Gazette Daily News Podcast, June 7

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This is John McGlothlen with the Gazette digital news desk and I'm here with your update for Monday, June 7th.

Today in the Cedar Rapids area, we’ll have a 30% chance of showers and thunderstorms, mainly after 4 p.m. It will be partly sunny, with a high near 85. Winds from the south 5 to 15 mph, with gusts as high as 20 mph. Tonight we’ll have a 10% chance of showers and thunderstorms before 7 p.m. The low should be around 69.

A Coralville street was closed for about two hours Sunday morning after a shooting victim was found on the street and while police investigated the incident, according to the Coralville Police Department. Shortly after 1 a.m., police responded to a report of an injured person in the roadway in the 300 block of Second Street. The first officer to arrive found two apparent gunshot wounds on the victim, who was taken by ambulance to the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics with what were believed to be non-life-threatening injuries. Police said the shooter had been identified and the investigation into an altercation before the shooting is continuing.

A Cedar Rapids woman was sentenced Friday to life in prison without parole for kidnapping and repeatedly beating a 15-year-old girl for more than nine months in 2019 until the girl, having suicidal thoughts, reached out to police. Mary Jane Jackson Thomas, age 47, was found guilty by a Linn County jury in March of first-degree kidnapping, second-degree kidnapping and two counts each of willful injury causing serious injury, willful injury causing bodily injury and going armed with intent. The jury deliberated about two hours before returning a guilty verdict, following a three-and-a-half-day trial. According to testimony, a doctor described the girl’s extensive injuries all over her body as “torture.” Jackson Thomas, originally from Micronesia, admitted in a videotaped police interview played for jurors Thursday that she repeatedly slapped, scratched, bit and struck the teen with a hammer and extension cord, but she didn't admit to kidnapping — confining the teen against her will. The woman, in the police interview, blamed the teen for being 'bad” and causing Jackson Thomas to punish her. She said the teen wouldn't listen to her and lied, which is why she punished her.