OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — Authorities have identified a convenience store clerk shot by a robber shot in Omaha.

Police say 50-year-old Thomas Foster was shot around 3:30 a.m. Wednesday on the southeast side of the city during a robbery.

Police say the robber walked in and demanded cash. Police say Foster took some from the register, but the robber grew angry when Foster couldn’t open the store’s safe. The robber then took money from the register and fired once as he left the store.

Police say the bullet hit one of Foster’s forearms and hips. He’s expected to survive.

No arrest has been reported. Omaha Crimestoppers is offering a $10,000 reward for a tip leading to the arrest of the suspect.

By MARGERY A. BECK, Associated Press

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — Attorneys for a former doctor convicted of killing four people connected to an Omaha medical school began the effort Wednesday to spare him from the death penalty — even as he refused to help in his own defense.

Anthony Garcia appeared disheveled, with a heavy beard and unkempt hair, when he was wheeled into a Douglas County courtroom in a wheelchair. He appeared to sleep throughout the hearing and refused to engage in conversation with his attorneys, who presented hundreds of documents and interviews collected over years intended to show that he was mentally ill at the time of the killings.

Garcia’s lawyers hoped to present any mitigating factors — such as impaired mental capacity — that might save him from execution. Much of the evidence Garcia’s lawyers presented Wednesday sought to show Garcia as an alcoholic who suffered depression since childhood and mental illness that caused him to have invasive thoughts of hurting people.

Garcia, 45, of Terre Haute, Indiana, was convicted of fatally stabbing 11-year-old Thomas Hunter, son of Creighton University School of Medicine faculty member Dr. William Hunter, and the family’s housekeeper, 57-year-old Shirlee Sherman, in 2008 at the family’s home in an upscale Omaha neighborhood.

Garcia also was found guilty of two other killings in a separate incident five years later, the 2013 Mother’s Day deaths of another Creighton pathology doctor, Roger Brumback, and his wife, Mary, in their Omaha home.

Prosecutors say Garcia blamed Hunter and Brumback for his 2001 firing from Creighton’s pathology residency program.

His lead attorney, Jeff Pickens with the Nebraska Commission on Public Advocacy, on Wednesday, painted the medical residency programs to which Garcia was accepted — including the Creighton program where Garcia worked for about a year — as “poor programs” that accepted Garcia simply to fill open positions.

“There’s a cruelty built into this case in that Mr. Garcia was set up to fail,” Pickens said.

Garcia’s parents attended the hearing, but Pickens said he did not plan to have them testify on Garcia’s behalf.

The jurors who convicted Garcia found evidence of several aggravating circumstances that could lead to his execution. A three-judge panel in Omaha will determine whether he will be sentenced to death or to life in prison. The sentence is not expected to be announced for at least a month.

Nebraska has not executed an inmate since 1997 when the state’s method of execution was the electric chair. The state has since adopted a lethal injection protocol that has been fraught with controversy, legal challenges, and difficulty in obtaining some of the drugs used to carry out lethal injection.

Twelve people are on Nebraska’s death row.

COLUMBUS, Neb. (AP) — A Columbus police officer wounded during a gunbattle has left an Omaha hospital.

Sgt. Brad Wangler was released Monday from Nebraska Medical Center.

He was shot Thursday evening after he and another officer arrived at a Columbus home to serve a Hall County arrest warrant. But police officials say the suspect met him with a handgun and fired. The two exchanged several shots. Police say Wangler was hit twice, and 24-year-old Jorge Robledo was hit five or six times. Court records also list his first name as Jorje.

Police Capt. Todd Thalken told the Columbus Telegram that the ordeal has been trying for the 19-year-veteran of the force and his family.

Robledo remains in the hospital.

By MARGERY A. BECK, Associated Press
OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — A Nebraska woman who went missing in November was still alive when the duo accused of killing her was caught on store surveillance video buying the tools that police think they used to dismember her, prosecutors allege in newly unsealed court documents.
Aubrey Trail, 51, and Bailey Boswell, 23, appeared in Saline County Court on Tuesday to face charges of first-degree murder and the improper disposal of human skeletal remains in the killing of 24-year-old Sydney Loofe, of Lincoln. Trail is representing himself. The Nebraska Commission on Public Advocacy, which is representing Boswell, declined to comment Tuesday.
Since he and Boswell were arrested weeks after Loofe’s disappearance, Trail has told several news outlets that her death was accidental, though he didn’t elaborate. In the unsealed arrest affidavit, though, investigators said Trail and Boswell were captured on video at a Home Depot in Lincoln on Nov. 15 buying tools used to dismember Loofe, hours before Loofe’s death and while she was still at work.
Authorities say Loofe met Boswell through the Tinder dating app and that they went on a date Nov. 14 and planned a second one for the following night. Loofe’s mother reported her missing on Nov. 16, and her dismembered body was found in December stuffed into garbage bags that had been dumped in a field near Edgar, about 90 miles (145 kilometers) southwest of Lincoln.
In the newly unsealed documents, prosecutors allege that Trail told investigators he strangled Sydney Loofe with an extension cord. Investigators believe Boswell, who lived with Trail in Wilber, helped Trail dismember Loofe and get rid of her remains.
Trail and Boswell were quickly named as people of interest in the case and were arrested in late November in Branson, Missouri, on unrelated fraud charges. They have been held in the Saline County jail since then, though the charges in Loofe’s death weren’t announced until Monday.
Authorities haven’t suggested a motive for the killing. The Nebraska Attorney General’s office, which is prosecuting the case, said it is considering seeking the death penalty.
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Follow Margery A. Beck on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ Margery3

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — The National Weather Service has confirmed that five tornadoes touched down in eastern Nebraska and one in western Iowa but caused little damage.

Each spotted during Monday’s powerful thunderstorms Monday caused no injuries, only minor damage and was rated EF-0, with winds from 65 through 85 mph.

Three were in areas around Louisville and Murray. One touched down near Elk Creek and one near Table Rock, and the sixth was spotted west of Thurman in Iowa.

SIOUX CITY, Iowa (AP) — A trial has been rescheduled for a Nebraska resident accused of stabbing to death a woman in northwest Iowa.

Court records show the attorney for 20-year-old Melissa Camargo-Flores, of Dakota City, Nebraska, wanted more time to prepare her defense. The new trial starting date set Tuesday is Sept. 18 in Woodbury County District Court. The former date was July 10.

Camargo-Flores is charged with first-degree murder in the Sioux City slaying of 24-year-old Kenia Alvarez-Flores on April 8. Court documents say Camargo-Flores admitted stabbing Alvarez-Flores and told investigators she’d been involved in a relationship with the victim’s boyfriend.

Authorities say the two women were not related.

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — Authorities say a robber shot a convenience store clerk in Omaha.

The robbery occurred around 3:30 a.m. Wednesday on the southeast side of the city.

Police say the robber walked in and demanded cash. The clerk took some from the register. The robber took it and then fired once as he left the store.

Police say the bullet struck one of the clerk’s forearms and hips. He’s expected to survive his wounds.

No arrest has been reported.

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — Hearings are scheduled to begin Wednesday on whether a former doctor should be executed for killing four people connected to an Omaha medical school.

A three-judge panel in Omaha will determine whether Anthony Garcia will be sentenced to death or to life in prison. He was convicted in 2016 of killing the 11-year-old son and a housekeeper of Creighton University faculty member William Hunter in 2008 and killing pathology doctor Roger Brumback and his wife in 2013.

Prosecutors say Garcia blamed Hunter and Brumback for his 2001 firing from Creighton’s pathology residency program.

The jurors who convicted Garcia already found evidence of several aggravating circumstances that could lead to his execution.

The sentence isn’t expected to be announced for at least a month.

On Friday, June 8, Investigators with the Nebraska State Patrol Troop C and officers from the Grand Island Police Department conducted an undercover operation to target and identify individuals soliciting prostitution in the Grand Island area.

This was an operation of the Central Region of the Nebraska Human Trafficking Task Force. The effort resulted in the arrest of seven individuals for soliciting prostitution.

In addition to attempting to rescue those being trafficking against their will for commercial sexual activity, other key tenants to the Human Trafficking Task Force are to attempt to reduce the demand for commercial sexual activity by conducting undercover investigations targeting and identifying sex buyers.

The following individuals were arrested and lodged in Hall County Corrections for Solicitation of Prostitution: Brandon Stickley, of Cairo, Craig Jones, of Kearney, Jesus Oliveros, of Grand Island, Buckley Haag, of Bartely, Michael Smidt, of Glenvil, Steve Cole, of St. Paul, and Mike Aipperspach, of Hastings.