OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — A 24-year-old Palmyra, Nebraska, man has landed a state record flathead catfish that tips the scales at 55 pounds.
Bow fisherman Connor Marcoe’s roughly 46-inch-long catch from a location he identified only as a small river in southeastern Nebraska broke the former state mark of 52 pounds and 8 ounces.
Marcoe says that “right away, I knew it was something special.”
Marcoe says he fishes three or four times a week and competes in several Bowfishers of Nebraska tournaments.
SEWARD, Neb. (AP) — A 7,000-resident Nebraska city welcoming would-be viewers of Monday’s full solar eclipse is scrambling to restore its water service after a main failed.
Seward’s water director laments that resolving the issue that surfaced about 2:30 p.m. Sunday was being hampered by the fact that it’s unclear where the water main broke.
The city received heavy rain last week and again Saturday night, leaving standing water in parts of the city.
Seward crews are working to find the broken water main and fix it, though it’s unclear how soon that may happen.
OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — Two Omaha contractors are expanding a legal strategy they say forces insurance companies to pay for storm damage. But industry officials say the practice leads to exaggerated claims and may drive away insurers.
Home repair contractors Steve Shannon and James Eggers have sued insurance companies more than 100 times since 2013, seeking $13 million they say property insurance companies failed to pay for storm repairs.
The legal strategy has brought a warning from state insurance regulators just as thousands of Omaha homeowners seek repairs for recent storms. Government and insurance officials say such lawsuits can drive up costs for everyone who buys home insurance.
Eggers says the contracts protect consumers when insurance companies deny claims, refuse to pay charges or skimp on repairs.
OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — A jury has found an Omaha man guilty of manslaughter and other counts in the 2015 death of a woman whose body was found in a vacant house.
33-year-old Reginald Briggs was found guilty Friday of manslaughter, two gun counts and pandering in the September 2015 death of 31-year-old Teresa Longo.
Police say Briggs killed Longo with a single shot to the back of her head inside an Omaha flophouse. Investigators say Longo had a young daughter and was homeless when Briggs offered her a place to stay in exchange for working for him as a prostitute.
Longo’s body was found weeks after she was killed inside the north Omaha house.
Briggs faces up to 170 years in prison when he’s sentenced in October.
___
OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — Omaha police say DNA collected years ago from several black men in a controversial sweep has been destroyed, now that a suspect in a series of rapes has been charged.
Omaha police confirmed last week that they destroyed all DNA samples taken as part of the sweep.
Dick Davis II, who now lives in Georgia, was among the men from whom police collected DNA in 2004 as police desperately sought to solve the rapes. Davis says he voluntarily allowed police to swab his cheek, but says he felt coerced to comply.
The sweep led to state law that requires police to notify innocent people in writing that they have not been implicated by their sample, and to purge DNA samples and any identifying information.
LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — A federal judge in Nebraska has sentenced a Chicago couple arrested last year in a major drug bust.
66-year-old Michael Melchior was sentenced Wednesday to five years in federal prison, and 64-year-old Peggy Brennan received three years of probation.
Melchior and Brennan were arrested in what authorities have described as Lancaster County’s largest drug-cash seizure. Authorities confiscated more than $2.4 million from an RV during a traffic stop along Interstate 80 in Lincoln, plus nearly $607,000 and 10 pounds of marijuana in Chicago.
Melchior pleaded guilty to conspiracy to distribute marijuana, and Brennan pleaded guilty to misprision of a felony for failing to report her knowledge of what Melchior was doing.
COLUMBUS, Neb. (AP) — Columbus police are switching to a new digital radio system in a matter of weeks that would allow them to encrypt dispatches and restrict public access to their communications.
The change will come in a matter of weeks. Capt. Todd Thalken says the department requested encryption as a feature of the new system.
Currently, police dispatchers pass information to officers on police channels that the public can overhear with a scanner. The calls include everything from fender-bender accidents to high-speed chases and drug busts.
Police say they’re looking to balance transparency with the need to protect confidential information relayed in transmissions.
News outlets including the Telegram and many local residents monitor police channels as a way of keeping track of what’s happening in town.
LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — A team of fire investigators is trying to determine the cause of a natural gas explosion in Lincoln that damaged nearly 20 homes and gave two people life-threatening injuries.
Investigators and Lincoln police spent a second-day searching rubble for reasons behind Monday’s home explosion. Investigators didn’t find any evidence of a gas leak outside the home Tuesday, and Black Hills Energy officials reported no issues with its service lines to the home.
Chief Fire Investigator Bill Moody says investigators will try to determine if a mechanical failure, accident or foul play triggered the blast.
Fire officials say the explosion threw homeowners, Jim and Jeanne Jasa. A hospital spokesman says the couple remains in critical condition as of Wednesday.
HASTINGS, Neb. (AP) — Authorities say a 50-year-old Hastings man suspected of plastering racist posters on city utility poles has been ticketed.
Police had identified the man after receiving reports of the flyers, some posted near schools, on Wednesday.
The flyers, which included an obscenity, railed against “white guilt” and listed a white supremacist website.
The posters were removed, and the man was cited on suspicion of violating a city ordinance that bans posting on public property, which carries up to a $250 fine. He was also cited with misdemeanor criminal mischief, punishable by up to three months in jail.
Mayor Corey Stutte blasted the posters, saying, “this racist ideology is against everything that our community and our nation stands for.”
OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — A man convicted in June in the road-rage shooting death of a motorist in an Omaha has been sentenced to up to 60 years in prison.
21-year-old Darwin Johnson was sentenced Wednesday in Douglas County District Court to 50 to 60 years in prison. He pleaded no contest in June to second-degree murder and a weapons count for the October 2016 shooting death of 32-year-old Cristian Pastrana-Marin.
Police say Pastrana-Marin and Johnson’s 18-year-old girlfriend got into a dispute in which Pastrana-Marin honked at her after one car cut off the other on U.S. Highway 75 near downtown Omaha. At a red light, Johnson got out of Green’s vehicle and fired seven times at Pastrana-Marin, hitting him once in the head. Pastrana-Marin died seven days later.
