Joseph LanckrietOMAHA, Neb. (AP) — An Omaha man has been sentenced to nearly five years in federal prison for robbing a Plattsmouth bank in 2012.
Federal prosecutors for Nebraska say 28-year-old Joseph Lanckriet was sentenced Thursday to 56 months in prison. He was also ordered to pay more than $27,000 in restitution.
Prosecutors say that on Dec. 7, 2012, Lanckriet and another man robbed the SAC Federal Credit Union in Plattsmouth. Lanckriet and co-defendant Thomas Woodard were arrested four years later in Sioux City, Iowa. The pair is suspected of committing a robbery in that city in 2014.
Woodard was sentenced in February to more than eight years for the crime. Investigators say they brandished a pellet gun in the robbery and later tied an employee’s hands behind her back and threatened to hurt her if she called police.
Investigators with the Nebraska State Patrol (NSP), working with Homeland Security investigators, have arrested a Grand Island man for enticement by electronic device.
NSP became involved in the investigation after receiving information that the suspect was engaging in communications of a sexual nature with an undercover Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) agent. The agent was posing as a 14-year-old girl.
Thursday, March 7, NSP Investigators served a search warrant on the home at 2724 Cottage Street in Grand Island. The suspect, Steven Anderson, 20, was arrested without incident.
LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — A former youth leader has been given a year in jail for making sexual advances to a 12-year-old boy at a Lincoln church.
Lancaster County District Court records say 23-year-old Taylor Martin was sentenced Thursday. He’d pleaded no contest to debauching a minor after prosecutors lowered the charge and dropped another.
A court affidavit in support of an arrest warrant says the boy told a therapist that Martin had kissed him in a bathroom at First-Plymouth Church in 2017 and suggested more sexual activity. Police say the boy said no and left the bathroom.
A church minister says Martin left the church voluntarily after serving for a couple of years as a paid youth group leader.
OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — A man has been convicted in the Omaha road-rage killing of a U.S. Army veteran who served in Iraq.
Douglas County jurors found Michael Benson, 26, guilty of second-degree murder Wednesday in the 2017 shooting death of James Womack, the Omaha World-Herald reported. Benson also was convicted on weapons and witness-tampering charges. He faces up to 28 years in prison when sentenced in May.
The shooting occurred at a busy Omaha intersection after Womack, 32, got out of his semitrailer and confronted Benson by yelling and pounding on the window of his truck. Witnesses testified that they heard gunshots and saw Womack fall to the ground. Womack later died at a hospital.
Omaha Detective Ryan Davis was one of the first officers to arrive at the scene. He said the road-rage shooting “was definitely stupid.”
“This guy was a working guy, he’s a dad, he’s a military veteran, and this is how he dies?” Davis said. “Senseless, just completely senseless.”
Womack served three tours in Iraq before he moved to Omaha with his wife to raise their three children.
His wife, Ivonne Womack, raised concerns about how Benson, who has a felony conviction, was able to get a pistol.
“It seems like anyone can have a gun hiding — it’s just ridiculous,” she said. “It makes no sense that people feel so comfortable to carry a gun and if something happens, it’s OK — just shoot.”
Ivonne Womack said the family doesn’t plan to let the shooting drive them from the area.
“This is the place that we chose to raise our family,” she said. “That was our dream. And I don’t want to change anything.”
NEBRASKA CITY, Neb. (AP) – A southeast Nebraska farmer who was imprisoned for neglecting his animals in 2011 is headed back to prison and won’t be allowed to own any livestock after he gets out.
Otoe County District Court records say 67-year-old John Maahs, of Unadilla, was sentenced Wednesday to two years. Judge Julie Smith also barred him from possessing livestock for 75 years. He’d pleaded no contest to five counts of abandonment or cruel neglect of livestock.
Authorities tipped off last April found the carcasses of more than 40 pigs and 15 goats on the farm, with live hogs feeding on dead hogs. Animals were locked inside buildings without food or water, although deputies found plenty of feed in sacks on the farm.
Maahs pleaded no contest in 2012 to the same charge and served more than a year in prison. In September 2011 deputies found about 1,000 hog carcasses on the property.
LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — A lawyer who said federal agents and prosecutors kept a man arrested in an O’Neill immigration raid from seeing his attorney now says the accusation was in incorrect result of miscommunication within his office.
Lincoln attorney John Berry had moved to suppress any statements the client had made. Berry alleged in a motion that a lawyer from his firm sent to a Grand Island detention center to see the client last August was barred by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent from seeing the client. Berry says the agent and an assistant federal prosecutor insisted the client didn’t have a right to counsel until the next day.
The Lincoln Journal Star reports that Berry has withdrawn his motion to keep the client’s statements from a jury, explaining that the original complaint was prepared before all the facts surrounding the incident had been shared by other members of Berry’s firm.
The judge said at a hearing last week that ICE and the federal prosecutor deserved a public apology. Berry agreed and did so in the courtroom. Assistant U.S. Attorney Lesley Woods said the government accepted Berry’s apology.
COUNCIL BLUFFS, Iowa (AP) – A 16-year-old Nebraska boy has been charged with murder, accused of killing a man in western Iowa’s Council Bluffs.
Court records say the Omaha boy was 15 when 38-year-old Adam Angeroth was slain. Angeroth’s body was found in his apartment on Jan. 24. Details about his death haven’t been released.
It’s not yet clear whether the boy will be tried as an adult. The Associated Press generally doesn’t name juveniles accused of crimes.
The boy’s preliminary hearing is scheduled for Monday.
Warrants also have been issued for a 21-year-old Omaha, Nebraska, man, Liam Stec, and 20-year-old Nicholas Haner, of Harlan, Iowa. Police are still looking for Haner. Stec remains in the Omaha jail awaiting prosecution in an unrelated Nebraska case.
LA VISTA, Neb. (AP) — Authorities in eastern Nebraska say a 17-year-old student has been arrested for bringing a handgun to his suburban Omaha school.
Police say the boy was arrested around 11 a.m. Wednesday for having the gun on the grounds of Brook Valley School, an alternative school in La Vista.
Police were called to the school by administrators after a student told staff members the teen had a handgun in his coat pocket. The principal confronted the student and confiscated the unloaded handgun without incident.
EMERSON, Neb. (AP) — A northeast Nebraska husband and wife accused of child abuse for locking cupboards and a refrigerator to keep their sons from eating have been sentenced to probation.
The Sioux City Journal reports that 41-year-old Blaine Busker and his 39-year-old wife, Donella Busker, were each sentenced Tuesday to a year’s probation. Each must also serve 60 days in jail once their probation is complete, unless the court later decides to waive jail time.
The couple pleaded no contest in November to one count each of misdemeanor child abuse. Prosecutors dropped second counts in exchange.
Prosecutors say the teenage boys, both adopted, were allowed to wash their clothes only once a week and shower every other day. The parents padlocked the bathroom that contained the home’s only shower and sometimes sat on the boys’ chests as punishment.
The boys are in state custody and have said they don’t want to reunite with their parents.
LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — A Lincoln man has been imprisoned for a sexual assault on an 8-year-old girl.
The Lincoln Journal Star reports that 32-year-old Paulo Cuevas was sentenced Tuesday to eight to 12 years. He’d pleaded no contest to sexual assault.
Prosecutors say the girl told her school principal about a year ago that she’d been sexually abused around four years earlier at a party at a family friend’s Lincoln home. She later said she didn’t report the assault immediately because she was afraid.
