OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — A man who police say fled the scene of a fatal Omaha crash has surrendered.

The Omaha Police Department said in a news release that 24-year-old Davionne Collier turned himself in Sunday and was booked into Douglas County Jail. He’s charged with a felony: failure to stop and render aid after a serious or fatal injury accident. Court records don’t list the name of an attorney who could comment for him about the case.

Police say Collier was driving a sport utility vehicle that collided with a car on May 28, fatally injuring 2-year-old Devon Morris and injuring his 5-year-old brother and two other people in the car.

Police say Collier and a passenger in his SUV walked away from the crash scene. Another passenger in the SUV was hospitalized.

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — Police are investigating a shooting that killed one woman and injured at least six others in downtown Omaha’s popular Old Market restaurant and shopping area.

The shooting was reported around 11:45 p.m. Saturday near 11th and Farnam streets. The victims in ranged in age from their teens to their late 20s.

Acting Omaha Police Deputy Chief Tom Shaffer says the shooting appears to be gang-related and might be tied to gun violence last month.

The woman who died was 20-year-old Jasmine Harris. The other injuries were not considered life-threatening.

No arrests had been made as of Sunday morning.

LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — A decades-old detox program in Lincoln could be forced to close if it loses its funding and state license for locking intoxicated people in rooms.

The Lincoln Journal Star reports that The Bridge Behavioral Health’s detox program often locks very intoxicated individuals in a treatment room after they’re brought in by Lincoln police.

Tammy Stevenson, executive director of the program, said The Bridge’s civil protective custody program first puts individuals in a locked room and then determines whether they can safely be moved to an unlocked location. The program cannot receive national accreditation if all individuals are initially placed in locked rooms, Stevenson said.

The state’s Division of Behavioral Health is threatening to cancel its $100,000 in funding this summer if the unit doesn’t get accredited.

Medicaid funding is also in jeopardy, which used to contribute between $50,000 and $60,000 a year to the program. Medicaid staff said they’d only pay for social detoxification if a new managed care firm took over.

But The Bridge would need to remodel and hire more staff in order to swap its locked-door policy for another approach, Stevenson said.

The change would also mean the program couldn’t take as many clients, including juveniles and individuals known to be combative, she said.

Police bring more than 3,600 people a year to The Bridge for involuntary detoxification. It could cost the county another $1.5 million to jail those formerly in the detox program.

Individuals jailed would first have to be charged with a crime, which would lead to additional fees in court costs, said Brad Johnson, manager of the county jail.
The Bridge staff is also concerned that the program could lose state licensing.

Losing state licensing would mean the program would be forced to close since most medical staff wouldn’t work at an unlicensed program, Stevenson said.

Some Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services officials recently assured the program’s staff that they’d work together on the licensing issue.

FREMONT, Neb. (AP) — The mayor of Fremont has been fined $2,250 for failing to properly disclose his business’ interests in certain contracts with the city.

The Nebraska Accountability and Disclosure Commission decided Mayor Scott Getzschman didn’t properly disclose his family heating and air conditioning business,

Getzschman Heating, had an interest in six contracts with the city. The contracts ranged from $28 to $460.

Getzschman told regulators he never intended to violate the law, but agreed to a settlement with the commission.

State law requires public officials to make any contracts they have an interest in a public agenda item. Then officials are supposed to disclose their interests in the contract.

Getzschman has been Fremont’s mayor since 2010, and before that he served on the city council for five years.

 

LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — Authorities in southeastern Nebraska are searching Pawnee Lake for a man who went under the water and didn’t resurface.

Officials say the 31-year-old Lincoln man was being pulled Friday on an inner tube by a jet ski when the tube capsized on the lake west of Lincoln. Another man and a 4-year-old, who were also riding on the tube, were able to safely reach the shore. Only the 4-year-old was wearing a life jacket.

Nebraska Game and Parks Commission law enforcement officials were using sonar Saturday to search the lake. The Malcolm Volunteer Fire and Rescue Department, the Lancaster County Sheriff’s Office and the Nebraska State Patrol also are assisting in search efforts.

The man’s name has not been released.

LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — The Nebraska Supreme Court has upheld the new lighter sentence of a 45-year-old man who was 14 when he killed his 12-year-old sister in 1987.

Sydney Thieszen had been sentenced to life in prison without parole for bludgeoning and shooting his adopted 12-year-old sister in their Henderson-area home.

Prosecutors said Thieszen killed his sister because he was afraid she would tell police he was running away from home.

Last year, a judge resentenced Thieszen to 70 years to life, based on a 2012 U.S. Supreme Court decision that declared mandatory life-without-parole sentences unconstitutional for juvenile offenders.

Thieszen appealed the new sentence, arguing it amounted to a de facto life sentence.

But on Friday, the state’s high court ruled that Thieszen’s new sentence was not excessive under the law.

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — Two books about witchcraft and one about Jack the Ripper have been returned to the University of Nebraska at Omaha library — 40 years overdue.

They came recently in a package without a return address but with a note: “Please forgive my laziness and reluctance to not only properly check them out — but for keeping them so long.” The note was signed only, “A former student.”

Joyce Neujahr is the library’s director of patron services and she says it’s not unusual for books to be returned months or even several years late. But she also says four decades late is one of the longest periods ever for the university library’s collection.

She told the Omaha World-Herald , “If the books could tell the story, it would be really interesting.”

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — The driver of a semitrailer that crashed into Interstate 80 traffic last year, killing a woman and seriously injuring several others, has been sentenced to 90 days in jail.

Seventy-year-old Robert Richmond, of Omaha, was sentenced Thursday after pleading no contest to misdemeanor motor vehicle homicide. Police say he failed to notice traffic had slowed on the interstate, slamming into the back of a car carrying several Creighton University students on their way to see a rare total solar eclipse.

A backseat passenger, 19-year-old Joan Ocampo-Yambing, of Rosemount, Minnesota, was killed. Five others were seriously injured in the four-vehicle pileup.

GRAND ISLAND, Neb. (AP) — A Grand Island woman has been given probation for letting six children stand on the running boards of her sport utility vehicle while it was moving.

Two of the children were hospitalized after Stephanie Wedige stopped her SUV on Nov. 11, 2016, in a church parking lot. Wedige had pleaded no contest to six counts of negligent child abuse and one of willful reckless driving.

She was sentenced Thursday in Hall County District Court to 48 months of probation.

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — An Omaha woman has reported that her pet boa constrictor was among the items stolen from her apartment.

23-year-old Chantel Beazer told police that a television, a gaming system and other items were gone when she returned to her home Tuesday after an absence of several days. Also missing: her Colombian boa constrictor measuring 7 feet (2 meters) long.

Investigators say they couldn’t find any sign that someone broke into the apartment.