JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC

It was great to see Chiefs’ defensive safety Daniel Sorensen make the game-securing pick-six last night against the Broncos. Daniel has had a tough year, coming under a lot of criticism, most of it justified because, at 31, he seems to have lost a couple of steps and hasn’t covered opposing teams’ receivers as well as he did in previous years.

It was thrilling to see him celebrate that pick-six in the fourth quarter. Once he got past two potential tacklers, including Broncos’ quarterback Teddy Bridgewater, who knocked him off balance but didn’t bring him down, he raised the ball above his head and waved it back and forth like a trophy as he headed toward the end zone. At the same time, he performed an eye-catching ballet routine, alternately dragging one toe into the turf, then the other, kicking up small clouds of dust. It was quite an athletic performance. I don’t know how he did it. I would fall flat on my face if I tried to drag a toe while running. (Of course, it’s moot because, with two replaced knees, my running days are behind me.)

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Next week, Kansas City Public Enemy No. 1, David Jungerman, is scheduled to go on trial for the 2017 murder of Thomas Pickert, the lawyer who had kicked Jungerman’s ass in a civil lawsuit. In that case, a jury returned a $5.75 million civil judgment against Jungerman for shooting a trespasser on the northeast Kansas City property where Jungerman operated a baby-high-chair business.

As some of you may recall, soon after he was charged, Jungerman was pushing for a speedy trial. Well, all that changed, and the case has dragged along interminably the last three years, including the year or more when most criminal cases came to a screeching halt because of Covid-19.

Jungerman’s main defense attorney, Dan Ross, has been raking in tens- or hundreds of thousands of dollars, filing a mountain of motions designed to slow down the proceedings. Just last week he filed a motion for a continuance, which I expect Judge John Torrence to overrule. Of course, once the case actually goes to trial, the legal bills from Ross and other defense attorneys will slow to a trickle, so they’ve got a strong incentive to try delay the trial as long as possible.

So Jungerman’s day of reckoning is now around the corner — and just in time for his 84th birthday, which would be March 3.

As I’ve said, the KC Police Department, especially the homicide division, has deteriorated the last 10 years or so, but they went all out of this case, and I fully expect a guilty verdict. I think some of the most interesting evidence will be video, captured from buses and buildings, showing Jungerman’s distinctive white van moving between his home in Raytown and Brookside, where Pickert lived. Jungerman told police neither he nor the van left his Raytown home the morning of Oct. 25, 2017. I expect the video to blow that lie wide open.

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Our laughable governor, Mike Parson, has demonstrated once again how disinterested he is in the welfare of Missouri residents at the expense of pleasing his Trump-trusting political base.

The Missouri Independent, which does a hell of a job of covering Jefferson City and state government, reported last week that the state Department of Health and Senior Services conducted an analysis showing definitively that masks help prevent Covid-19 infections.

The first important thing to know is that Parson’s office requested the analysis in November. I feel sure Parson, anti-science politician he is, expected the analysis to show that wearing masks would not make a significant difference in infection rates.

The study compared infection and death rates in St. Louis, St. Louis County, Kansas City and Jackson County with the rest of the state from the end of April to the end of October. What the health department came back with was that jurisdictions with mask mandates experienced an average of 15.8 cases per day for every 100,000 residents compared to 21.7 cases per day for every 100,000 residents in unmasked communities.

Here’s the kicker…Analysis in hand, Parson decided not to release it. He sat on the information. Of course he did! Why would he want Missouri residents to see proof that masks work when he and Attorney General Eric Schmitt are determined to thwart mask mandates to satisfy their heads-in-the-sand constituents?

The results of the analysis probably would not have come out if The Indepenent hadn’t gotten a tip and submitted a Sunshine Law request.

Thanks to the publication’s resourcefulness, you can read all about it.

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Finally, it was fantastic to see Kansas City’s own Buck O’Neil elected to Major League Baseball’s Hall of Fame. Patty and I went down to the Negro Leagues Museum yesterday afternoon for the festivities. A boisterous crowd of about 200 people was on hand, and we let out a mighty roar when the announcement was made on the MLB network. I saw several people wiping tears from their eyes. My eyes welled up, too. A memorable day, for sure!