Operations are returning to normal at Bally’s after a strange incident this morning.
In the midst of the normal morning routine at Bally’s Casino, the sense of normal disappeared in one frightening moment when a car came crashing through the roof of the conference center. That car came from the top floor of the attached parking garage.
At the time of the crash, Koorsen Fire and Safety was hosting a conference for building inspectors and firefighters at the site. Koorsen is the fire protection company for Bally’s, and they aided in getting the building’s systems turned off. Firefighters and others attending the conference rendered aid at the scene.
The vehicle hit a concrete barrier, causing it to drop through the roof of the conference center, followed by the Ford SUV. The driver of the vehicle was the only injury.
A crane was brought in during the afternoon to lift the SUV and the concrete barrier out of the conference center.
The unanswered question is, “Why?” Police are putting together all of the information, looking at video footage, and planning to talk to the driver to determine what happened.
Bally’s was able to continue with normal casino operations through the day today and the parking garage will remain close until further notice.
Bally’s released the following statement: “We are currently investigating an incident involving a vehicle that drove off the seventh floor of our parking garage and will provide updates as necessary. Upon initial review, the incident appears to be the result of driver error. There are no signage or structural issues with the parking garage. The safety of our guests and staff remains our top priority.”
ORLANDO, Fla.—The University of Southern Indiana Cheer Team wrapped up its trip to the UCA & UDA College Cheer & Dance National Championships Saturday with a 18th-place finish in the prelims of the All-Girl Division I Traditional routine. USI ended its traditional routine with 64.7 points after posting a raw score of 69.2 before deductions. That performance came on the heels of a strong showing in the All-Girl Division I Game Day competition on Friday. The Screaming Eagles turned out a stellar performance, posting a 20th-place finish out of 31 teams with a clean-sheet score of 78.3667 points. USI missed out on the 16-team final by just over two points. Under the direction of seventh-year Head Coach Megan Ringer, USI was competing in the All-Girl Division I Game Day routine for the first time in program history and the All-Girl Division I traditional routine for the first time since 2019.
TERRE HAUTE, Ind. – The University of Evansville women’s basketball team saw career days from Camryn Runner (Cicero, Ind./Hamilton Heights) and Sydney Huber (Cedar Rapids, Iowa/Mount Vernon) at Indiana State on Sunday, but came up just short in a 77-71 defeat.
Runner matched her career-high with 30 points and became the second player in the country to tally 30 points, nine rebounds, seven assists, and two blocks in a game this season. 20 of Runner’s 30 points came in the second half. Huber also got hot in the second half, scoring all of her career-best 18 points in the final two periods. The freshman shot 4-for-9 from the three-point line, including a 3-for-5 mark in the fourth quarter to help the Aces mount a furious comeback effort. Fellow freshman Jelena Savic (Melbourne, Australia/Kurunjang Secondary College) grabbed a career-high eight rebounds.
Indiana State started hot, taking an 11-2 lead in the first three and a half minutes of action. The Sycamores continued to control things, maintaining a nine-point lead at the 2:29 mark in the quarter, but layups by Georgia Ferguson (Waterloo, Ontario/Cairine Wilson Secondary School) and BreAunna Ward (St. Louis, Mo./John Burroughs School) helped the Aces cut the deficit to five heading into the second quarter.
The Aces continued to claw back in the early stages of the quarter, cutting it to two on a layup by Elle Snyder (Latrobe, Pa./Greater Latrobe). However, the Sycamores would outscore the Aces 15-4 in the remainder of the period to take a 37-24 advantage into halftime.
Evansville fought back once again coming out of the half to cut it to three, as the Aces outscored the Sycamores 18-6 from the 8:29 to 3:15 mark, spearheaded by eight points from Runner and six points from Huber. Indiana State responded once again, though, capping the quarter with a 6-0 run to own a 53-44 lead heading into the fourth.
Indiana State remained in control early in the fourth, extending the lead back to 15 with 4:04 to, but the Aces would not go down without a fight. A triple from Huber, two layups by Runner, and another deep three-pointer by Huber brought the deficit back to seven with 2:35 remaining, forcing a Sycamores timeout.
Evansville continued their surge with a jumper by Runner and a free throw by Ward before Huber responded to a pair of Sycamore free throws with her third three-point basket of the quarter, making it a one-possession game with 47 seconds left. However, that’s as close as the Aces would get, as Indiana State sunk their free throws down the stretch to escape with a 77-71 win.
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For the right buyer, the City-County Observer is more than a website—it is a foundation. One that can be revitalized, expanded, and positioned for long-term success in the future of local media.
By Marilyn Odendahl, The Indiana Citizen & Chloe White, TheStatehouseFile.com
During the 2024-25 academic year, Indiana school corporations reported 6,718 incidents of bullying.Photo from Pexels.
Rachel Van Alstine of Elkhart just wants parents to have the chance to tell their stories.
The Parent Coalition for Child Safety and Wellness and VOICE of Peru Parents, two nonprofit, grassroots organizations founded by parents, grandparents and guardians whose children have been bullied in school, are supporting a pair of bills introduced into the Indiana General Assembly that they hope will protect children and teenagers.
The two pieces of legislation—House Bill 1093, authored by Rep. Dale DeVon, R-Granger, and House Bill 1107, authored by Ethan Manning, R-Logansport—address bullying by mandating more oversight of schools and more transparency over how they handle threats or incidents of harm experienced by students. Both bills have been assigned to the House Education Committee, but neither have been scheduled for a hearing.
Even so, Van Alstine of the Parent Coalition and members of the other parental groups remain optimistic.
“Our stories are powerful, because it’s the truth of our kids,” Van Alstine said, “and what we’re coming to testify with, I don’t know how anyone could look away.”
Graphic by Chloe White, TheStatehouseFile.com
Already, the state has laws meant to address bullying.
Indiana Code 20-33-8-0.2 provides a definition of bullying. According to state statute, bullying is unwanted and repeated acts or gestures, including verbal, physical, or any other behaviors, that are committed by a student or group of students with the intent to harass, intimidate or harm another student and create a hostile school environment.
Notably, school corporations in Indiana are required by law to report the number of bullying incidents and student arrests to the state’s Department of Education. The DOE annually compiles the information from the schools on its website, where the public can access the information.
The education department has issued reports on bullying for the past three school years.
According to the Indiana Department of Education’s annual report on bullying, during the 2024-25 school year, a total of 6,718 events of bullying were reported, which includes physical, verbal, social and written/electronic incidents. In the prior school year, 7,700 incidents of bullying were reported, including 2,409 acts of physical violence, which was a 10-year high.
The data reported by the individual schools across Indiana varies widely. For example, during the 2024-25 school year, the 13 schools in the city of Hammond reported a high number of physical bullying occurrences, with the 108 events at Henry W. Eggers Middle School being the highest in the entire state. Comparatively, during the same time, the 48 facilities that comprise the Indianapolis Public Schools indicated that cyberbullying was the biggest problem, with the highest largest number of such bullying cases being the 16 incidents reported by Arlington Middle School.
Graphic by Chloe White, TheStatehouseFile.com.
Van Alstine raised questions about the number of school corporations reporting zero incidents of bullying. She believes that Indiana schools are incentivized to provide inaccurate or even fabricated data on bullying, because they are competing for staff, students and funding, so the school’s public image is important. The result, she said, is a “silencing culture” that discourages students and teachers from coming forward.
“The impact on our kiddos’ education is also something that’s not factored here,” Van Alstine said of bullying. “(Indiana is) retaining third graders for not being able to read, but, yet, they’re in classrooms where they can’t learn.”
Creating a safe school environment
HB 1107 is the first bullying legislation Manning has authored and is his favorite kind of bill: one inspired by his constituents. Following a playground incident where an elementary-age child was allegedly assaulted by another classmate, parents and guardians of students in the Peru School District formed VOICE of Peru Parents after, they said, the school corporation failed to investigate the incident.
Following the organization’s goal to “combat discrimination, bullying, and duty neglect of the school administration, members of VOICE approached Manning to help author preventive legislation.
“In this specific situation, they had talked to the principal, they talked to the superintendent, they talked to the school board,” Manning said. “They just weren’t getting any resolutions.”
Manning’s bill would establish a state bullying ombudsman position with the Indiana Department of Education and require each school corporation to establish a bullying oversight committee. Also, the bill would allow parents or targeted students to submit complaints to that committee if they believed the school administration failed to investigate a bullying incident or the resolution of an incident was “insufficient or ineffective.”
HB 1093 incorporates pieces of two anti-bullying bills DeVon introduced during the 2025 legislative session. Although neither measure received a hearing last year, he decided to try again, he said, because bullying has changed from his childhood, when students might throw a few punches and be best friends afterward, to today’s students, who may be having to endure a constant stream of torment on social media.
DeVon’s new bill would revise the definition of bullying and require each public school, including charter schools, to document and track bullying incidents or abusive behaviors, and to implement interventions to deter or prevent bullying. In addition, the schools will have to submit an annual report on bullying incidents to the state education department and other governmental entities, starting on July 1, 2027.
To tackle the problem of bullying, DeVon said, the government needs to be proactive. He has met with and listened to the members of the Parent Coalitionand, sharing their concerns about the data coming from schools, crafted HB 1093 to bolster the reporting requirement.
“We’re just trying to put a little more action into reporting and to really, truly help the kids that are being bullied,” DeVon said. “Hopefully, there (will be) some more actions and safety plans that are put into place.”
For now, both bills are awaiting their initial hearing within the House Education Committee, where members of the parental groups plan to testify in support.
The Indiana State Teachers Association said it did not have a position on either HB 1093 and HB 1107, but it is monitoring the measures to see whether either will get a legislative hearing. The Indiana Association of School Principals did not respond to a request for comment.
VOICE board member Jeri Casperson, guardian to her grandson Noah, believes anti-bullying legislation will help children throughout the state.
“I would hope that when we send our children to school that we can trust that they’re in a safe place,” Casperson said. “I would hope that we can have confidence in knowing that our education department and the schools are doing what they need to.”
Suicides, abuse spur parents to action
Roughly 300 parents and guardians within the Peru Community School Corp. are members of the VOICE Facebook group. Unverified images posted to the group’s page show several instances of children with large welts on their arms and bumps resembling goose eggs on their heads.
Van Alstine has similar stories of students being bullied for years from elementary to high school. She described her own experience of having her son, who she said has been bullied, confess he wanted to harm himself.
“You’re literally walking on eggshells, praying to God you’re not missing something, because suicide is so real,” Van Alstine said.
The stories of students who take their own lives have galvanized the parents of the groups.
Bullying is blamed for causing 13-year-old Terry Bader III of Covington and 10-year-old Sammy Teusch, of Greenfield, to commit suicide in March 2023 and May 2024, respectively. In Elkhart, Rio’s Rainbow was founded after 12-year-old Rio Marie Allred committed suicide in March 2022. The young girl was diagnosed with alopecia, an auto-immune disease that causes hair loss, and, according to a lawsuit filed by her family against Elkhart Community School District, was subjected to verbal and psychological abuse and physical assaults by her classmates. The litigation was settled in July 2023.
Despite the struggles of bullied students, Van Alstine does not want the children and teens who are instigating the incidents to face punitive punishments. The offending students are often acting out or themselves are the victims of abuse, she said, so suspending or expelling them does not get to the root of the problem.
“I’ve worked with children for more than half my career, and these children that are exhibiting these aggressive and abusive behaviors, they need the most help,” Van Alstine said. “(They should) not be punished.”
DeVon and Manning did not include any penalties in their proposed legislation. Under HB 1093, school corporations will not face any sanctions if they fail to comply with the reporting requirements.
“We’re just trying to put a spotlight on the issue of bullying and truly trying to help,” DeVon said. “We don’t want to penalize anybody, but we just want to help.”
Manning is hopeful his bill will give parents another resource when they are trying to help their children.
“I still think there should be some additional guidance from the state, some place for parents or guardians to go if they don’t feel they are being heard at their local level,” Manning said. “The bullying ombudsman could maybe ask some questions and say, ‘Did you think about this,’ and just provide an additional outlet for folks to go if they have concerns about either specific bullying incidents, or acts of violence.”
VOICE board member Logan Morris admits to being bullied when he was a student in school.
He joined the organization, he said, after his niece had shared similar experiences in elementary school. He noted each incident of bullying can have a long-term impact.
“Our children, those are our leaders of tomorrow,” Morris said. “If you look at the statistics, there’s children out there that take their own lives because of bullying, or maybe they turn into a bully themselves… For things to continue to go in that direction, it’s not good for humanity.”
This article was published by TheStatehouseFile.com through a partnership with The Indiana Citizen, a nonpartisan, nonprofit platform dedicated to increasing the number of informed, engaged Hoosier citizens.
Marilyn Odendahl has spent her journalism career writing for newspapers and magazines in Indiana and Kentucky. She has focused her reporting on business, the law and poverty issues.
Chloe White is a reporter for TheStatehouseFile.com, a news site powered by Franklin College journalism students.
STATEHOUSE – Recent legislation authored by State Rep. Stephen Bartels (R-Eckerty) aims to reform dozens of state boards and commissions.
House Bill 1003 would eliminate, sunset or restructure dozens of redundant or inactive boards and commissions, aiming to streamline government and improve efficiency across multiple policy areas. In a press conference last week, Bartels joined House Speaker Todd Huston (R-Fishers) to announce that HB 1003 is part of the House Republican caucus’ 2026 legislative priorities to reduce government bureaucracy.
Bartels is a member of the General Assembly’s Government Reform Taskforce which met last fall to discuss the approximately 250 boards and commissions that currently exist in Indiana. Bartels said that HB 1003 is a result of those discussions, which found examples of state boards and commissions that were doing the same work or no longer active at all.
“The various boards and commissions in our state do important work, however, some of them serve similar purposes and have similar goals. Under this bill, many of these would be combined, reformed or eliminated to better serve Hoosiers,” Bartels said. “This is about streamlining efforts and reducing government bureaucracy. We did this using a thoughtful and responsible approach while working closely with stakeholders every step of the way.”
HB 1003 would also consolidate various cultural-focused commissions under one Indiana Cultural Commission (ICC), centralizing resources for communities across Indiana. Bartels emphasized that this proposed change is not about taking anything away but keeping the essential functions of the boards and commissions while retooling them to operate more effectively.
Bartels said that he worked alongside members of the Government Reform Task Force, the Indiana Civil Rights Commission and members of boards and committees themselves to identify areas for potential reforms.
HB 1003 has been referred to the House Government and Regulatory Reform Committee for consideration. To read more about this bill and follow session, visit iga.in.gov.
House Republicans released our priorities for the 2026 legislative session focused on lowering costs for Hoosier families and reducing government bureaucracy.
This year’s priorities build on efforts advanced in recent years to reduce costs, get government out of the way and grow our economy.
Over the last few years, Indiana’s GDP grew at a faster rate than all of our neighboring states, and Indiana ranks seventh in the country for attracting new residents.
A recent MarketWatch report shows Indiana as 1 of 15 states currently experiencing expansion and growth – faring better than most other states in the country. We want to continue this momentum while tackling some of the highest costs for Hoosiers, including home ownership and utility costs.
This session our caucus priorities are:
• Expand Indiana’s housing supply and drive down costs of home ownership by rolling back costly regulations that impede development (House Bill 1001, a bill I co-authored); • Prioritize energy affordability by adding performance-based accountability to ensure utilities are hitting targets aimed at reducing costs and increasing reliability (House Bill 1002); • Reduce government by combining, eliminating or streamlining dozens of redundant or inactive boards and commissions (House Bill 1003); and • Cut red tape in education by eliminating unnecessary rules and regulations, freeing up resources and giving K-12 schools more flexibility to focus on educating our kids (House Bill 1004).
FOOTNOTE: EPD DAILY ACTIVITY REPORT information was provided by the EPD and posted by the City-County-County Observer without opinion, bias, or editing.
