This is a once-in-a-lifetime thing, let’s make it last as much as possible.”

Baker bought his winning ticket at a Hy-Vee in Newton, Iowa. The store will receive a $1,000 bonus for selling the winning ticket.

LAREDO, Tx. (KGNS) - Two Laredo ISD elementary school campuses are briefly placed on secure mode this morning after reports of an armed person at a nearby neighborhood.

Both Farias Elementary School and Santa Maria Elementary School went into secure mode at around 10:30 a.m. after the district received reports from Laredo Police about a possibly armed person near the area.

Dr. Oscar Perez with LISD, says that the district’s police department followed up with the report and discovered that a man located at the corner from Farias Elementary School had a pellet gun.

“Our LISD Police Department responded immediately, and they found that it was a person with a pellet gun shooting at the birds very close to this particular area,” said Dr. Perez.

Dr. Perez adds that whenever a school is placed on secure mode, that means the threat is happening outside of the campus; meanwhile, during a lockdown the threat is inside the campus.

Perez assures parents that at no point were the students or teachers in any danger during this incident.

MESQUITE, Texas (AP) — A chilly, midday darkness fell across North America on Monday as a total solar eclipse raced across the continent, thrilling those lucky enough to behold the spectacle through clear skies.

Street lights blinked on and the planets came into view, as the moon shrouded the sun for a few minutes across the land. Dogs howled, frogs croaked and some people wept, all part of the eclipse mania gripping Mexico, the U.S. and Canada.

Almost everyone in North America could see at least a partial eclipse, weather permitting.

It was the continent’s biggest eclipse audience ever, with a couple hundred million people living in or near the shadow’s path, plus scores of out-of-towners flocking in to see it. With the next coast-to-coast eclipse 21 years out, the pressure was on to catch this one.

Clouds blanketed most of Texas as the total solar eclipse began its diagonal dash across land, starting along Mexico’s mostly clear Pacific coast and aiming for Texas and 14 other U.S. states, before exiting into the North Atlantic near Newfoundland.

In Georgetown, Texas, the skies cleared just in time to give spectators a clear view. In other spots, the eclipse played peek-a-boo with the clouds.

“We are really lucky,” said Georgetown resident Susan Robertson. “Even with the clouds it is kind of nice, because when it clears up, it is like, Wow!”

“I will never unsee this,” said Ahmed Husseim of Austin, who had the eclipse on his calendar for a year.

Just east of Dallas, the hundreds gathered at Mesquite’s downtown area cheered and whistled as the clouds parted in the final minutes before totality. As the sun finally became cloaked, the crowd grew louder, whipping off their eclipse glasses to soak in the unforgettable view of the sun’s corona, or spiky outer atmosphere, and Venus shining brilliantly off to the right.

Going into Monday’s spectacle, northern New England into Canada had the best chances of clear skies, and that didn’t change. Holly Randall, who watched from Colebrook, New Hampshire, said experiencing the eclipse was beyond her expectations.

“I didn’t expect to cry when I saw it,” she said, as tears ran down her face.

The show got underway in the Pacific before noon EDT. As the darkness of totality reached the Mexican resort city of Mazatlán, the faces of spectators were illuminated only by the screens of their cellphones.

The cliff-hanging uncertainty of the weather added to the drama. But the morning’s overcast skies in Mesquite didn’t rattle Erin Froneberger, who was in town for business and brought along her eclipse glasses.

“We are always just rushing, rushing, rushing,” she said. “But this is an event that we can just take a moment, a few seconds that it’s going to happen and embrace it.”

A festival outside Austin wrapped up early on Monday because of the threat of afternoon storms. Festival organizers urged everyone to pack up and leave.

Eclipse spectators at Niagara Falls State Park had to settle for darkness, but no stunning corona views. As people made their way out of the park a little more than an hour later, the sun broke through.

I’d give it a 6 out of 10,” said Haleigh Thibodeau, who traveled from Buxton, Maine, with her mother.

In Rushville, Indiana, the street lights lit up as darkness fell, drawing cheers and applause from residents gathered on porches and sidewalks.

For some, eclipse day was also their wedding day. Couples exchanged vows in a mass ceremony at a park in Trenton, Ohio.

St. Louis was just outside totality, but that didn’t stop residents from taking in the scene from the Mississippi River aboard the Tom Sawyer, a paddlewheel riverboat.

“I almost enjoyed it a little bit more because it didn’t go black,” said passenger Jeff Smith of St. Louis.

During Monday’s full eclipse, the moon slipped right in front of the sun, entirely blocking it. The resulting twilight, with only the sun’s outer atmosphere or corona visible, was long enough for birds and other animals to fall silent, and for planets and stars to pop out.

At the Fort Worth Zoo, Adam Hartstone-Rose, a researcher from North Carolina State University, said most animals remained relatively calm. One gorilla climbed atop a pole and stood there for several seconds, likely a sign of vigilance.

“Nobody was doing sort of bonkers behavior,” he said.

The out-of-sync darkness lasted up to 4 minutes, 28 seconds. That’s almost twice as long as it was during the U.S. coast-to-coast eclipse seven years ago because the moon was closer to Earth.

It took just 1 hour, 40 minutes for the moon’s shadow to race more than 4,000 miles (6,500 kilometers) across the continent.

The path of totality — approximately 115 miles (185 kilometers) wide — encompassed several major cities this time, including Dallas; Indianapolis; Cleveland; Buffalo, New York; and Montreal. An estimated 44 million people live within the track, with a couple hundred million more within 200 miles (320 kilometers).

“This may be the most viewed astronomical event in history,” said National Air and Space Museum curator Teasel Muir-Harmony, standing outside the museum in Washington, awaiting a partial eclipse.

Experts from NASA and scores of universities were posted along the route, launching research rockets and weather balloons, and conducting experiments.

Monday’s celestial sensation held special meaning for Fallon Vahani, who followed the action from the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Blind from birth, the 44-year-old Indianapolis resident moved her fingertips over a Braille table reader, feeling the small plastic bumps pulsing as they traced the moon’s path. She’d listened to a radio broadcast of the 2017 eclipse and was eager to try this new method.

“I was very excited when I could finally understand what everyone else was talking about,” she said.

LAREDO, Tx. (KGNS) - The Laredo Police Department is releasing new information about the first murder of the year where a man was reportedly shot three times at a local motel Friday night.

Laredo Police investigators arrested Luis J. Olguin, 32, Jesus Abrego, 34, and George Gonzalez, 33 for allegedly shooting 57-year-old Raul Turrubiates.

Laredo police received the call Friday at around 10 p.m. about a suspicious person with a gun at the motel.

An officer who was nearby heard the gunshots and saw a Nissan Altima leaving the area.

The officer told the driver to stop but the driver refused and led police on a car chase.

The car eventually stopped near Ryan and Monterrey where three people got out of the car and ran away.

Police were able to arrest Olguin and Abrego; meanwhile, Gonzalez was eventually arrested at his home near the 300 block of Olive Street.

While there’s no word on what led up to the shooting, police believe that all four men knew each other.

“In this particular case, we really don’t go too much into motives until it gets to court, but it wasn’t a random thing,” said Investigator Baeza. “The perpetrator and the victim did know each other, through what relationship they had, they were known to each other, so for right now it is still an ongoing process collecting a lot of evidence, but they did find a lot of pieces of evidence.”

Baeza adds that Turrubiates was shot twice in the upper body and once in the leg.

He reportedly died from his injuries.

All three men were charged with murder.

LAREDO, TX (KGNS) - An off-duty officer from the Laredo Police Department finds himself on the other side of the law after allegedly assaulting a family member.

Anthony Whitehawk Cabello was arrested and charged with assault.

The incident was reported at around midnight when police responded to a 911 call for a reported domestic assault at the 11000 block of Camargo Dr.

According to police, officers found a woman who had been allegedly assaulted and identified the suspect as Cabello.

The Laredo Police Department has placed Cabello on administrative duty while they investigate the matter.

LAREDO, TX. (KGNS) - A man is facing multiple charges for allegedly driving drunk with four children in the vehicle.

Laredo Police arrested Martin Flores, 34, and charged him with DWI, four counts of endangering a child, resisting arrest, and evading arrest with a motor vehicle.

The incident was reported on Saturday, April 6, 2024, at around 3:30 a.m. when officers pulled over a white Honda Pilot that was seen driving without lights near Willow Street and Meadow Avenue.

Police say Flores appeared to be driving under the influence and had four kids, ages 5, 7, 10, and 11 inside the vehicle at the time.

Flores was also served with an outstanding warrant for possession of marijuana out of Webb County Sheriff’s Office.

Child Protective Services was notified about the case.

LAREDO, TX. (KGNS) - Laredo Police need your help identifying a man and a woman who are allegedly tied to a theft case.

The incident was reported on Tuesday, March, 26 of this year at the 7500 block of San Dario Avenue.

Police say a man and a woman who were both caught on camera wearing black t-shirts allegedly changed the item price tags before paying from them at the self-checkout.

The total value of the items taken was roughly $291, but only $46 was paid for.

If you have any information regarding the identity or whereabouts of these people, you are asked to call Laredo Police at 956-795-2800 or Crime Stoppers at 956-727-TIPS.

All calls will remain anonymous.