(AP)- The teenage daughter of a woman who secretly left her family 11 years ago says she’s angry and doesn’t want to have a relationship with her.

Morgan Heist said Thursday that she’s still trying to sort out why Brenda Heist would have decided to abandon her and her brother in Pennsylvania in 2002 and hitchhike with strangers to Florida.

Morgan Heist is now a 19-year-old freshman at a community college outside Philadelphia. She says she thinks about how she’s spent the last decade mourning a woman who was alive.

Morgan says that knowing what she knows now, she wishes she never cried over her mom’s fate.

Brenda Heist’s mother says she’s been released from police custody and is staying with a brother in northern Florida.

Lawmakers have passed a new sentencing range of 40 years to life for murders that were committed by a juvenile.

The bill won final approval on Thursday, 38-1.

The measure was introduced by Sen. Brad Ashford of Omaha in the wake of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that declared mandatory life-without-parole sentences for juveniles unconstitutional.

The proposal represented a compromise between lawmakers who supported 30-year minimum sentence, and others who pushed for at least 60 years.

It also allows judges to consider mitigating factors in a case, including a juvenile’s maturity and efforts toward rehabilitation.

The bill now goes to Gov. Dave Heineman.

(AP) — Maryland has become the first state south of the Mason-Dixon line to abolish the death penalty in more than 50 years.

Democratic Gov. Martin O’Malley signed the measure at a crowded ceremony on Thursday. Attending was one-time Maryland death row inmate Kirk Bloodsworth. He is the first person in the U.S. freed because of DNA evidence after being convicted in a death penalty case.

West Virginia did away with capital punishment in 1965.

The bill will not apply to the five men the state has on death row, but the governor can commute their sentences to life without parole. O’Malley has said he will consider them on a case-by-case basis.

The state’s last execution was in 2005.

Supporters of the death penalty could still try to petition the bill to the ballot.

Nebraska law officers are already discussing security arrangements for construction of an oil pipeline, even though the pipeline hasn’t been given a final federal blessing.

The Nebraska State Patrol invited county sheriffs and prosecutors along the pipeline’s path through Nebraska to a meeting in Grand Island last week.

Nance County Sheriff Dave Moore says the law officers are anticipating Nebraska protests that would echo those occurring during construction of the pipeline leg between Cushing, Okla., and refineries on the Gulf Coast in Texas.

Pipeline opponent Jane Kleeb says there likely would be acts of civil disobedience in Nebraska but no violence.

The proposed Keystone XL pipeline would deliver 830,000 barrels of U.S. and Canadian crude oil per day to the refineries.

A 23-year-old Beatrice man has been given a year behind bars for leaving the scene of an accident in Beatrice last year.

Andrew Drent was sentenced in Gage County District Court on Wednesday. He’d pleaded no contest to attempted failure to stop and render aid after making a deal with prosecutors, who lowered the charge.

Investigators say Drent’s car ran into a bicyclist on July 21, 2012. Drent continued driving and then left his vehicle in a parking lot. He was arrested after he was contacted at his home.

Defense and prosecution lawyers had jointly recommended two years of probation for Drent, but Judge Paul Korslund told Drent he was giving him the year’s sentence as “a wake-up call.”

Four people have been injured in a two-vehicle collision near the eastern Nebraska village of Waterloo, and officials say slick road conditions may have contributed to the crash.

Douglas County Chief Deputy Sheriff Marty Bilek says the crash happened around 5 p.m. Wednesday on a bridge near West Maple Road and Highway 275. He says sleet was falling at the time and icy conditions had been reported.

One person is critically injured and three others are seriously injured. An infant in one of the cars was not hurt.

Bilek says a northbound vehicle crossed the center line and hit the other car. Southbound lanes of Highway 275 were closed following the crash.

A fire chief who lost his job after being accused of theft has been jailed in southeast Nebraska.

John Porter surrendered to Lincoln police on Wednesday morning. A Lancaster County jailer says the 46-year-old Porter is still in custody, awaiting court action on the theft allegation. Online court records don’t list the case yet.

The board of the Southeast Fire & Rescue Department in Lincoln dismissed Porter on Feb. 1. Turner has denied the board’s allegations that he stole thousands from the department by manipulating accounts.

 

(AP) — A 19-year-old Lincoln man was sentenced to 11 to 22 years in prison after being convicted of dragging two Lincoln police officers who clung to his car as they tried to arrest him.

Shahbaz Mohammad was sentenced Wednesday. He had pleaded no contest in March to second-degree assault on an officer and operating a motor vehicle to avoid arrest.

The incident with police occurred Oct. 14 during a traffic stop. Mohammad gave another man’s name to police, and when officers asked him to get out of the car he drove off.

He dragged two officers, one for about 130 feet and the other for 10 blocks.

The car ran over one officer’s knee, and he couldn’t resume full duty for a month.

UPDATE:

Three college friends of the surviving Boston Marathon bombing suspect are accused of removing a backpack from his dorm room — a backpack containing fireworks that had been emptied of gunpowder. According to charges filed today, they did so three days after the attack.

Two of the men are charged with conspiring to obstruct justice. A third is charged with making false statements. The affidavit says the two facing the obstruction of justice charges agreed to get rid of the backpack after concluding from news reports that their friend, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, was one of the bombers.

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Boston police say three more suspects have been taken into custody in the marathon bombings.

In a tweet Wednesday morning, the police department says only that three more suspects are in custody and more details will follow. Police spokeswoman Cheryl Fiandaca confirmed the tweet but referred all other questions to the FBI.

Three people were killed and more than 260 injured on April 15 when two bombs exploded near the finish line.

Suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev died after a gunfight with police several days later. His brother, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, was captured and lies in a hospital prison.

Both are Russian natives who lived for several years in the U.S. They are accused of using a weapon of mass destruction.