Gazette Daily News Podcast, May 17

Be sure to subscribe to The Gazette Daily News podcast, or just tell your Amazon Alexa enabled device to "enable The Gazette Daily News skill" so you can get your daily briefing by simply saying "Alexa, what's the news?" If you prefer podcasts, you can also find us on iTunes.

This is John McGlothlen with the Gazette digital news desk and I'm here with your update for Monday, May 17th.

We’ll have a 40% chance of showers today in the Cedar Rapids area. It will be cloudy, with a high near 68. Winds from the east 10 to 15 mph, with gusts as high as 20 mph. Tonight there will be a chance of showers and thunderstorms, then showers likely after 1 a.m. The low should be around 57.

Iowa surpassed 6,000 confirmed COVID-19 deaths over the weekend. With six new COVID-19 deaths reported by the Department of Public Health on Sunday, Iowa has reached 6,006 total deaths because of the virus since the start of the pandemic. While the deaths surpassed another grim milestone, the seven-day average of cases hit 237, the lowest since April 20, 2020, and a continued drop for the fourth consecutive day.

An Indiana man has been arrested in connection with a shooting death in Iowa City last month. The Iowa City Police Department said 29-year-old Renard Winfield Jr. of Gary, Indiana, has been charged with first-degree murder in connection with the shooting of 31-year-old Tommy Curry. In a criminal complaint, police said Curry thought he was going to be meeting with a woman he had been texting with for months the night of April 28. Instead, police said Curry was killed by Winfield, who had been posing as a woman. Curry was found inside his vehicle at the Meadow Lark Apartment Complex at 2400 Lakeside Drive. He had been shot numerous times and later died of his wounds. Investigators reviewed Curry’s cellphone and found he had been exchanging text messages with someone since Jan. 23. The text messages showed Curry met the person associated with the phone number — who he believed to be a woman — on a dating website. Using the phone number and associated dating website, investigators were led to Winfield.