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Opening statements begin today in the trial of an Iowa County woman and her daughter charged in the death of a teenage girl.  Police say Laurie and Alexis Barry were taking care of 13-year-old Selah Kaden back in 2018 when she died from suffocation.  An autopsy showed she also had blunt force trauma to the head.  The trial is expected to last two weeks.

A new study shows homes in south central Wisconsin are the most expensive in the state.  The Wisconsin Policy Forum says Wisconsin home values are increasing at the fastest rate in a generation.  Numbers from the Wisconsin Realtors Association show the average home in south central Wisconsin costs over 285-thousand dollars, the most expensive of any region in the state.  In Madison the average home costs 377-thousand dollars.

Wisconsin is the fifth-best state in the nation for working moms.  That’s according to WalletHub, which says Wisconsin ranks fifth in the professional opportunities category, sixth in child care, and tenth in work-life balance.  WalletHub says the best state for working moms is Massachusetts and the worst is Louisiana.

We’re still waiting for all of the police reports from Saturday’s Mifflin Street block party.  The working assumption is that too many people were on the porch that collapsed on Mifflin Street Saturday morning.  Three people were hurt when the second-floor porch gave way.  Two of them were taken to the hospital, though everyone is expected to be okay. Madison Police are not saying much about the collapse, though they are continuing to look into it. Firefighters braced the building

The sheriff in Vernon County says they caught the man who’s been stealing road signs. Deputies arrested 19-year-old Bretton Anderson of rural Viroqua last week. They say they found 18 stolen road signs last week. The sheriff had reported stolen road signs for the past several months, including some missing stop signs. Anderson is looking at theft, criminal damage to property, and possession of stolen property charges. He was released from jail shortly after his arrest.

We have a ‘who,’ but we do not have a ‘why’ in last week’s shooting at a Janesville plant.  Authorities yesterday identified Devon Hills as the man who was shot and killed at Precision Drawn Metals last Tuesday. The suspect in the shooting is being held on a million-dollars bond. Investigators are not saying what led-up to the shooting. Hills’ friends have started a GoFundMe for his three kids.

 Wisconsin’s bird flu tally is now at 12 cases in nine counties, with over two-point-seven million birds put-down.  The state’s Department of Agriculture on Friday added Fond du Lac and Oconto counties to the list of places where the flu has been confirmed. Barron County has seen three cases, including one farm where the state says over 100 thousand birds had to be destroyed. In addition to the backyard and farm-raised flocks in the nine counties, Wisconsin says its found the flu

It is another sad anniversary for Alexis Patterson’s family in the Milwaukee area. Tomorrow marks 20 years to the day since she disappeared.  She was seven-years-old when she vanished in 2002.  Her stepfather says he walked her to school, but police say she never got there. Her stepfather passed away last year from a suspected drug overdose.  Alexis’ mother says she believes her daughter is still out there, and is holding-out hope that she returns one day.

Fishing season is just about to open, but in some parts of northern Wisconsin the lakes are still frozen.  Kurt Justice owns a fishing shop in Minocqua, he says the northern part of the state didn’t get its long-thaw this year.  He said some fishermen are still out on the ice, though the DNR doesn’t recommend that. Fishing season in Wisconsin begins on Saturday.

Wisconsin’s latest coronavirus hospitalization count is about a tenth of what it was at the state’s peak. The Wisconsin Hospital Association on Friday said 234 people are in the hospital with the virus. That includes 37 in the ICU. At the omicron variant-peak, Wisconsin had just over 22 hundred people hospitalized with the virus. CLICK HERE FOR MORE FROM WI DHS.