(AP) — A 75-year-old driver has died after a collision near O’Neill in northern Nebraska.

The Holt County Sheriff’s Office says the accident occurred Wednesday afternoon, less than a mile east of O’Neill.

The office says Thomas Schneider halted at a stop sign and then turned east onto Nebraska Highway 108. But he apparently turned too wide and went into the oncoming lane. His vehicle struck a westbound vehicle driven by 52-year-old Gerald Kemp, of Niobrara.

Schneider was pronounced dead at the scene. The Sheriff’s Office says Kemp suffered no visible injuries.

(AP) — A former city councilman has pleaded guilty to stealing water from the city of Ashland in eastern Nebraska.

Chad Yochum entered the guilty plea Thursday morning. He was ordered to pay a $100 fine and $100 in restitution and court costs.

Ashland police say Yochum disconnected the water meter at his home to avoid being charged for using city water. He was charged with theft and originally pleaded not guilty.

Yochum, who was elected to the city council in 2010, has since resigned. He cited work-related issues.

Lorene Garrett, Yochum’s neighbor, has also been accused of stealing water. She has pleaded not guilty to theft and a pre-trial hearing is scheduled in September.

(AP) — One of the world’s most famous whiskey-makers is getting a $100 million shot in the arm.

The parent company of Jack Daniel’s announced a $100 million-plus expansion of its Tennessee distillery Thursday. The investment by Louisville, Ky.-based Brown-Forman Corp. is the largest single production expansion in the 147-year history of Jack Daniel’s. It will add stills and barrel warehouses and about 90 jobs at the Jack Daniel Distillery in Lynchburg, Tenn.

Expansion work will begin this fall and is expected to wrap up within two years.

Overseas demand for American whiskey and bourbon is booming. Jack Daniel’s sales have soared in the past decade as the venerable brand spreads to more countries.

(AP) — Peru State College has enrolled its largest freshman class in the southeast Nebraska school’s history.

The college announced that 266 freshman have enrolled this school year, up 28 percent since 2012. Administrators say the influx is so large that the college’s residence halls are nearing capacity. President Dan Hanson says administrators are looking at contingency plans in case the halls reach capacity next year.

Overall student enrollment has increased 5 percent since last year. The total student population is expected to exceed 2,500 by mid-October, when the final numbers are reported.

Administrators say more than 12 percent of freshman class members are Board of Trustees Scholars, the most prestigious academic scholarship offered by the Nebraska State College System.

(AP) — A 60-year-old man who was pulled from an eastern Nebraska lake has died.

His wife, Jenny, said her husband, James “Jim” Lee, died Wednesday after he was taken off life support.

Jim Lee, of Greenwood, had been hospitalized since his rescue Sunday afternoon from Branched Oak Lake northwest of Lincoln.

The Lancaster County Sheriff’s Office says Jim Lee had gone into the water to retrieve his personal watercraft, which had floated away. Boaters later found him, pulled him out of the water and called 911. Bystanders worked to revive him before medics arrived.

(AP) — Officers are still searching for an inmate who escaped from the Thurston County Jail in the northeast Nebraska city of Pender.

A sheriff’s office worker said 39-year-old Mark Kuehn was still on the loose Thursday morning. Jailers discovered that he was missing Wednesday morning. How he got out hasn’t been disclosed.

The jail is just blocks from Pender schools, so they were locked down. Schools in nearby Wayne were locked down, too.

Kuehn has been in jail since his conviction on two counts of theft. He’s also a sex offender who was convicted in Stanton County.

(AP) — A 25-year-old Columbus man who acknowledged that he head-butted his 4-month-old son has been given six to 10 years in prison.

Judge Robert Steinke sentenced Jeremy Hetrick for attempted child abuse. Hetrick was sentenced last week.

Prosecutors say Hetrick had abused the infant at a Columbus apartment he shared with the boy’s mother. Court records say Hetrick called 911 on Jan. 22 to report that his son had stopped breathing. Police Capt. Bret Strecker stated in an affidavit that doctors later said the boy had bleeding on the brain and three healed rib fractures.

Strecker said Hetrick acknowledged that he’d lost patience when his son became fussy that night, had squeezed the boy and then head-butted him very hard.

(AP) — Authorities in Omaha have identified a woman found dead near a street intersection.

The Douglas County Sheriff’s Office says 33-year-old Andrea Kruger was discovered about 2:15 a.m. Wednesday on 168th Street, just south of Fort Street in northwest Omaha.

Douglas County sheriff’s investigators and crime scene experts are checking the area.

Sheriff’s Lt. Rob Jones says Kruger’s injuries were consistent with gunshot wounds. No arrests have been reported.

(AP) — Prosecutors say the case of an Ohio woman accused of helping her teenage daughter beat up a fellow classmate is the result of a mother acting “like a child.”

Meanwhile, the woman’s attorney told jurors at the start of the trial Wednesday that she was trying to protect her daughter.

Thirty-one-year-old Precious Allen faces misdemeanor charges of assault and trespassing in the February scuffle at Withrow High School in Cincinnati.

Accounts of the fight differ. Allen’s then-14-year-old daughter says another teenage girl started it and she was defending her mother. The other girl says Allen and her daughter attacked her.

Police have said Allen held a teen down in a classroom and told her daughter to hit the girl with a combination lock.

 

(AP) — A federal judge has awarded $3 million to the parents of a Southern California teen who was fatally shot by plainclothes Drug Enforcement Administration agents three years ago.

The judge said Wednesday that the DEA agents had reason to believe they were in danger but it was unreasonable for them to fire at the moving car driven by Zachary Champommier (sham-POH-mee-ay).

In June 2010, the 18-year-old was driving by a Studio City parking lot where agents were discussing a search warrant they had just served. Authorities said the agents fired at the teen after he tried to run down a sheriff’s deputy.

Champommier’s parents claimed in a wrongful-death suit that the agents recklessly shot at their son, who had no way of knowing he was encountering law enforcement officers.