News Briefs from Rockton and Roscoe: 1/26/2022

Last Saturday, FBI agents raided the headquarters of the Center for COVID Control (CCC), which was associated with the COVID testing center near Schnucks. According to Block Club Chicago, the federal government has paid CCC over $124 million for COVID tests. Former employees of the Center for COVID Control told Block Club that they often marked clients as having no insurance, sending the bill to Washington instead of to the client's insurance provider. The spokesman for the Center for COVID Control says "company leaders voluntarily called for a seven-day national pause of local collection site operations to reset all operational aspects of the company and ensure accurate testing services continue to be made available to patients across the country.” The seven-day national pause has been extended and the testing centers are still closed.

A Marengo man was indicted on Jan. 19, 2022 on the charge of committing first degree murder and hiding his girlfriend's body in his Jeep, which he placed in a Roscoe storage facility.  On Nov. 15, twenty minutes after the victim refilled a painkiller prescription over the phone, her passcode was used to enter her storage shed. The body was discovered on Mar. 1, when the McHenry County Sheriff’s Office, assisted by the Roscoe Police Department, executed a search warrant there. Winnebago County authorities are in the process of extraditing the man from Wisconsin, where he is already serving a prison sentence on a different charge. J. Hanley, Winnebago County State’s Attorney, says that first degree murder carries a sentence of 20-60 years in the Illinois Department of Corrections, which must be served 100%.

The Varsity Scholastic Bowl Team at Hononegah Community High School placed third in the NIC-10 regular season.  The team consisted of Grant Gouwens, Joseph Kasel, Ethan Butler, Sarah Yeager, Shane Levi, and Sebastian Wysocki.

At Tuesday night's meeting, the Kinnikinnick Board of Education dealt with a "resolution authorizing a supplemental property tax levy to pay the principal of and interest on outstanding limited bonds" for the district. They voted whether to approve the contract with Bergman Cleaning Services for Kinnikinnick School and the bid from NES for a 2021-22 asbestos abatement project at Stone Creek School.

The MercyHealth Urgent Care facility in Roscoe has not reopened yet. A spokesperson told us, "It is closed through this week. We are encouraging people to use the urgent care on Perryville."  The Roscoe location temporarily closed at the beginning of January because of staffing shortages

On the evening of Jan. 20, 2022, Harlem-Roscoe firefighters received a report of a single vehicle accident in the 2200 block of E. Rockton Road, east of Dorr Road, in Rockton. Most of that stretch of road is fenced on the south side. The airbag had deployed and Harlem-Roscoe paramedics did not need to transport the driver of the white car to the hospital.

According to Hononegah Community High School's administration:

"The boys swim team was busy last week, wrapping up an undefeated dual meet season on Thursday with their final dual meet of the season against Boylan and East. Event wins came from Hayden Blankenship, Vito Skominas, Jack Kitzman, Davis Cass, Owen West, Cale Miles and Michael Long. Big personal best swims also came from Aidan Paccagnini, Bryce Strommer, Damian Harms, Garrett Preston, Spencer Thoren and Max Tyson. The boys swim team then followed this up with a resounding victory on Saturday at the Hillmen Invitational at UW Platteville. Winning all but one event, the boys took home the win at their second to last invite of the season. They will continue their season this Friday with the JV/Freshman conference meet and then again on Saturday with their final invite at Beloit Memorial."

Roughly 31,354 people have a Roscoe or Rockton zip code, but after 185 years, not all of them know that we have now a daily news outlet here. Would you recommend us on Nextdoor, review us on Google, recommend/review us on Facebook, or share about us on other social media? If you're not on social media, subscribe to our free email newsletter and then forward the email to a neighbor. Click here to send them an email. Or just tell your friends, "It's at RoscoeNews dot com. Take a look."

Hononegah Community High School's entry in the 36th Annual Illinois Snow Sculpting Competition is titled "A Lot 'o Axolotl." It will be on display in Block J at Sinnissippi Park, Jan. 27-29, 2022. It's one of eleven entries in the High School division.

Technically, COVID numbers in Winnebago County on Friday jumped by almost a thousand new cases. But according to a Northern Illinois public information officer speaking on behalf of the Winnebago County Health Department, that doesn't mean either that there's a new outbreak or that COVID is defeated yet. Keep reading.

New cases reported in the last ten days (Jan. 15-25, 2022):

• Saturday: 1,211 new cases
• Sunday 639 new cases
• Monday 239 new cases
• Tuesday 387 new cases
• Wednesday 711 new cases
• Thursday 245 new cases
• Friday 1,194 new cases
• Monday 1,193 new cases
• Tuesday 233 new cases

Cynthia Hall told us, "The daily case counts have fluctuated due to the increase in testing volumes and turnaround times. They do not reflect any large scale outbreaks but reflect the overall high level of transmission in the community." Maybe the Center for COVID Control is catching up on its testing backlog in the lab...

One piece of good news: Hall reported, "As of Thursday, January 20, 2022, Rockford hospitals – Mercyhealth, OSF HealthCare Saint Anthony Medical Center, and UW Health SwedishAmerican Hospital – are currently providing in-patient care for 169 patients who have tested positive for COVID-19 and persons suspected of being COVID-19 positive. This is a decrease from last week’s report of 214."

Alexa Johnson, a biology major from Roscoe, has made the dean's list at Monmouth College for the Fall 2021 semester, earning a grade-point average over 3.5 on a 4.0 scale. Founded in 1853, Monmouth College is a nationally ranked liberal arts college. Affiliated with the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and the birthplace of the women's fraternity movement, the college offers 38 majors, 42 minors, 17 pre-professional tracks, and two innovative Triads in Global Food Security and Global Public Health.

Three Roscoe students were among the more than 600 students named to the Carthage College dean's list for the fall 2021 semester. Emma Topham, Andrew Hallstrom, and Brennan Ott  achieved a minimum 3.5 grade-point average. Carthage is a private college located on the Lake Michigan shore in Kenosha, Wisconsin and was founded in 1847.