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Man gets 5 years in Iowa prison for ramming police vehicles

SIOUX CITY, Iowa (AP) — A Sioux City man accused of ramming police cars on a chase that began in Nebraska has been sentenced to five more years in an Iowa prison.

Woodbury County court records say 43-year-old Larry Johnson II pleaded guilty to felony eluding after prosecutors dropped an assault charge. His plea agreement says the sentence must be served after the remainder of his 15-year sentence for forgery. He was on parole when the chase occurred July 6.

The Nebraska State Patrol says a Nebraska trooper tried to stop Johnson’s pickup truck being pursued by South Sioux City police. Officials say the truck rammed the trooper’s car before crossing into Iowa.

Officials say the truck again rammed both the trooper’s car and a sheriff’s vehicle before becoming stuck on a median.

His Nebraska case is pending.

Tow truck driver acquitted in fatal highway crash

PAPILLION, Neb. (AP) — A tow truck driver has been found not guilty for the crash deaths of two people south of Omaha.

A Sarpy County jury in Papillion (puh-PIHL’-yuhn) handed up the verdicts Thursday on 57-year-old James Helbert. He’d been charged with two counts of misdemeanor vehicular homicide.

Investigators say Helbert was driving the tow truck Jan. 5 when he crashed into the parked vehicles in the southbound lane to exit U.S. Highway 75 near Bellevue. Killed were 19-year-old Khalil Jones, of Daytona Beach, Florida, and 47-year-old Shamus Dean, of Papillion. They were outside their vehicles.

Police say Jones was an airman stationed at Offutt Air Force Base south of Omaha and say his car had stalled along the highway. Dean had pulled over to help. Two other people in Jones’ vehicle were injured.

Superintendent in school kangaroo chili incident quits post

Mike Williams
POTTER, Neb. (AP) — A western Nebraska school superintendent has resigned just weeks after one of his school cooks mixed kangaroo meat into chili made for students.

Potter-Dix Schools board of education minutes say board members Wednesday night accepted the resignation of Mike Williams and then voted to send him a notice about the possible immediate cancellation of his contract.

It’s unclear whether the chili incident played any role in Williams’ exit. He’s declined to comment. And school board member Lori Biesecker (BEE’-seh-kur) said Friday that neither she nor any other school board member would comment.

Williams said in a letter to parents earlier this month that the cook told him he’d augmented the chili’s beef one day with kangaroo meat because it is lean and nutritious. Williams says the meat came from a food distributor that must meet federal requirements.

Arrest made in death of Wilcox infant

Investigators with the Nebraska State Patrol have arrested a man in connection with the death of an infant in Wilcox earlier this month.

Investigators initially responded to a report of the death of six-week-old Zackary Preston on October 1, 2018 when the infant was found unresponsive in a bed at his home in Wilcox.

Following an investigation, the child’s father, Christopher Preston, 23, of Wilcox, was arrested on charges of felony child abuse resulting in death. The arrest was made Wednesday, October 24, at his place of work in Holdrege.

Christopher Preston was lodged in Kearney County Jail.

Nebraska couple accused of keeping child in basement charged

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — A northeastern Nebraska husband and wife accused of locking a special-needs foster child in a basement storage room have been charged in federal court with kidnapping, child abuse, and false imprisonment.

Federal indictments against Charles and Krista Parker were unsealed Wednesday.

Prosecutors say the 10-year-old boy was found Sept. 15 in the basement room of the Macy home by Omaha Nation Law Enforcement Services officers.

Officials say Krista Parker was drunk and asleep in an upstairs bedroom.

The Parkers told police they only occasionally locked the boy in the room, but officers found the room covered in human feces and urine. The boy, who had been living with the couple for nine months, told officials that the room served as his bedroom, where he ate his meals and slept on the floor.

Nebraska lawmaker wants to lower voting age to 16

LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — A state senator wants to lower the Nebraska voting age to 16.

Sen. Anna Wishart, of Lincoln, says she intends to propose a state constitutional amendment next year that would do so. She says today’s 16-year-olds are informed and “fully capable” of helping other voters choose people to represent them in state and local offices.

She said at a legislative forum Wednesday that the idea for a lower voting age came after a conversation with a German woman who had been voting since she was 16 and, as a result, was “so much more engaged and informed than I was about local politics” at a similar age.

Sixteen-year-olds are allowed to vote in German’s municipal elections; the voting age is 18 for other elections.

The Latest: Police take suspicious package from NY building

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Latest on pipe bombs sent to prominent Democrats and CNN (all times local):

7:10 a.m.

A New York City police bomb squad has removed a suspicious package from a Manhattan building associated with Robert De Niro.

A law enforcement source tell The Associated Press that the device found Thursday appeared to be linked to the others sent to Democratic figures and CNN’s New York City hub. The package looked similar to the others and had a similar device inside, the source said.

The NYPD says the device was taken from 375 Greenwich Street in the Tribeca neighborhood around 6:30 a.m. Thursday.

A spokesman said police were called for a report of a suspicious package at the location around 5 a.m.

By Michael R. Sisak in New York

___

6:40 a.m.

New York police say they’re responding to reports of a suspicious package.

It’s unclear if the report is related to pipe bombs sent to prominent Democrats including Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

The New York Police Department says Thursday’s report involves the Tribeca neighborhood in Manhattan. A bomb squad unit on Thursday morning drove in a caravan through the city after leaving the neighborhood.

Authorities said on Wednesday the pipe bombs were packed with shards of glass and were intercepted. None of the seven bombs detonated, and nobody was hurt as authorities in New York, Washington, D.C., Florida and California seized the suspicious packages.

One of the explosives was sent to CNN, which prompted the evacuation of the Time Warner Center in Manhattan, where CNN has offices.

___

1 a.m.

A series of pipe bombs sent to prominent Democrats including Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton has deepened political tensions and fears two weeks before national midterm elections.

The pipe bombs were packed with shards of glass and were intercepted. None of the seven bombs detonated, and nobody was hurt as authorities in New York, Washington, D.C., Florida and California seized the suspicious packages.

One of the explosives was sent to CNN, which prompted the evacuation of the Time Warner Center in Manhattan, where CNN has offices.

The targets of the bombs were some of the figures most frequently criticized by President Donald Trump, who still assails Clinton at rallies while supporters chant “lock her up.” Trump also often singles out CNN as he rails against the “fake news” media.

Trump took a softer tone at a rally in Wisconsin on Wednesday, saying, “Let’s get along.”

School removes posters carrying white nationalist messages

KEARNEY, Neb. (AP) — The University of Nebraska at Kearney has removed dozens of signs that carried white nationalist messages.

University officials say many of the signs said, “Prevent white minority by 2044.”

University spokesman Todd Gottula says the signs “promoting a racist agenda” went up over the past weekend. He says they were taken down because they’d been posted on doors into buildings and on poles around campus instead of at university-approved locations, such as bulletin boards.

Gottula says the posters “weren’t removed because of content, they were removed because they weren’t approved per our policy.”

Call to wrong number delivers rescue ride to man in pain

COLUMBUS, Neb. (AP) — A phone call to a wrong number in Nebraska delivered just what a man in pain needed: a ride to a hospital.

Lisa Nagengast said a driver for a Jimmy John’s sandwich shop rescued her brother, Greg Holeman, on Saturday night after he called her just as she arrived at the Tampa, Florida, airport. She had been in Nebraska to help Holeman get to his Columbus home after spinal fusion surgery three days earlier in Omaha. He called her in great pain and said he was oozing blood and his left leg had gone numb, Nagengast said.

Her brother is a veteran living on disability and didn’t have Department of Veterans Affairs’ approval to call an ambulance, she said. He also couldn’t afford a taxi to a hospital, she said.

Nagengast was still in the Tampa airport when she tried to call his VA social worker but misdialed and reached what turned out to be a right number: the Jimmy John’s in Columbus and its night manager, Jason Voss. She explained her problem.

“She was a little panicky,” Voss told the Omaha World-Herald on Tuesday. “At that point I figured I should take a minute to think about it. It was obviously not someone making something up; it was an actual situation going on.”

It took Nagengast a little while to realize she hadn’t reached her brother’s social worker.

“I apologized profusely. I was really embarrassed,” she told The Columbus Telegram. “I just told them, ‘Never mind.’ But somehow they found it in their hearts to help.”

Voss called delivery driver Zach Hillmer, who picked up Holeman and drove him to a hospital emergency room. Hillmer, a U.S. Navy veteran, said it was a privilege to help a fellow military man.

Sam Nixon, operating partner of Columbus’ Jimmy John’s, said he was proud.

“Those guys did that on their own accord, and that’s what was so special about it,” Nixon said.

Nagengast said her brother is back at home and doing OK.

Explosive devices sent to Obama, Clintons; CNN evacuated

WASHINGTON (AP) — Disrupting a rash of targeted attacks, the U.S. Secret Service intercepted a bomb that was addressed to Hillary Clinton and a possible explosive that was sent to former President Barack Obama.

Also Wednesday, a police bomb squad was sent to CNN’s offices in New York City and the newsroom was evacuated because of a suspicious package.

A U.S. official told The Associated Press that investigators believe the explosive that was discovered near the Clintons’ home in Chappaqua, New York, is linked to one found Monday at the compound of liberal billionaire George Soros.

The official wasn’t authorized to publicly discuss an ongoing investigation and spoke on condition of anonymity.

The official said one of the packages had the return address of Rep. Deborah Wasserman Schultz, an ironic reference to the former chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee.

The package addressed to Obama was intercepted Wednesday by Secret Service agents in Washington.

Neither Clinton nor Obama received the packages, and neither was at risk of receiving them because of screening procedures, the Secret Service said in a statement.

The White House condemned “the attempted violent attacks recently made against President Obama, President Clinton, Secretary Clinton, and other public figures.”

“These terrorizing acts are despicable, and anyone responsible will be held accountable to the fullest extent of the law,” press secretary Sarah Sanders said in a statement that that referred to the senders as “these cowards.”

Hillary Clinton was attending campaign events for Democrats in Florida on Tuesday and Wednesday and was not at the family’s New York residence at the time. She is headlining a fundraising reception on Wednesday for former Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala, who is running for Congress in South Florida.

Bill Clinton was at the family’s Chappaqua home at the time the package was intercepted at a Westchester County facility, said a person familiar with his schedule. The person said the device was screened at the facility — not in proximity to their residence — and never reached the Clintons’ home.

A law enforcement official told The Associated Press that the package discovered at Soros’ home appeared to be a pipe bomb and was in a package placed in a mailbox outside the gates of the compound. A Soros employee opened it just inside the gates, not near Soros’ quarters, the official said.

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