GRAND ISLAND, Neb. (AP) — Authorities say an 84-year-old woman died after her vehicle collided with a pickup truck on a weather-worsened roadway just outside Grand Island.
Authorities say the woman lost control of her vehicle Easter Sunday morning on U.S. Highway 30 on the northeast side of Grand Island.
The woman’s been identified as Ramona Senkbile, who lived in Grand Island. It’s unclear whether the pickup driver was injured.
DAVID CITY, Neb. (AP) — Court records say a David City man has been accused of mistreating his ailing wife and selling her painkillers.
Fifty-year-old Robert Smith is charged with felony abuse of a vulnerable adult. Smith’s attorney, Bryan Meismer, said Monday that it was too early in the legal process to make any statement.
The records say Smith’s wife has cerebral palsy and other ailments. She told a sheriff’s deputy last month that her husband had dumped her out of her wheelchair and had pushed it while her feet dragged on the floor, injuring her. She also says he’s withheld food and water so she wouldn’t have to use a bathroom.
The investigator says Smith acknowledged the mistreatment and says he’s been selling her opioid painkiller pills for $120 a month for three or four years to an Omaha woman.
OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — Two parents want the Millard school district to adopt a comprehensive policy on sex education instead of sticking to its pro-abstinence approach.
The parents urged the school board at its meeting Monday to mirror the Omaha Public Schools approach, which encourages abstinence but also teaches about contraception, abortion, gender identity and sexual orientation.
One of the two, Jennifer Day, told the board that research shows that comprehensive sex education is far more effective in preventing sexually transmitted infections and teen pregnancy than a pro-abstinence curriculum.
Board President Mike Pate says the pro-abstinence approach has worked for years and is accepted by the Millard district community in Omaha.
The board is updating the district’s health education curriculum, based on a framework adopted in 2016.
LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — Concerns raised locally about an overseas campaign urging violence against Muslims on Tuesday prompted the Lincoln school district to send reassuring messages to Arabic-speaking families.
The “Punish A Muslim Day” campaign began in England and that authorities there have launched an investigation. News about those efforts has spread on social media.
Lincoln police spokeswoman Angela Sands says the department has no information to suggest violence will occur in Lincoln, but officers will patrol mosques and organizations that serve Muslim residents.
School district letters went to the families of the 1,415 students who list Arabic as their home language. It assures them district officials are taking the campaign seriously. The district doesn’t ask about religious affiliations.
The district’s Linda Hix says administrators had been getting calls from family members who’d heard about the threat and were worried.
LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — Attorneys for a Nebraska death row inmate whose case inspired the 1999 movie “Boys Don’t Cry” say he should be found ineligible for execution because he has the intellect of a child.
John Lotter was sentenced to death for his role in the 1993 killings of Brandon Teena, a 21-year-old transgender man, and two witnesses, Lisa Lambert and Philip DeVine, at a farmhouse in Humboldt, about 75 miles south of Omaha.
Lotter’s lawyers filed a motion stating that recent IQ testing shows the 46-year-old Lotter is intellectually disabled and therefore can’t be put to death under a U.S. Supreme Court ruling forbidding the execution of the intellectually disabled.
Nebraska law says an IQ of 70 or below is presumptive evidence of an intellectual disability. Court records show Lotter scored a 67 last year, which would be the equivalent IQ of an 8-year-old.
The judge will need to grant an evidentiary hearing to consider the issue.
LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — A former city clerk accused of stealing from several southeastern Nebraska villages has died.
60-year-old Ginger Neuhart died at Mary Lanning Healthcare in Hastings on Tuesday, a day after pleading guilty to theft and agreeing to pay restitution to Alvo of $39,000. Her sentencing had been set for May 29. It’s unclear how she died.
Neuhart was also facing charges forgery and theft charges in Saunders County. She was accused of embezzling from the villages of Ithaca and Memphis while working as clerk/treasurer.
The charges followed Nebraska State Auditor reviews that found Neuhart had altered her monthly paychecks to add $1,000 to $2,000 to them after they’d been signed.
The audits found $160,500 in fraudulent payments to Neuhart since 2005 from Memphis coffers; $41,000 in overpayments in Ithaca since May 2013, and $105,000 from Alvo over seven years.
OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — A woman has filed a lawsuit against the Omaha massage and spa business, saying it’s liable for her sexual assault by one of its employees.
The lawsuit was filed Friday in Douglas County District Court against Oasis Massage & Spa and seeks an unspecified amount in damages. It says Oasis failed to properly supervise 62-year-old Melvin Buffington, who has been criminally charged with 14 counts of sexual assault for incidents involving massage customers.
The woman, who goes by the pseudonym “Jane Doe” in the lawsuit to protect her identity, says Buffington sexually assaulted her in January, causing her mental anguish.
LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — A newly formed group of parents and grandparents is pressing the city of Lincoln and the Lincoln school district to put police officers in all 12 district middle schools.
Parents United For Greater School Safety asked the Lincoln Public Schools board and City Council to consider the proposal.
“We need these (school resource officers) to be a first-responder in the event of an incident,” said Greg Jeffers, a member of the group.
The Lincoln Police Department currently has six resource officers assigned to the district’s six high schools. The city pays for two-thirds of the cost and the district covers the rest.
The district previously had four school resource officers covering the middle schools until 2011, when officials decided the officers were needed for regular duty.
Adding the middle school officers would give more than half of the district’s students access to a resource officer, said Cheryl Bullard, a member of the parent group.
The group encouraged the city to apply for a federal COPS grant to help pay for the new positions. The grant would cover up to 75 percent of salary and benefits of police officers for three years, Bullard said. Those federal funds could drop the school district’s and the city’s contribution to as low as $187,500 annually.
City and school officials are discussing the possibility of adding school resources officers and hiring more officers to do a threat assessment, said Rick Hoppe, chief of staff for Mayor Chris Beutler.
School board committees are considering a variety of security issues, such as having social media-monitoring software to detect potential threats, improving school entrances, having sensors detect open doors and improving communication about lockdown drills and protocols.
OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — The theater in Omaha’s Henry Doorly Zoo and Aquarium in Nebraska has reopened after a $1.2 million renovation.
The zoo’s theater reopened Friday. It had been closed starting Jan. 15 for a revamp that included a new screen, sound system, chairs, carpet, lighting and cup holders.
The newspaper reports that the zoo ditched the Imax screen and replaced it with a 3-D 4K system. The new screen is smaller than the old one at 41 feet high and 75 feet long. Zoo officials say that will give the theater more film options and better sound quality. It’s also a cost saver compared to screening Imax movies.
The renovations were funded through donations. Films now screening at the theater include “Oceans: Our Blue Planet 3D” and “Meerkats.”
OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — An Omaha woman accused of angrily chasing a motorcyclist before the bike crashed into another, killing three people, has been sentenced to a year of probation.
57-year-old Rhonda Boisseau also had her driver’s license revoked for 30 days at Thursday’s sentencing. She was also ordered to take anger management and empathy classes.
Police say Boisseau chased the motorcycle in a road rage incident last June after confronting a group of bikers in a parking lot. Police say the motorcycle driver, 24-year-old Andrew Torrice, ran a red light in an effort to flee Boisseau, crashing into another motorcycle. The crash killed Torrice, 34-year-old Adam Kammann and his passenger, 37-year-old Christine Zadina.
