Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Names and faces
■ Chris Soules, an Iowa farmer who starred on The Bachelor two years ago, was arrested Tuesday on a charge of causing a deadly accident and leaving the scene. Soules, who was portrayed as a wholesome country boy looking for love on season 19 of the ABC reality show, was behind the wheel of a pickup that rear-ended a tractor Monday night in northern Iowa, the Iowa State Patrol said. The crash sent the tractor into a ditch on one side of the road and Soules’ truck into a ditch on the other side, the patrol said. The tractor driver was taken to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead. Investigators spoke with witnesses to determine that Soules left the scene, according to a complaint. Soules, 35, was arrested in Aurora about five hours after the crash and was booked into the Buchanan County jail on a charge of leaving the scene of a fatal accident. He was released on $10,000 bond and must surrender his passport and wear an electronic monitoring ankle bracelet until trial. On The Bachelorette
in 2014, Soules tried to win the affections of Andi Dorfman but was passed over. A fan favorite, he returned as
The Bachelor the next year, where he drew attention to farming life and the struggles facing rural Iowa. He proposed to Chicago fertility nurse Whitney Bischoff at the end of his season, but their relationship ended shortly after the show.
■ Actress Abigail Breslin is opening up about why she didn’t report being raped by someone with whom she was in a relationship. Breslin said in an Instagram post that she “was in complete shock and total denial.” She said she didn’t want to view herself as a “victim,” so she pretended it never happened. She added that since she was in a relationship with the person who raped her, she “feared not being believed.” The 21-year-old responded to one commenter by revealing that she was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder 1½ years ago. She says she’s made progress but still struggles. Breslin is starring in ABC’s upcoming musical remake of Dirty Dancing next month.
■ Retired University of Notre Dame philosophy professor Alvin Plantinga has won one of the world’s leading religion prizes. Plantinga, whose writings over half a century made belief in god or a divine reality a serious option within academic philosophy, was announced Tuesday as the winner of the 2017 Templeton Prize. The honor from the John Templeton Foundation comes with a $1.4 million award. Plantinga taught at Notre Dame in South Bend, Ind., for 28 years until retiring in 2010. The Templeton Prize honors a living person who has made an exceptional contribution to affirming life’s spiritual dimension. Previous winners include Mother Teresa, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and the Dalai Lama.