Fiat Chrysler has pushed back the reopening of a shuttered Indiana factory until late 2021, blaming delays caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Company officials had announced in March a $400 million plan to convert a Kokomo transmission factory so that it could begin engine production within the first three months of 2021.

That reopening has been delayed until 2021’s last quarter, in part because of the company’s eight-week shutdown earlier this year, Fiat Chrysler spokeswoman Jodi Tinson told the Kokomo Tribune.

Fiat Chrysler said it plans to make the factory about 40 miles north of Indianapolis into the U.S. production site for the Global Medium Engine Turbo 4 for Jeep Wranglers and Cherokees, which is now built in Italy.

Officials said the project would retain about 1,000 jobs and add nearly 200, bringing the total Fiat Chrysler workforce at its Kokomo-area factories to more than 8,000.

A dozen rural Indiana communities will share more than $8 million in federal grants to improve their water systems.

Lt. Gov. Suzanne Crouch and the Indiana Office of Community and Rural Affairs announced the grants Thursday.

“These grants are vital to Indiana’s economic success as these projects should improve the quality of life in these rural communities,” Crouch said.

The state distributes grants to rural communities to help them with projects such as infrastructure improvement, public facilities and economic development.

Lawrenceburg, Sullivan and Edinburgh are receiving $600,000 each for flood drainage improvements.

Beech Grove is getting $600,000 for wastewater improvements. Carbon, Dana, Lapel, Leavenworth, New Market, Thorntown and Putnam County are getting $700,000 each for improvements.

Spurgeon was awarded $700,000 to construct a wastewater system.

Authorities in Indiana were investigating the death of a 32-year-old woman who allegedly shot herself while sitting in a police vehicle during a crash investigation.

Indiana State Police said Sunday that Amanda Elbert of Alexandria, Indiana, was not in custody and used a gun that was in her purse.

Elbert was in a car that crashed about 8:15 a.m. Saturday into a utility pole near Gas City in Grant County, north of Muncie. The car’s driver allegedly fled before police arrived.

Elbert told officers she was not injured. She was allowed to sit in the front passenger seat of a police vehicle to keep warm.

As officers were conducting an inventory of the crashed car, they heard a gunshot. Elbert was pronounced dead at the scene.

The Grant County sheriff’s office asked the state police to investigate the shooting.

A 19-year-old southern Indiana man faces charges in the shooting death of his father during an apparent altercation.

The man was arrested Saturday night and was being held Sunday without bond in the Gibson County Jail, Indiana State Police said.

Officers found his 44-year-old father wounded Saturday afternoon in the Oakland City home where the 19-year-old resides. The father was pronounced dead at the scene.

Oakland City is northeast of Evansville.

— Associated Press