LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — Police say school officials confiscated from an 11-year-old student a baggie of methamphetamine she was showing to classmates at her Lincoln school.
OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — Police say a motorcyclist has been killed in a crash in northeastern Omaha near the city’s airport, and an Iowa driver could face charges.
Police say 45-year-old Michael Laughlin was on a motorcycle Wednesday afternoon heading south on 11th Street when a northbound car turned left in front of the bike, causing the crash. The car then slid into an eastbound pickup truck.
Laughlin was taken to an Omaha hospital, where he was pronounced dead. The car’s driver, a 27-year-old man from Council Bluffs, Iowa, was not injured. The driver of the pickup also was not injured.
Police say charges in the case are pending.
GRAND ISLAND, Neb. (AP) — Grand Island police are investigating a fatal shooting.
The department said Thursday in a news release that officers sent around 9:15 p.m. Wednesday to check a disturbance call in northeast Grand Island found a 32-year-old man suffering from several gunshot wounds. Police say he died around 11:45 p.m. at a local hospital. His name hasn’t been released.
No arrests have been reported.
DAYTON, Iowa (AP) – Authorities say a Nebraska man twice tried to ram his pickup truck into an Iowa police chief’s patrol car.
Webster County court records say 37-year-old Anthony Spinharney, of Omaha, is charged with attempted murder of a police officer, eluding and interference with official acts. The records don’t list the name of an attorney who could comment for him.
Webster County Sheriff Jim Stubbs says Dayton Police Chief Nick Dunbar began chasing Spinharney when he speeded into Dayton around 6 p.m. Tuesday. The chase continued into a farm field northeast of town. Stubbs says Spinharney turned his pickup around and drove straight at Dunbar’s police car but missed. Stubbs says Spinharney then circled back and again tried to hit Dunbar’s cruiser.
Stubbs says Spinharney drove into another field after Dunbar fired a shot that struck Spinharney’s pickup.
Spinharney abandoned his truck and soon was arrested.
OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — A federal report says an Omaha Police Department helicopter forced to make an emergency landing last week suffered a loss of engine power.
The Omaha World-Herald says a preliminary report from the National Transportation Safety Board didn’t conclude how or why the power loss occurred on April 16. No agency investigators traveled to the scene of the emergency landing. The report says the pilots heard a horn before seeing an indicator that there was a loss of engine power.
The helicopter, Able-1, had just left its base at Omaha North Airport when the emergency happened.
Police say the pilots took immediate action and landed in an open field just northwest of the airport. The aircraft was damaged, but no one was injured.
OMAHA, Neb. (AP) – A woman who’d fired what she said was a warning shot has been given five years of probation for killing a teenage girl in Omaha.
Douglas County District Court records say Judge James Gleason sentenced 27-year-old Catessa Barnum on Tuesday. She’d pleaded no contest to manslaughter after prosecutors dropped a related weapons charge.
Authorities say the shooting occurred during a Sept. 23, 2017, confrontation between Barnum and a romantic rival, Porcha Hill. Hill was the mother of 15-year-old Shadaisja Hill.
Barnum’s attorney, Cindy Tate, says Barnum fired the shot as a warning to Porcha Hill and others who’d converged on Barnum that morning. But the shot went through a side of Hill’s vehicle and struck her daughter behind an ear.
Douglas County Attorney Don Kleine says he disagreed with the probation sentence but would not appeal it. He says Barnum had a clean record, so probation was an option for the judge.
LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — A natural resources district that maintains levees in the Omaha area and other parts of eastern Nebraska will lose its ability to issue bonds for flood projects at the end of this year.
Lawmakers failed to reach a vote Tuesday on a bill that would have extended the bonding authority for the Papio Missouri Natural Resources District. Opponents filibustered the proposal, arguing that the NRD spends too much and the bonding authority wasn’t necessary to protect against floods.
The bill by Sen. Brett Lindstrom, of Omaha, would have allowed the NRD to continue issuing bonds until Dec. 31, 2024. Because it stalled, that authority will expire on Dec. 31 of this year.
The Papio Missouri NRD includes all or parts of six counties along Nebraska’s eastern border.
LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — Lincoln’s year-old cardboard ban has led to a 76% drop in the amount sent to the city landfill but the diversion comes with raised costs for the city.
The decline in corrugated cardboard at the city’s landfill is estimated to have saved 239,360 trees, 30 million pounds of carbon dioxide emissions and 1.5 million gallons of gas, the Lincoln Journal Star reported.
Cardboard made up 2.4% of the waste entering the landfill last year, down from 9.4% in 2017, according to Donna Garden, assistant director of Lincoln’s Transportation and Utilities Department.
Garden wrote in a report to city officials that Lincoln’s public recycling sites have seen the amount of cardboard dropped off by residents double since the ban took effect last April. But the cost of running those 29 drop-off sites has also doubled.
Lincoln expects to pay about $900,000 a year to Von Busch Refuse to haul away recyclables from the public sites, Garden said.
Costs are partially offset by revenue from selling the cardboard, but returns have dropped due to changing markets and processing companies paying less for the material. Lincoln made roughly $295,000 from the material’s sales in fiscal year 2016-2017. Garden projects the city’s annual revenue from cardboard will be around $217,000 for a full fiscal year.
The city’s Transportation and Utilities Department plans to consider expanding the landfill ban, Garden said.
The ordinance was originally part of a broader effort that would’ve eventually banned all paper, but Mayor Chris Beutler could only get City Council approval for cardboard.
The issue was recently debated by two candidates running for mayor in the May 7 election.
Candidate Cyndi Lamm believes that Lincoln shouldn’t have “mandated recycling to begin with,” while opponent Leirion Gaylor Baird said she would look for bipartisan support to expand the landfill ban.
Court records say 29-year-old Erica Jenkins was sentenced Monday in York, convicted of assault of a confined person. Prosecutors say Jenkins punched and used a padlock in a sock to beat Christine Bordeaux in the York women’s prison cell they shared briefly in September 2016.
Erica Jenkins was convicted of murder in January 2015, accused by authorities of helping her brother, Nikko, kill a man in Omaha in 2013. Nikko Jenkins pleaded no contest to murder in that case and three others. Bordeaux was sentenced to 20 years for robbery in connection with Nikko Jenkins’ crimes.
Bordeaux is a cousin to the Jenkinses.
Hays, Kan., woman Addy Tritt, whose story about buying out the Hays Payless store to help Nebraska flood victims went viral, appeared on “The Ellen Degeneres Show” on Monday. The show airs at 4 p.m. CST on Eagle channel 10 and 610.
Ellen surprised Tritt with a game of “Holey Roller” — which Tritt “won.” The prize money Tritt is coming home with is made possible by Cheerios.
Watch below, courtesy www.ellentube.com.
