OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — An Omaha lawyer has been picked to lead a national trade group of divorce and family lawyers.
John Slowiaczek will serve as president of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers. The group has more than 1,650 members nationwide.
Slowiaczek says he hopes the group will continue setting high standards for matrimonial law.
Slowiaczek has been practicing law since 1973 and is a partner at the Slowiaczek, Albers & Astley law firm in Omaha.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Students and administrators raised concerns about a Tennessee school bus driver’s behavior behind the wheel in the weeks before a crash killed six children.
Police have charged the driver Johnthony Walker with vehicular homicide after the Chattanooga crash. Federal authorities said Walker was driving off the designated bus route when he wrecked on a curvy road while carrying 37 children on their way home from Woodmore Elementary School.
Records released by the school district on Friday include two written statements by students complaining about Walker’s driving. One said the driver would stop the bus to make students moving from their seats hit their heads. Another wrote: “We need seat belts.”
The school’s principal asked for video of the bus leaving campus, saying that in her opinion he was “driving way too fast.”
VERO BEACH, Fla. (AP) — The suicide of a firefighter who had a reputation for being a brave and positive force in his Florida community has shined a light on post-traumatic stress disorder in his profession.
One Saturday last month, Vero Beach Battalion Chief David Dangerfield posted a message about PTSD on Facebook before going out into the woods and fatally shooting himself.
The Firefighter Behavioral Health Alliance estimates about 30 percent of the nation’s 1.3 million career and volunteer firefighters suffer from PTSD, with 132 suicides by active and former U.S. firefighters and paramedics reported last year.
There have been recent national efforts to train firefighters to recognize PTSD and to remove the stigma of seeking help.
LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — A man awaiting sentencing in a Lincoln shooting has been arrested again.
Leshawn Rogers was one of five people arrested Tuesday at a Lincoln home after officers serving an arrest warrant on another man found marijuana, four guns and more than $13,500 in cash there.
Rogers has been charged with possession of marijuana for sale, two firearms crimes and with possession of money while violating a state statute.
Rogers is scheduled to be sentenced next week in the Feb. 11 shootings of two men during a botched drug deal. He pleaded no contest to two counts of assault.
OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — Authorities have arrested three teenagers suspected of one or more carjackings in Omaha.
The three were arrested Thursday morning after they ran from a vehicle that had been reported stolen at gunpoint in northwest Omaha. The car owner told police that a man demanded the keys to her car Wednesday afternoon and then struck her in the face with a firearm. He took her keys and drove off in her car.
The three teens — two are 14 and the other is 16 — are being investigated for possible connections to two more carjackings, a purse theft and a failed carjacking.
RAVENNA, Neb. (AP) — A historical marker commemorating a former U.S. Army outpost in Buffalo County will be repaired as part of a statewide effort to spiff up more than 100 such markers.
The Nebraska Marker Project was established earlier this year to help the Nebraska State Historical Society. The project goal is to raise $80,000 to repair and preserve the markers in anticipation of the state’s 150th-anniversary celebration next year.
The marker sits a mile southeast of Ravenna (ruh-VEH’-nuh) along Nebraska Highway 2. It notes the nearby former site of Post South Loup Fork, an outpost of Fort Kearney. The outpost was established in May 1865 by Company E of the 7th Iowa Cavalry and abandoned three months later.
Local legends say the outpost also was called Fort Desolation and Fort Banishment.
WHITECLAY, Neb. (AP) — Activists looking to end beer sales in Whiteclay have been collecting money to offer a reward for information about a woman’s death.
The killing of 50-year-old Sherry Wounded Foot remains unsolved. Wounded Foot was found beaten and unconscious behind a Whiteclay building on Aug. 5. She died in a hospital 12 days later.
Activists say beer sales in Whiteclay are largely to blame for the town’s violence. They also say the alcohol sales contribute to systemic issues on nearby Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.
Sheridan County Attorney Jamie Simmons says the county sheriff’s office and Nebraska State Patrol are investigating Wounded Foot’s death. A $1,000 reward for information leading to an arrest will soon be posted on the website for the Nebraska Crime Stoppers.
Today
OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — Omaha police have arrested a 36-year-old man who they say beat his brother, aimed a vehicle at officers and ran into a police cruiser.
The man’s brother told responding officers that he escaped his brother after being struck several times as they argued Wednesday night. Police say the man was found sitting in his vehicle nearby in northeast Omaha, but he ignored commends to get out and then drove toward the officers, missing them.
Police say officers chased the man across the Missouri River into Council Bluffs, where he rammed a police cruiser before driving back into Omaha. He stopped in the Old Market area, where officers took him into custody with the aid of a police dog.
Online court records don’t show that he’s been formally charged yet.
LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — Authorities say a man found dead inside a Lincoln house that caught fire last month died from a medical condition.
An autopsy shows 57-year-old David G. Spinar died of liver disease. His body was found Oct. 27 after firefighters were dispatched to a burning home near the University of Nebraska-Lincoln East Campus.
Lincoln Fire Investigator Ken Hilger tells the newspaper that Spinar knocked over a lamp before he died. The unbroken bulb eventually ignited the fire.
