SCOTTSBLUFF, Neb. (AP) – A 34-year-old Scottsbluff man has been convicted of first-degree sexual assault on a child and three counts of felony child abuse.
Eric Rocha was convicted Friday in Scotts Bluff County District Court.
Authorities alleged that Rocha sexually assaulted a 7-year-old child in a home and in a car. Rocha was also accused of striking three other children with a belt, and punching them in the ribs and nose.
The alleged abuse came to light after the children were interviewed by the state Department of Health and Human Services, and the Nebraska State Patrol. Rocha was in jail at the time on a domestic abuse charge.
Court documents show the four children are now in state care.

FREMONT, Neb. (AP) – Authorities say the suspect in a Fremont shooting has died.
Deputy Chief Jeff Elliott of the Fremont Police Department says officers were sent to a Fremont home a little before 9 p.m. Thursday.
Elliott says officers found a woman who had been shot in the face. She was taken to a hospital.
He says a male suspect was later found dead.
It’s believed the man and woman were romantically involved.
The names of those involved and other details have not been released.

STANTON, Neb. (AP) – Authorities say a suspect in the shooting of a woman in Norfolk has been taken into custody after a standoff at a mobile home in Stanton.
Authorities arrested 34-year-old Carlos Arevalo-Martinez Thursday evening. He’s wanted in the shooting of 33-year-old Edna Gutierrez.
She was shot in the head on Tuesday and is hospitalized in Omaha.
An arrest warrant was issued for Arevalo-Martinez for first-degree assault and a weapons charge.
Stanton County Sheriff Mike Unger says the mobile home was under surveillance for most of Thursday.
Several schools in Stanton were locked down and numerous residents of the trailer park were evacuated.
Stanton is 15 miles southeast of Norfolk.

LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) – The Nebraska Attorney General’s office would lose its oversight of a state environmental fund, under two proposals slated for a legislative hearing.
The proposals were introduced following criticism of a $100,000 grant by Nebraska Attorney General Jon Bruning, who approved the money for an industry-backed farm group. The Legislature’s Judiciary Committee will hear both bills Wednesday.
The money was awarded to We Support Agriculture, a group created to promote farming in the midst of what it perceives as threats to Nebraska’s agriculture industry. The fund is made up of money from state environmental fines and settlements.
The proposals were introduced by state Sens. Heath Mello of Omaha and Ken Haar of Malcolm. Both are Democrats in the officially nonpartisan Legislature. Bruning is a Republican running for U.S. Senate.

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) – A group of 16 workers in the Omaha Roads Department has claimed a $1 million Powerball prize.
The Nebraska Lottery says they claimed the prize on Tuesday from the Feb. 8 drawing. They workers have pooling their money to buy Powerball tickets each week for nearly a decade. Each will receive a $62,500.
One of the tickets matched five numbers, but not the Powerball.
The lottery says it’s the first automatic $1 million winning ticket since Powerball was upgraded on Jan. 15. Previously, the amount for matching the first five numbers was $200,000.

NORFOLK, Neb. (AP) – Police want to talk to a 34-year-old man about the shooting of a woman in a Norfolk home.
Police Chief Bill Mizner said that Carlos Alfredo Arevalo-Martinez is wanted for questioning about Tuesday’s shooting. A police dispatcher said Wednesday that no one by that name was in custody.
The shooting occurred around 12:15 p.m. Tuesday. Mizner says officers found 33-year-old Edna Gutierrez lying in the kitchen with a gunshot wound to the head.
She was taken to a local hospital, then to The Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha. A hospital spokeswoman said Wednesday she didn’t have any information on Gutierrez, who also is known as Edna Little Elk.
At least four nearby schools were locked down for about an hour after the shooting was reported.

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) – One Omaha family will have more than hearts and flowers to celebrate on Valentine’s Day.
Domingo Cruz and his wife, Elia Velasco, will now celebrate the birth of their son, who was delivered outside a south Omaha gas station.
Cruz said that he was in route to the hospital with his laboring wife Tuesday when she yelled that she wasn’t going to make it. Her baby wasn’t due for another two weeks, so her early labor caught them by surprise.
Cruz says he pulled into the gas station and called 911.
Omaha firefighters arrived in minutes and helped deliver the healthy 6-pound, 5- ounce baby in his parents’ car outside the station.

McCOOK, Neb. (AP) – Red Willow County commissioners have approved plans to build a 24-bed jail and law enforcement center next to the courthouse in McCook.
Voters will be asked in the May primary about financing for the $5.1 million project.
At the commissioners’ meeting on Monday, commission chairman Earl McNutt said “It’s time to go forward or say ‘no’ to it.”
The county closed its jail in 1982 because it did not meet state standards.
Voters rejected plans for a joint public safety facility with the city of McCook in 2006.

KEARNEY, Neb. (AP) – Authorities say a fatal crash at a south-central Nebraska train crossing was an accident.
The accident occurred about 8:40 p.m. Jan. 25 in Odessa, a few miles west of Kearney.
Authorities say 19-year-old Jimmy Ray “JR” Burnett was driving his pickup north on Evergreen Road when he entered the crossing and collided with a Kansas-bound coal train.
A Union Pacific spokesman says the crossing had white X markings and stop signs but no gates or flashing lights.
Burnett was a student at the University of Nebraska at Kearney.
He graduated from Garden County High School in 2011.

ALLIANCE, Neb. (AP) – A 25-year-old man has been charged with stabbing to death two people in western Nebraska.
Court records say Dominick Dubray, of Alliance, faces two counts of first-degree murder and two weapons counts.
The bodies of 22-year-old Catalina Chavez and 42-year-old Mike Loutzenhiser, of Scottsbluff, were found Saturday morning in a home on the east side of Alliance.
Police said another person who lived in the house was injured and flown to a Denver hospital. Court records list Chavez and Dubray as living at the same address.
Dubray initially was not named and was identified only as a person of interest. But the charges were filed on Tuesday in Box Butte County Court.
His attorney in a 2011 criminal case didn’t immediately return a call Wednesday from The Associated Press.