BOSTON, MA, (WTAQ) - The Boston Marathon was marred by violence Monday after a pair of explosions that rocked the finish line. "This is probably the darkest day in marathon history"  said Green Bay Cellcom Marathon Director Sean Ryan who has worked the Boston Marathon for the past six years. 

This year he coordinated more than 80 buses full of running club members who travel to participate in the race.

“It’s Patriot’s Day in Boston, marathon Monday, and to see such a dark cloud cast over this beautiful day it’s really sad and tragic” Ryan said in a phone interview from Boston. 

Ryan says you can’t plan for everything, but Boston Marathon officials envisioned scenarios like this. 

Officials reacted quickly by using buses to grab runners who were stranded on the course. 

Runners had taken shelter at churches, pizza houses, and retailers.  Many didn’t have access to money, cell phones, or transportation. 

Ryan says marathon officials can only prepare how to respond to an incident. 

“You never rule anything out, but you don’t really talk as much about prevention as about response.  You can’t prevent an extremely hot day, you can’t prevent some lunatic from planting a bomb, it’s a matter of how quickly and effectively you respond.”

Ryan had to make a judgment call that cancelled last year’s Cellcom Marathon because of unexpected heat. 

“This event will definitely affect my thinking, and particularly for all the national marathons….it’s probably going to create some significant changes in things, unfortunately.” 

GREEN BAY, WI (WTAQ) - University of Wisconsin Green Bay has hired local attorney Joseph Nicks to be the independent investigator that will look into complaints concerning men’s basketball coach Brian Wardle. 

Meanwhile, a second complaint involving verbal abuse was filed late last week.  

UWGB Spokesman Christopher Sampson says the local media attention and events nationally factored into their decision. 

“It was really important that the university to move forward on the basis of an investigation that is seen as thorough, unbiased and third-party, neutral” Sampson said.

But regardless of the Rutgers University incident, Sampson says UWGB would have proceeded the same way. 

Sampson says players are not obligated to talk with investigators, but are encouraged to do so.

Sampson says Nicks will have access to any players, staff and information needed for the investigation. 

The final report will likely be released.  But Sampson says for confidentially reasons, UWGB players and staff identities may be redacted. 

PULASKI, WI (WTAQ) - Voters in the Pulaski Community School District approved a referendum question worth nearly $4.4 million dollars for building maintenance and security upgrades. 

A two-day recount of April 2^nd ballots found is passed by an even wider, yet slim margin of 10 votes. Canvass results last week found it passed by eight votes, out of more than 6,100 cast for question two.

Superintendent Mel Lightner says the district will be allowed to borrow $4.37 million. 

Lightner says security upgrades were needed at their elementary schools in light of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. 

Three other referendum questions, worth tens of millions of dollars, failed.  

The district was looking for funding for technology upgrades, new additions, and a new community pool at the high school.   

The new money will also lessen future budget expenses.  But the district is still looking at teacher layoffs, restructuring grades at elementary schools, and a possible grade school closure. 

“With the fact that it passed, it makes those possibilities less likely.”  

GREEN BAY, WI (WTAQ) - A new Green Bay traffic enforcement team was on the streets Monday. 

Four police officers have been assigned to the team that will conduct patrols during the morning and afternoon.   

Lt. Karl Ackermann says they are hoping to reduce traffic accidents in some of the worst areas of the city. 

The city has a five-year average of more than 28-hundred accidents annually.  More than 41% of those were rear-end crashes, where districted or inattentive drivers hit the vehicles in front of them. 

Ackermann says deployment areas will depend on data from the city’s traffic engineer, the state transportation department and their own figures. 

Ackermann says the traffic enforcement team will be on the roads looking for drivers whose eyes are not on the roads. 

APPLETON, WI (WTAQ) - Wisconsin was well represented at this year's Boston Marathon. 

Over 400 runners took part, with approximately 45 from Northeast Wisconsin.

One of them is former State Representative Steve Wieckert of Appleton. He finished the marathon about five minutes before the explosions happened.

"All of a sudden there was this big, muffled bang, very loud, but muffled and we turned around in that direction and heard another bang immediately and then saw the smoke from that second bang,” Wieckert told FOX 11.

Wieckert says he knew something was seriously wrong when police escorted him and other runners in the opposite direction.

Fellow Appleton-area runner Chad Gruett finished about an hour and a half before the explosions. He says there was a lot of confusion.

"It's been pretty chaotic since then. The police have the area all cordoned of. They swept the area looking for any additional devices,” said Gruett.

Both Gruett and Wieckert say the other runners from the Fox Valley they traveled with are alright. But communication has been tough for those here at home trying to contact loved ones in Boston.

Gruett and Wieckert are asking why this happened?

"Shock and disbelief,” said Gruett.

“Pretty angry, pretty angry. It's just a world-class event and then to have this happen,” stated Wieckert.

And Wieckert is thankful he finished when he did, just moments before the blasts. Leg cramps almost held him back.

"By a few minutes, I think, I think I could've been right there. So I'm a little shook to be honest with you,” said Wieckert.

MENASHA, WI (WTAQ) - Police in Menasha say a woman struck a house with her vehicle Monday afternoon.

It happened in the 800 block of Martin Street.

Officials say the 49-year-old woman was backing out of a driveway, continued across the street and hit a house on the other side of the street.

No one was injured. The house sustained significant damage.

The woman faces OWI charges.  Police say the driver took a breath test on the scene and it showed her alcohol level was more than three times the legal limit.

KEWAUNEE, WI (WTAQ) - A woman from northeast Wisconsin is the state’s newest lottery millionaire.

Michelle Grant of Denmark cashed in her $4 million Megabucks ticket Monday. She won the jackpot in Saturday night’s drawing.

Grant chose the one-time cash option of $2.9 million – and she’s getting just under $2 million after taxes.

Grant and lottery officials will hold a news conference Wednesday in Kewaunee, where she bought her ticket. The merchant that sold it, the Lakeshore Lighthouse, is getting an $80,000 commission.

Megabucks is a Wisconsin-only lotto game. Grant was the game’s first jackpot winner since last October.

The odds of winning it are one in 7 million.

MADISON, WI (WTAQ) - Nine Wisconsin school districts could each lose up to $1.4 million in state aid under Governor Scott Walker’s private school voucher plan.

The Legislative Fiscal Bureau says the maximum losses would occur if 110 students in each district take tax-funded vouchers to go to private schools.

The bureau said each school system could make up for part of the losses by raising local property taxes anywhere from $123,000 to $341,000.

The Republican Walker says more kids need the type of private school choice that low-income kids in Milwaukee have had for two decades. He said it would give more kids in underperforming public schools a chance for a better education.

But Republican Senate Education chairman Luther Olsen of Ripon says the new fiscal bureau report confirms an extremely high cost to local taxpayers. And like other government programs, Olsen fears that it will go out of control in the future. He says, “We can hardly pay for one school system – how are we going to pay for another?”

Jim Bender of School Choice Wisconsin says the statewide effect would be negligible, because other public schools would share the state aid that the voucher districts lose.

Walker’s budget would expand vouchers to Madison, Green Bay, Kenosha, Waukesha, West Allis, Sheboygan, Fond du Lac, Beloit, and Superior.

APPLETON, WI (WTAQ) - A Kimberly restaurant owner has been charged with human trafficking.

51-year-old Yen Meier was charged in Outagamie County with human trafficking and benefiting from human trafficking.

According to a criminal complaint, the alleged victim told police she became pregnant by Meier’s brother in China. Meier and her brother arranged for the victim to come to Kimberly and work at Yen’s Chinese Buffet. The victim said she agreed because she was afraid of being shamed in China for having a baby out of wedlock. The victim said she arrived in the U.S. in December 2011. The baby was born the following April.

The victim told police Meier paid her a total of $50 the entire time she worked at the restaurant. Meier forced her to work six or seven days a week, for 12 to 14 hours a day. Meier had the victim live in two Kimberly apartments and gave her so little food that her body was not able to produce milk for the baby.

Finally, in July, the victim told police she had enough of Meier’s treatment and contacted another person to help her get to Chicago. She did not take the baby along because she had no way to take care of the child. It was the abandoned child that eventually got police involved in the case.

After a months-long investigation, Fox Valley Metro police say they arrested Meier Tuesday afternoon and booked her into the Outagamie County Jail.

She is due to make her first court appearance in the case Wednesday.

PULASKI, WI (WTAQ) - The Pulaski Community School District is losing its superintendent to another Wisconsin school district.

Superintendent Mel Lightner has accepted the same position at the School District of Grafton, in southeast Wisconsin. 

Grafton school leads made the announcement Tuesday.

On April 2, Pulaski district voters rejected three of four referendum questions and narrowly approved a fourth, giving the school district $4 million for school maintenance and security upgrades.

Lightner has been in Pulaski since 2008. Before that, he was superintendent of Kimberly schools.

SHEBOYGAN, WI (WTAQ) - Seventy-six year old Ruby Klokow’s adult son calls her an “evil monster” who deserves to die.

Klokow was recently found guilty of killing her daughter more than 50 years ago.

James Klokow Jr. says he suffered years of horrific abuse at her hands. He says the sentence his mother received is unacceptable.

Ruby Klokow pleaded no contest to second-degree murder charges in the 1957 death of her six month old daughter.

Prosecutors have agreed to recommend a sentence of 45 days in jail and 10 years’ probation, citing her age and medical condition.

Her son says she should have to serve at least 20 years.

WICHITA, KS (WTAQ) - A Fox Valley man is charged in federal court with helping cause computer problems for Koch Industries.

37-year-old Eric Rosol of Black Creek is scheduled to make his first appearance before a judge Wednesday in Wichita Kansas, where Koch is based.

He’s charged with damaging a computer, and conspiring to damage computers.

According to a federal indictment, a hacker group called “Anonymous” asked co-conspirators in 2011 to start a campaign to send a large volume of repeated requests to Koch’s Web site – and it crashed as a result.

Rosol is also accused of sending a code that damaged a Koch computer.

MANITOWOC, WI (WTAQ) - Jobs are being added at a company in Manitowoc.

The Jagemann Stamping Company says they will add up to 100 jobs and a 50,000-square foot addition.

The company's president says they're experiencing growth in key business segments.

According to Jagemann's website, they are a full-service stamping company recognized worldwide as a leading manufacturer.

Construction is due to begin in May and should be wrapped up in September.

By Scott Malone and Tim McLaughlin

BOSTON (Reuters) - Investigators of the Boston Marathon bombings believe they have identified a suspect from security video taken before Monday's blasts killed three people and injured 176 others, a U.S. law enforcement source said on Wednesday.

The source said an official announcement was expected later on Wednesday in what is the first major publicly disclosed break in the investigation.

Investigators of the bombings searched thousands of pieces of evidence from cell phone pictures to shrapnel shards pulled from victims' legs.

Based on shards of metal, fabric, wires and a battery recovered at the scene, the focus turned to whoever may have made bombs in pressure cooker pots and taken them in heavy black nylon bags to the finish line of the world-famous race watched by crowds of spectators.

A stretch of Boston's Boylston Street almost a mile long and blocks around it remained closed as investigators searched for clues in the worst attack on U.S. soil since the hijacked plane strikes of September 11, 2001.

Cities across the United States were on edge after Monday's blasts in Boston. Adding to the nervousness was the announcement that mail containing a suspicious substance addressed to a lawmaker and to President Barack Obama. The FBI said, however, that agents had found no link the attack in Boston.

The blasts at the finish line of Monday's race injured 176 people and killed three: an 8-year old boy, Martin Richard, a 29-year-old woman, Krystle Campbell and a Boston University graduate student who was a Chinese citizen.

Boston University identified the student as Lu Lingzi.

No one has claimed responsibility for the attack.

"Whether it's homegrown, or foreign, we just don't know yet. And so I'm not going to contribute to any speculation on that," said U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, who until January was Massachusetts' senior senator. "It's just hard to believe that a Patriots' Day holiday, which is normally such time of festivities, turned into bloody mayhem."

FBI ASKS WITNESSES FOR PHOTOS

The FBI was leading the investigation and asking witnesses to submit any photos of the blast site -- which was crowded with tens of thousands of spectators, race staff and volunteers and runners. Many of them have turned in thousands of images, authorities said.

"Probably one of the best ways to get a lead is to go through those images and track down people coming and going with backpacks," said Randy Law, an associate professor of history at Birmingham-Southern College in Alabama and author of "Terrorism: A History."

"It's the needle in the haystack but when you have the resources that the local and federal authorities have, they can go through what I'm sure will be thousands and thousands of photos and hours of videos. You can find something occasionally," Law said.

The head of trauma surgery at Boston Medical Center, which was still treating 19 victims on Wednesday, said his hospital was collecting the shards of metal, plastic, wood and concrete they had pulled from the injured to save for law enforcement inspectors. Other hospitals were doing the same.

"We've taken on large quantities of pieces," Dr. Peter Burke of Boston Medical Center told reporters "We send them to the pathologists and they are available to the police."

NYLON FRAGMENTS, BALL BEARINGS AND NAILS

Bomb scene pictures produced by the Boston Joint Terrorism Task Force and released on Tuesday show the remains of an explosive device including twisted pieces of a metal container, wires, a battery and what appears to be a small circuit board.

One picture shows a few inches of charred wire attached to a small box, and another depicts a half-inch nail and a zipper head stained with blood. Another shows a Tenergy-brand battery attached to black and red wires through a broken plastic cap. Several photos show a twisted metal lid with bolts.

The nickel metal hydride battery typically is used by remote-controlled car enthusiasts, said Benjamin Mull, a vice president at Tenergy Corp. The batteries, made in Shenzhen, China, are sold on the internet and in hundreds of outlets.

People at the company "were shocked and appalled" when they learned their battery had been used in the blast, he said.

Security officials who spoke on condition of anonymity said instructions for building pressure-cooker bombs similar to the ones used in Boston can be found on the Internet and are relatively primitive.

Pressure cookers had also been discovered in numerous foiled attack plots in both the U.S. and overseas in recent years, including the failed Times Square bombing attempt on May 1, 2010, the officials said.

(Additional reporting by Mark Hosenball in Washington, Svea Herbst-Bayliss in Boston and Terril Yue Jones in Beijing; Editing by Daniel Trotta and Grant McCool)

GREEN BAY, WI (WTAQ) - A closed door meeting regarding the upcoming Bellin Run had race organizers and public safety officials discussing contingency plans on Wednesday.

Approximately 18 people from different local agencies, as well as Bellin Health and St. Vincent, began the meeting with plans to deal with inclement weather for the June 8th race.

Cellcom Green Bay Marathon executive director Sean Ryan, also present at the Bellin Run meeting, serves as a local representative of Dave McGillivray Sports Enterprises. DMSE, which also operates the Boston Marathon, is contracted by the Bellin to help operate the annual 10k event that has nearly 20,000 runners wind their way through neighborhoods in Green Bay and Allouez.

The media was made aware of the meeting Tuesday. But Bellin officials closed the meeting to reporters, once on site, except other than to get video or pictures for storytelling purposes.

MADISON, WI (WTAQ) - The threat of severe weather has forced postponment of a statewide tornado drill.

The State of Wisconsin Tornado drill was scheduled for Thursday, April 18.

However, a possibility for tornadoes in the southeast part of the state has led to the rescheduling of that drill.

It will now take place Friday, April 19. The drill will include a statewide tornado watch issued at 1:00 p.m. and a statewide tornado warning issued at 1:45 p.m.

GREEN BAY, WI (WTAQ) - The Green Bay Packers have announced Wednesday that star linebacker Clay Matthews has signed a contract extension with the team.

“Clay has been a productive member of our team and we are pleased to be able to come to an agreement that will extend his Packers career,” Packers GM Ted Thompson said in a statement.

A source tells the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel that it's a five-year deal worth $66 million, keeping him under contract through 2018. That would make Matthews the highest-paid linebacker in the NFL.

“Congratulations to Clay, who has quickly developed into a core member of our team,” Head Coach Mike McCarthy said in a statement. “His accomplishments and the example he sets on and off the field will be vital to our continued success. We look forward to the rest of his Packers career.”

Matthews, who was drafted out of Southern California in the first round (No. 26 overall) by the Packers with the second of their two first-round selections in 2009, is the only player in franchise history to be named to the Pro Bowl in each of his first four seasons in the league.

He has registered 42.5 sacks since entering the league in ’09, ranking No. 5 in the NFL over that span, and has finished in the top five in the league in sacks two of the last three seasons.

Matthews has played in 58 games during his four seasons in the league with 55 starts and has recorded 270 tackles (191 solo), four interceptions (two TD returns), 23 passes defensed, seven forced fumbles and three fumble recoveries (one returned for a TD).

BELLEVUE, WI (WTAQ) - Brown County Sheriff’s is warning about counterfeit $100 bills. 

The Bellevue Target was victim to three transactions, but a fourth failed. 

The ink on $5 bills was “washed” away and a $100 bill was printed on it.  Sheriff’s Capt. David Konrath says they are looking for four African-American males in their early 20’s.

Video surveillance photos of the suspects were released.  They drove away in a dark colored four door vehicle with possible Illinois license plates.

Retailers normally use a special security pen to check the authenticity of large bills, but Konrath says they have to go further and hold the bill up to the light. 

Security features to look for under the light include the watermark of Benjamin Franklin’s face and the 100 denotation security strip.  Large denomination bills also have special reflective color changing ink.

NEW LONDON, WI (WTAQ) - A New London cheese plant says it is planning to layoff workers starting next month.

Saputo Cheese officials say the plant will lay off 22 employees effective May 5.

The layoffs are due to changes in plant operations.

Company officials say the laid off employees will be put on a call-back list.

MADISON, WI (WTAQ) - The body of a missing Kaukauna man has been recovered from a Madison lake.

On Wednesday, the Dane County Medical Examiner's Office confirmed that they pulled Charles Geurts' body from Lake Monona.

The 26-year-old Geurts was in Madison for a work conference when he went missing back in January.

He was last seen at his hotel after a night out drinking with his colleagues.