(AP) — A 44-year-old Creston man has been given 30 to 36 months in prison for physically abusing two of his girlfriend’s children.
Larry Einspahr Jr. last week was given credit for 150 days already served.
Online court records show he’d pleaded no contest and was convicted of two counts of negligent child abuse.
Einspahr’s girlfriend, 42-year-old Janelle Gertsch, has pleaded not guilty to five counts of child abuse that officials say occurred over three months last fall.
Gertsch and Einspahr were accused of abusing Gertsch’s 12-year-old son and 9-year-old daughter.
Gertsch had adopted the two and another child but has since divorced the man she was married to at the time. Officials described the abuse as excessive discipline.
(AP) — The next Miss America won’t hear a familiar refrain when she’s crowned in Atlantic City, N.J., in September.
The song, “Miss America,” which starts with the words, “There she is, Miss America,” will not be part of the pageant.
Miss American Organization vice president Sharon Pearce says the tune, which was first played in 1955, is no longer included. She says no decision has been made on a final song.
The song was replaced by instrumental music at the 2013 pageant in January after the widow of the songwriter filed a licensing lawsuit in federal court in California in 2012. The complaint was dismissed in December following a confidential settlement.
The song was not used for three years in the 1980s after a contract dispute.
(AP) — Omaha police are looking for suspects in the stabbing death of a 20-year-old man.
A news release from police Tuesday morning says officers were called around 11 p.m. Monday to south Omaha to investigate a cutting. Upon arriving, the police found Anthony Baker with an apparent stab wound.
Baker was taken to Creighton University Medical Center, where he died.
Police are asking anyone with information to contact police at 402-444-5652, or Crime Stoppers at 444-STOP (7867), www.omahacrimestoppers.net, or text “OPD” to 274637 (Crimes).
An Iowa man has been sentenced in a Nebraska federal courtroom to 18 months in prison for having stolen explosives.
U.S. Attorney for Nebraska Deb Gilg says 43-year-old Christopher Bousman, of Council Bluffs, Iowa, was sentenced Monday.
Authorities say that in August 2011, one or more people broke into storage units at the Buckley Powder Company in rural southeast Nebraska and stole 100 pounds of blasting agent, 3,000 feet of detonating cord and two cases of boosters.
An anonymous tip led investigators to Travis McQueen, of Omaha, and officials determined Bousman had assisted McQueen in disposing of the materials by throwing them into the Missouri and Platte rivers.
McQueen was sentenced in January to more than five years in federal prison for possession of stolen explosives.
(AP) — An analysis of state and federal data suggests that cellphone use by drivers involved in fatal crashes is seriously under reported.
The National Safety Council, an advocacy group, said the under reporting makes the distracted-driving problem appear less significant than it actually is, and impedes efforts to win passage of tougher laws.
The council reviewed 180 fatal crashes from 2009 to 2011 in which there was strong evidence the driver had been using a cellphone. But only half the 2011 crashes were coded in the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s accident database as involving cellphone use. In 2009, 8 percent of the crashes examined were coded as involving cellphones. In 2010 the figure was 35 percent.
The study was paid for in part by Nationwide Mutual Insurance Company.
The discovery of three women in a Cleveland home who all had gone missing separately about a decade ago brings to mind cases of abductions elsewhere. A list of some prominent cases:
JAYCEE DUGARD
Dugard was abducted in June 1991 on her way to school in South Lake Tahoe, California. Then 11, she was held for 18 years by Phillip and Nancy Garrido. She was raped repeatedly by Garrido and gave birth to two daughters. Dugard was freed in 2009 after she and her two children appeared in public with him and a police interrogation revealed her identity. Convicted of kidnapping and rape, Garrido was sentenced to 431 years in prison. His wife received a sentence of 36 years to life.
ELISABETH FRITZL
Fritzl disappeared from her town of Amstetten, Austria, in 1984 at age 18. In 2008, she re-emerged 24 years later from the dungeon-like basement chamber where her father, Josef, had kept her captive. He raped her thousands of times. She bore him seven children, one of which died in captivity after Josef Fritzl refused to allow medical treatment. Josef Fritzl was sentenced to life in a prison psychiatric ward in March 2009. Elisabeth Fritzl and her children were given new identities.
SHAWN HORNBECK
In October 2002, Hornbeck — then 11 — was kidnapped while riding his bike to a friend’s house in Washington County, Missouri. In January 2007, authorities found Hornbeck and another kidnapped boy, Ben Ownby, in the suburban St. Louis apartment of Michael Devlin. Ownby, 13, had been abducted four days earlier. Devlin was sentenced to life in prison for kidnapping and abusing the boys.
NATASCHA KAMPUSCH
Kampusch was kidnapped in 1998 off the street in Vienna at age 10. She managed to escape in 2006 but only after spending eight years as a captive, mostly in a tiny basement enclosure. She was abused by her abductor, Wolfgang Priklopil, who committed suicide soon after Kampusch freed herself.
ELIZABETH SMART
At age 14, Smart was snatched from her bedroom in Salt Lake City in June 2002 by Brian David Mitchell, who did odd jobs for the family. Tormented over nine months by Mitchell and his wife, Wanda Barzee, Smart was freed after she was recognized in March 2003 while in public with both of them. He is serving a life sentence and Barzee is serving 16 years in prison.
Aged between 8 and 19 when snatched between mid-1995 and August 1996, the six victims were abducted, tortured and abused by Belgian Marc Dutroux. Only Dardenne, 12, and Delhez, 14, escaped alive after being found near the southern Belgian town of Charleroi a few days after Dutroux’s arrest in August 1996. He is serving a life sentence. His wife, Michelle Martin, is now in a convent after serving 16 years of a 30-year prison term.
STEVEN STAYNER
The 7-year-old boy was kidnapped in 1972 while walking home from school in Merced, California. After Stayner escaped captivity in 1980, Kenneth Eugene Parnell was convicted of kidnapping him and a second boy, 5-year-old Timmy White, and sentenced to seven years in prison. Stayner died in a motorcycle accident in 1989 at age 24.
(AP) — Authorities have released the names of all five women killed when a limousine burst into flames on a San Francisco Bay bridge.
The San Mateo County Coroner’s Office identified the victims on Tuesday as 35-year-old Michelle Estrera, of Fresno, 46-year-old Anna Alcantara and 43-year-old Felomina Geronga, both of Alameda, 31-year-old Neriza Fojas of Monterey and 39-year-old Jennifer Balon, also of Alameda.
The cause of deaths and toxicology reports are still pending. The Coroner’s Office says a final report could take another three to four weeks to complete.
The victims were among nine women celebrating Fojas’ recent wedding when the limo they were in caught fire on the San Mateo-Hayward Bridge on Saturday night. Four of the women managed to escape.
Fojas and Balon had previously been identified by family. Estrera was identified by her employer.
(AP) — President Barack Obama says military personnel who engage in sexual assault are betraying the uniform they are wearing. He says he has directed Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel to “step up our game exponentially” to halt such assaults.
In a tough statement, Obama said he wanted members of the armed services to hear directly from their commander in chief that such behavior is not only unacceptable, but illegal and unpatriotic.
Obama’s remarks came in response to a question about charges against Lt. Col. Jeffrey Krusinski, who led the Air Force’s Sexual Assault Prevention and Response unit. He was charged with groping a woman in a northern Virginia parking lot on Sunday.
Obama made his remarks during a news conference Tuesday with South Korea’s president, Park Geun-hye (goon-hay).
The Nebraska State Board of Education has suspended the certificates of two teachers who tried to hide how a student with a peanut allergy tasted a peanut butter sandwich.
Board spokeswoman Betty Van Deventer says the board decided on Tuesday to suspend the certificates of Keri Watkins and Ann Gigstad for a year. The suspensions were dated back to late April last year, when the two resigned from the Millard school district. Thus, Van Deventer says, the teachers’ suspensions have been completed.
The teachers had lied to administrators and the mother of the boy who’d tasted a peanut butter sandwich in Watkins’ classroom earlier in April 2012.
(AP) — A 44-year-old Creston man has been given 30 to 36 months in prison for physically abusing two of his girlfriend’s children.
