GRAND ISLAND, Neb. (AP) — Authorities say an airboat accident on the Platte River killed a Grand Island woman.
The accident happened Sunday afternoon about 5 miles south of Grand Island on the river’s south channel.
Hall County Chief Deputy Sheriff Quinn Webb said 48-year-old Beverly Andrews was one of five passengers tossed off the boat driven by 69-year-old Charles Encinger, of Grand Island. Andrews was pinned under the airboat after it struck the south bank and flipped. She was pronounced dead at a Grand Island hospital.
The accident is being investigated by the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission and the Hall County Sheriff’s Office.
LYNCH, Neb. (AP) — Authorities are investigating the deaths of two people whose bodies were found in their northern Nebraska home.
57-year-old Brenda Wickersham and her husband, 65-year-old Darold Wickersham, were shot to death in their home in Lynch. Authorities suspect a murder-suicide occurred Thursday.
Boyd County Attorney Tom Herzog says no other information will be released until autopsy results have been obtained.
LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — A former Lincoln schoolteacher and Husker football player has been sentenced to prison in a child sex assault case.
Lancaster County District Court records say 41-year-old Sean Applegate was given 15 to 20 years at his Lincoln court hearing Tuesday. The records say he’d pleaded no contest to intentional child abuse and attempted sexual assault of a child.
He was arrested in April last year after a woman reported that she had been molested by him between 2013 and 2014, starting when she was 15.
Applegate was a wingback for Nebraska, 1996-1999. He had worked as an industrial arts teacher at Pound Middle School.
OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — A former assistant principal accused of having sex with a 15-year-old student has pleaded no contest in Omaha.
Douglas County District Court records say 46-year-old Matthew Fedde entered the pleas Monday to two felony counts of attempted sexual assault of a child. Prosecutors had lowered the charges in exchange for Fedde’s pleas. His sentencing is set for Dec. 21.
Investigators say Fedde had multiple sexual encounters with the student on the grounds of Millard South High School last school year. Fedde was arrested after the girl’s parents found references to a sexual relationship with Fedde in her diary.
BELLEVUE, Neb. (AP) — The purchaser of a Powerball ticket in Bellevue has only a few weeks left to claim his or her $1 million prize.
The Nebraska Lottery says the ticket sold at a Kwik Shop on Capehart Road matched the first five numbers drawn April 18 : 9, 10, 12, 17 and 23. But it didn’t match the Powerball number of 9.
The prize must be claimed on or before the Oct. 15 expiration date. Prizes of $20,000 or more must be claimed in person at the Nebraska Lottery headquarters in Lincoln.
LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — Most epilepsy patients taking cannabis-derived oil in a clinical trial at the University of Nebraska Medical Center continue to see improvement in their seizures.
A study authorized by Nebraska lawmakers in 2015 has shown the majority of the 23 participating patients have experienced benefits from taking cannabidiol, commonly referred to as CBD oil. Patients participating in the two-year trial have forms of epilepsy that don’t respond to regular treatments.
Christopher Kratochvil is UNMC’s associate vice chancellor for clinical research. He says the patients who saw the greatest improvement have two of the most difficult forms of epilepsy to treat, Lennox-Gastaut syndrome and Dravet syndrome.
The drug used in the study is the Epidiolex oral solution, a product approved in June by the federal Food and Drug Administration.
MCCOOL JUNCTION, Neb. (AP) — Authorities say a man died after becoming trapped under his overturned all-terrain vehicle in eastern Nebraska.
The accident occurred Friday evening, about 1½ miles (3 kilometers) south of Interstate 80 in eastern York County. The York County Sheriff’s Department says Eugene Weise was heading east on a county road when he lost control of the ATV as he turned south. He became trapped under the ATV in the middle of the intersection.
The department says Weise was taken to a York hospital and then flown to a Lincoln hospital, where he died.
NORTH PLATTE, Neb. (AP) — Authorities say a 42-year-old man died after an incident at Union Pacific’s railroad yard in western Nebraska’s North Platte.
Railroad spokesman Justin Jacobs says the incident occurred Saturday morning and involved a North Platte man who worked for a UP contactor.
Authorities have not released the man’s name or other information about what happened.
NORTH PLATTE, Neb. (AP) — A California woman accused of having marijuana for sale has been fined in western Nebraska.
Lincoln County District Court records say a judge told 51-year-old Jewel Estrada on Monday to pay fines of $5,000 and $5,000 restitution to Nebraska. Estrada took a deal and pleaded guilty to possessing more than a pound of marijuana and to not having a tax stamp. The pot charge was lowered from possession for sale.
The Nebraska State Patrol says a trooper made a traffic stop of the woman’s car on Dec. 17 just after she left Interstate 80 in North Platte. The trooper discovered the driver, Estrada, was wanted on a 2010 traffic citation for speeding in eastern Nebraska. She lives in North San Juan, California.
The patrol says troopers found around 59 pounds (27 kilograms) of pot in her car.(backslash)
OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — A former doctor was sentenced to death on Friday for the revenge killings of four people connected to a Nebraska medical school, including the 11-year-old son of a physician who helped fire the man from a residency program nearly two decades ago.
Anthony Garcia, 45, of Indiana entered the courtroom in a wheelchair and appeared to sleep through the hearing as a three-judge panel sentenced him to death. The judges, who heard arguments earlier this year during the sentencing phase of Garcia’s trial, also had the option of life in prison.
Garcia was convicted in 2016 for two attacks — that occurred five years apart — on families connected to Creighton University School of Medicine in Omaha. Prosecutors argued the killings were motivated by Garcia’s long-simmering rage over being fired in 2001 by Dr. William Hunter and another Creighton pathology doctor, Roger Brumback.
Some of the victims’ relatives testified Friday, including Jeff Sherman, whose mother was fatally stabbed alongside Hunter’s young son when she worked at the Hunter family’s home in 2008.
“I’m left with constant images from courtroom pictures of what happened to my mom,” Sherman said. “I can’t ever get those images out of my head.”
Investigators said Garcia fatally stabbed 11-year-old Thomas Hunter and 57-year-old Shirlee Sherman at the family’s home in an upscale Omaha neighborhood. Police collected a slew of evidence but struggled to find a suspect in the killings.
The case went cold in the following years. But that changed with the 2013 Mother’s Day deaths of Brumback and his wife, Mary, in their Omaha home. Police recognized similarities in the 2008 and 2013 killings, and Garcia was quickly eyed as a suspect. He was arrested two months later during a traffic stop in southern Illinois.
On Friday, Thomas Hunter’s mother, Dr. Claire Hunter, spoke of the agony of losing her young son so violently. She said the boy “was a joy in everybody’s life.”
“You can’t begin to enumerate what an event like has had on us, on the entire community,” she said after Garcia was sentenced.
Garcia’s parents and brother, who live in California, also attended the hearing. They were tearful as the verdict was read.
His brother, Fernando Garcia, said it was hard for his family to imagine his brother committing the crimes.
“We just want the victims’ families to know we do pray for them. We feel their pain,” he said. “We’re sorry those things took place. We’re not an evil family. We hope they find peace somehow.”
During the trial, prosecutors presented massive amounts of circumstantial evidence, including credit card and cellphone records placing Garcia in and around Omaha the day the Brumbacks were killed. One receipt showed Garcia eating a meal at a chicken wings restaurant within two hours of when police believe the Brumbacks were attacked.
Prosecutors also presented evidence that Garcia had sought to attack another Creighton medical school faculty member on May 10, 2013 — the same day the Brumbacks were killed. Prosecutors said Garcia pushed in a back door of that woman’s home but fled when the home’s alarm went off. Police believe he then found the Brumbacks’ address on his smartphone and attacked them.
Roger Brumback was shot in the doorway of his home and then stabbed. His wife was stabbed to death, much the same way Thomas Hunter and Shirlee Sherman had been stabbed, according to investigators.
Nebraska had not executed an inmate in more than 20 years until last month, when Carey Dean Moore died by lethal injection for the 1979 shooting deaths of two Omaha cab drivers.
However, the state’s mode of execution remains riddled with controversy and legal challenges in the face of difficulty in obtaining some of the drugs used to carry out lethal injection.
Under Nebraska law, Garcia’s sentence will be automatically appealed.
Friday’s sentencing was briefly interrupted when the lead judge in the case suffered a medical emergency and had to be carried from the courthouse on a stretcher. Gage County District Judge Rick Schreiner took over, explaining that Randall had undergone a medical procedure earlier in the week that caused him extreme back pain.
GRAND ISLAND, Neb. (AP) — Authorities say an airboat accident on the Platte River killed a Grand Island woman.
