WINONA, Minn. — An eastern Wisconsin driver stopped for speeding ended up charged with drunken driving. When Jason William Schallet, age 23, of North Fond du Lac, was asked to step out of his car, he couldn’t walk straight, the arresting deputy said. This was near Prairie Island Road about 1:40 a.m. Besides balance issues, Schallet’s eyes were bloodshot and watery, the deputy said. His blood-alcohol tested at 0.12% — half again too much. He also failed the usual roadside sobriety tests.

WINONA, Minn. – A woman drove around construction barriers on Gilmore Valley Road after dark. You guessed it: She became stuck in the mud. She buzzed her husband. He raced to the rescue in his car and also got stuck. Deputies cited both for ignoring bright orange and white reflective stripe barricades.

WINONA, Minn. – Somebody shot an arrow at a house in the 300 residential block of Chestnut Street on the East Side. No one was injured. The arrow was released powerfully enough to break a side window on the front door and embed itself in siding. This was no kid toy, police said. The damage was discovered about 2 p.m. The homeowner had no clue about who might have done it, police said. Unknown was whether the arrow was shot from the street or a passing car – or when the deed was done. Police began a search for doorbell camera recorders up and down Chestnut.

GALESVILLE Wis.  – A rural woman who ran an unlicensed daycare facility south of Galesville was charged with child abuse. The case against Maegan Elizabeth Valley, 33, involved a toddler who had been scalded shortly after his parents left him off for the day. The year-old,boy suffered second-degree and third-degree burns. The criminal complaint said Valley called the boy’s father about 8:230 a.m., April 11, and said the boy has erupted in hives. The father drove the boy 22 miles to the Winona hospital. Emergency room doctors reported that burns covered 24% of the boy’s body. The burns, second degree and third degree, were to his lower face, chest, abdomen, a hand and a thigh. In Trempealeau County court, Judge Rian Radtke set bail at $2,500. Valley posted bail and was released pending further hearings.

Daycare profile

The facility, unlicensed, was operated by Maegan Elizabeth Valley and her husband, Jason P. Valley, at their home. A Trempealeau County detectives reported checking the Valleys’ house and found the propane low. The Valleys were quoted that they had been taking cold showers since winter.

Valley. Charges: Child neglect and recklessly causing great harm.

RIDGEWAY, Minn. – Concerned about a man possibly recording children outside the Ridgeway School, the principal called the sheriff’s office. The principal didn’t have much to go on –just that the guy was in a old white pickup truck, maybe a Ford. Sheriff Ron Ganrude assigned deputies to make extra patrols around the school. The school is on County Road 12 just off Interstate 90.

Good times beckon. Winona High School senior Lacey Kimmerle has won the 2024 Steamboat Days button design contest. She got the news from the Steamboat Day Committee the other morning before classes started. Buttons go on sale around town a week from Friday to support events like the grand parade. Cost: $5. Runners-up in the dsisgn contest: Jack Lenz and Emily Benke. The five-day festival is in June.

WINONA, Minn. – The Fire Department reported 38 emergency medical calls plus 9 fire calls in recent days:

> Tuesday, May 7: 9 medical calls plus 1 fire call.

> Monday, May 6: 9 medical calls plus 2 fire calls.

> Sunday, May 5: 4 medical calls plus 1 fire call.

> Saturday, May 4: 6 medical calls plus no fire calls.

> Friday, May 3: 7 medical calls plus 1 fire call.

> Thursday, May 2: 3 medical calls plus 3 fire call1.

> Wednesday, May 1: 4 medical calls plus 1 fire calls.

Earlier: Emergency, fire crews make 51 calls

Pride of the Arches. It’s now Dr Wagner. It seems but yesterday that Caleb Wagner mowed lawns around the Arches enclave near Farmers Park — $5 a mow. Now he’s graduated with a doctorate in food science from Washington State University. It’s hard to believe a more glorious academic regalia than Washington State’s exists anywhere else, although for Wagner it’ll be replaced soon enough by a white coat in a nutrition research lab. The cord around his neck? A classmate from Hawaii gave orchid leis to friends to mark the occasion. Wagner is a 2011 grad of Lewiston-Altura High School and then UW-LaCrosse en route.

WINONA, Minn. – A Lewiston man parked asleep at the wheel at a Kwik Trip convenience store — drunk too, said police. They arrested James Robert Sorenson, 46, but after banging on the car window to awaken him. Sorenson showed signs inebriation, including trouble staying awake, police said.  They called paramedics to check him out, then made the arrest. This was at the Kwik Trip on Mankato Avenue at Broadway Street about 4 a.m.

Sorenson. Although not driving, he was at the wheel and had control of the vehicle, police said in justifying the DWI charge

WINONA, Minn. – Police closed the books on an intrusion into a houseboat at the East End Marina last week. The door was kicked in but nothing taken, police said.

Earlier: Possible theft from houseboat investigated

ST. PAUL, Minn. — Lieutenant Governor Nancy Flanagan, a pleasant person not inclined to rudeness, couldn’t resist a barb when she heard that former President Donald Trump would be speaking next week in St. Paul:

WINONA, Minn. – A Winona man was arrested on an accusation that he pulled a knife on another man in an East Third Street bar. Andrew Lee Hensley, 24, denied any threat or pulling a knife, police said, but they arrested him after finding he was carrying a jackknife. The arrest was in a second Third Street bar down the street. This was about 12:30 a.m.  The man who called police said Hensley had come up behind him and called hm a rapist and threatened him with a knife. The other man told police that he was scared and responded by telling the assailant that he had a gun and to back off. It was a bluff: He didn’t really have a gun. Even so, he told police, he followed Hensley, who had kept saying he was going to kill him. Police located Hensley in the second bar. They said he denied any assault, any threats and brandishing a knife. Officers said, however, that he found he had a black and silver knife with a folding blade in a pocket.

Hensley. Booked for assault with a dangerous a weapon and terroristic threats.

WINONA, Minn. – A popped-open can of Busch Light on the floor-board  was a tip-off to the cop that a Goodview woman had been imbibing and driving. So too were whuffs of booze wafting from Erin Elizabeth Roberts’ open car window  — and also her blood-shot eye and slurred speech. Roberts 25, was booked at the county jail. After a urine test, she was released to be driven home. A charge of drunken driving will depend on a urine analysis from the state crime lab. For sure, said the arresting officer, there will be an oen-container charge.

When the lights died. Fans lit up the Winona high school track. Dozens of cell phone became lighthouse beacons to guide runners back on course and to the finish line.

Who pulled the plug? How did this happen?

WINONA, Minn. — Halfway through the boys 4×400-meter race, the last event of the meet, the lights at Paul Giel Field shut off. It was mayhem. Blind to where they were heading, runners veered and stumbled full-throttle off course. But before runners got too tangled, a trackside spectator switched on a cell phone. Dozens of other fans got the cue and did the same. Nobody was injured. Thus the 2024 1AA high school track sectionals in Winona unexpectedly became one never ti forget. What had gone wrong? Blackouts have occurred before — but for nanosecond blink or two. Not this time. The lights, it turned out, were on a timer, and nobody had expected the meet to run so late.

Paul Giel Field. The multi-event  field by daylight.

WINONA, Minn. – A Goodview woman was taken in by police for drunken-driving after being stopped on the West Side for a headlight problem. Erin Elizabeth Roberts, 25, declined to volunteer a blood-alcohol test, police said. Police took a court-required urine sample anyway and sent it to the state crime lab for evaluation. Charges in the meantime were pending. The traffic stop was about 8:30 p.m. at Fifth and Mechanic streets. Police said Roberts showed signs of impairment and failed the usual battery of walk-through field sobriety tests.

VIROQUA, Wis.  – As deputies were responding to a 911 domestic abuse call from outside town, they spotted a man running across a cornfield. They stopped and held Nakeil Jermaine Bettis, 44, then inspected the house from which the 911 came. The woman was no longer there, but deputies found her soon at another address. She was safe. At the site of the disturbance, deputies found evidence of a firearm discharge and later a handgun. Bettis was arrested and taken to the county jail in Viroqua.

Bettis. In custody on charges of recklessly endangering safety, battery, disorderly conduct, domestic abuse.

ELBA, Minn. – A farmer called the sheriff’s office about a trespasser driving through his land. A deputy found the trespasser, who explained he was heading for a mossy fallen oak where he had found morels last spring. The farmer, a morel aficionado himself, understood completely.  No charges were pressed.

Elusive delicacy.  Morels usually sprout in mossy dying oak, elm, ash or aspen. If you know someone who’s picked morels, don’t bother asking where. Nothing is a more closely held secret in these parts.