Illinois, Peoria County | featured news

The Peoria Rivermen proved to be more bark than bite against the Hamilton Bulldogs in a duel between last-place teams Saturday.

Peoria mustered 43 shots but surrendered the game-winning goal with just 2:40 left in the third period to slide to a 3-1 loss before 4,830 at Copps Coliseum.

The Rivermen, last in the Midwest Division, lost for the sixth time in nine games despite the best efforts of goaltender Mike McKenna, who held the team in a 1-1 duel for more than 57 minutes.

Three suspects were questioned by police following the reported sexual assault of an 18-year-old girl Saturday night in a South Peoria alley.

The woman told police that shortly after 6 p.m. she was in the 2700 block of West Wyoming Street with three male acquaintances when she was attacked, taken to the ground and sexually assaulted by at least two of them.

There’s always been something about small towns and high school basketball.

It’s a love affair documented in the 1986 film “Hoosiers.”

In some ways since, that something has become a bit cliched.

A restaurant chain with a Peoria location offers a breakfast of two pancakes, two sausage patties, two scrambled eggs, coffee, milk and juice for about $9, but on Saturday, the Peoria County Farm Bureau provided that same meal for 85 cents.

The 13th annual Farmer’s Share of the Food Dollar Breakfast began at 7 a.m. in the Youth Building at the Exposition Gardens in Peoria and served food until 11 a.m.

Gov. Pat Quinn delivered his budget speech last week, and it was another of those confounding efforts of his.

Quinn got favorable marks for concentrating a large portion of the speech on the need for pension reform and how pension costs are still taking up an ever larger part of the budget, to the detriment of other programs. Some lawmakers didn’t like that Quinn singled them out for failing to pass pension reform and left himself out of the blame game. But still, the focus of the speech was where it needed to be.

Chet Hole, a volunteer at the March Madness Experience, calls himself “one of the originals.”

For 16 out of the 17 years the Experience has been in Peoria, Hole has been a loyal volunteer, working both weekends at the event.

Hole, a resident of Washington, said it takes time and a lot of work, but the excitement and all the fun keep him coming back.

It was just past 1 a.m. when they found Christopher Cotton's body, slumped in the driver's seat at a Buffalo, N.Y., intersection, shot dead by an assailant who left all the car's windows up, the doors locked. Little more than an hour earlier, the pharmaceutical technician had joined family for drinks and YouTube videos, then went to meet his girlfriend. He never made it.

The future is unclear for a promising heart device aimed at preventing strokes in people at high risk of them because of an irregular heartbeat.

Jared Entwhistle scored 16 points and Jordan Bradshaw added 14 points and 12 rebounds to lead a balanced scoring attack as Mason City Illini Central beat Madison, 55-44, in the IHSA Class 1A boys basketball state title game on Saturday.

Entwhistle didn't hit his first field goal until the fourth quarter. But he made 11 of 16 free throws to pace the Cougars (27-6). Illini Central's Justin Onken chipped in eight, Duncan McClure eight and Connor Martin seven.

Federal officials say railroad accidents last year in Michigan and Illinois were caused by workers not following required safety precautions.