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A new program geared toward helping nonviolent offenders overcome drug addictions got about $650,000 in funding from Sedgwick County on Wednesday.

Commissioners voted unanimously to approve funding for the program, set to begin in October, for the rest of the year.

The program will cost about $1.1 million next year. The total budget for this year, including startup costs, is $746,363. In May, the county approved $96,282 for three staff positions.

Money for the program will come out of the county's public safety contingency budget.

The county hopes the program will reduce the jail's inmate population. County manager William Buchanan recently recommended not going forward with a $54 million expansion of the jail to cut the county's property tax mill levy. He said alternative programs are working to keep offenders out of jail.

Edwin R. Hall was near the jewelry counter in Target when he spotted Kelsey Smith.

She was there buying a present for her boyfriend. He was there looking for a victim.

"Nice legs," Hall thought when he noticed the girl who graduated from high school 10 days before.

When she turned and he saw her face, he thought she looked liked a 12-year-old. It was early in the evening of June 2, 2007. He narrowed in.

On Wednesday, a packed Johnson County courtroom heard vivid details of what happened to the 18-year-old Overland Park girl, as Hall unexpectedly pleaded guilty to kidnapping her, raping and sodomizing her and then strangling her with her own belt.

Judge Ben Burgess denied a request Wednesday by Elgin Ray Robinson Jr. to move his trial from Wichita.

Burgess said Robinson's attorneys provided no evidence to show it would be impossible to get an impartial jury in Sedgwick County District Court.

Val Wachtel, who is defending Robinson in the murder of 14-year-old Chelsea Brooks, said he had received no money to fund a community opinion survey that might support his argument.

"Is it your view that I should order the Board of Indigent Defense Services to provide the funds for that to be done?" Burgess asked Wachtel.

"No, indeed your honor," Wachtel said. He added that he didn't think the order was necessary.

Eleven women and one man were arrested in a prostitution sting Monday, police said.

Six undercover officers working through Patrol South conducted the sting between 3 p.m. and midnight along and near South Broadway and East Kellogg.

The women ranged in age from 19 to 43. The man, 28, was arrested in a hotel room on East Kellogg booked on suspicion of being a pimp.

Two Wichita men pleaded guilty this week in federal court to participating in drug deals for ecstasy, including one that yielded 1,800 pills.

Ecstasy is the street name for a psychedelic stimulant that goes by the scientific name methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA).

Thuong Nguyen, 26, and Stuart Lu, 24, both pleaded guilty to illegally using a telephone to make the drug deal.

They were among 20 people charged in January from a three-year federal probe into the sale of MDMA. Charges are still pending against other defendants.

Investigators say they intercepted a phone call July 10, 2007, in which Alan Nguyen agreed to buy more than 1,500 ecstasy pills from Du Le.

An 84-year-old woman has died from injuries she suffered in a weekend traffic accident.

Wichita police said Tuesday that Eva Brown died Sunday at Via Christi Regional Medical Center-St. Francis Campus as a result of several broken bones.

She was a passenger in a Pontiac Bonneville that was southbound on Main when it ran a red light and hit an eastbound Buick on Central at 11:20 a.m. Saturday.

Two other women in the Bonneville, the 71-year-old driver and a 91-year-old passenger, were also taken to St. Francis for treatment, as was the 38-year-old Wichita woman driving the Buick. Their injuries were not considered life-threatening, police said.

The Bonneville driver was ticketed for running the red light, police said. The Sedgwick County District Attorney's Office has decided not to pursue further prosecution.

The Wichita police officer critically wounded when he was shot twice 10 days ago has been released from the hospital.

The officer was shot by a 26-year-old man in the 2400 block of West Maple just after 11:30 p.m. on July 11 when the officer stopped to question him in connection with a "suspicious character" complaint.

The man, later identified by police as Francisco Aguilar, ran north from Maple into a residential area, then headed west. He took cover next to a car in the front yard of a house in the 2800 block of Maple and eventually killed himself as officers closed in.

Authorities suspect Aguilar was in the country illegally because he was using a fake ID card from Mexico and had given police aliases in previous dealings.

The officer was shot once in each leg, and one of the bullets struck his femoral artery. Police Chief Norman Williams said quick action by officers responding to the wounded officer's call for assistance saved his life.

Criminal complaints from police beats in Wichita. Missing dates indicate days where no reports were filed.

Beat 11

Drug offense

1100 block of N. Edwards, July 10.

Larceny

Adams, David W. and Darnell, Schurrilla K., both of Wichita

Alarcon, Rafael D. and Manes, Laura D., both of Wichita

Anozie, Marcel A. and Anukam, Jennifer C., both of Wichita

Arreola, Adalbeto and Smith, Shayna L., both of Wichita

Attebery, Todd L. and Osborne, Jennifer L., both of Wichita

Johnson County District Attorney Phill Kline's campaign manager says a fundraising request made in the name of an anti-abortion group was a "terrible mistake."

Jennifer Giroux, who belongs to the Ohio-based anti-abortion group Women Influencing the Nation, recently moved to Kansas to run Kline's campaign.

Giroux solicited donations for Kline's Aug. 5 primary campaign last week under the group's name and slogan. She told the Kansas City Star that a "Web guy" erroneously sent the donation request on the group's letterhead.

Giroux said a retraction was sent out the next day.

"It couldn't have been a worse mistake," she said.

Republican Sen. Pat Roberts began airing a television campaign ad Tuesday that questions his leading Democratic challenger's dedication, the same day the opponent attacked Roberts' longevity in Washington.

Roberts' 30-second spot, airing in Topeka and Wichita markets, criticizes former Rep. Jim Slattery over the votes Slattery missed in Congress while running for governor in 1994.

The ad cites the Congressional Record, saying Slattery missed 44 percent of the votes that year. That was the third-worst percentage for any House member for 1994, ahead of only a Texas representative who lost his primary race and a New Jersey congressman who died.

Roberts' re-election campaign said he has missed 8 percent or less of his votes each year since he began serving in Congress in 1981.

"Roberts never stops working for Kansas," his latest ad says. "Jim Slattery doesn't even show up."

Sedgwick County voters can begin casting advance ballots in person today for the Aug. 5 primary election.

You can vote at the Sedgwick County Election Office, 510 N. Main, Suite 101, through Aug. 4. Additional advance voting sites will open July 31.

Here's when you can vote at the election office:

• 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. today through Friday and July 28-30

• 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. July 31 through Aug. 1

A picture of Gov. Kathleen Sebelius holding a T-shirt with the words "Barack Chalk Jayhawk" across the front has caused a bit of a stir on the Kansas campus.

The university doesn't want anyone to get the idea that the shirt, which plays off the school's "Rock, Chalk, Jayhawk" chant, is a political endorsement by the school.

The T-shirts came about after Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, referred to KU supporters at a campaign event in Kansas City, Mo., as "Barack Chalk Jayhawks."

The university, which owns the trademark on the "Rock, Chalk, Jayhawk" slogan, gave the Young Democrats club permission to print 100 shirts in support of Obama -- as long as only members of the group received the shirts.

"I was honestly thrilled they let us print the shirts," said Marc Langston, who organized the T-shirt printing and had sought the university's permission.

Standing at the busy pumps of a downtown QuikTrip, Rep. Todd Tiahrt said gas prices could drop dramatically if America increased its domestic oil drilling and expanded oil refineries.

If Congress lifts a moratorium on drilling this September, oil speculators would hedge their bets on the future of crude and make moves to cut the price at the pump, he said Monday.

"We can't just hope and wait on the wind today and drive smaller cars," he said, also noting that alternative energy and conservation are key to America's future.

"Our economy needs something more."

Tiahrt, R-Wichita, who is up for re-election this November, advocated drilling for oil off the nation's coasts, Alaska and elsewhere -- a move his opponent, State Sen. Donald Betts, D-Wichita, opposes.