OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — Omaha police say DNA collected years ago from several black men in a controversial sweep has been destroyed, now that a suspect in a series of rapes has been charged.

Omaha police confirmed last week that they destroyed all DNA samples taken as part of the sweep.

Dick Davis II, who now lives in Georgia, was among the men from whom police collected DNA in 2004 as police desperately sought to solve the rapes. Davis says he voluntarily allowed police to swab his cheek, but says he felt coerced to comply.

The sweep led to state law that requires police to notify innocent people in writing that they have not been implicated by their sample, and to purge DNA samples and any identifying information.

LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — A federal judge in Nebraska has sentenced a Chicago couple arrested last year in a major drug bust.

66-year-old Michael Melchior was sentenced Wednesday to five years in federal prison, and 64-year-old Peggy Brennan received three years of probation.

Melchior and Brennan were arrested in what authorities have described as Lancaster County’s largest drug-cash seizure. Authorities confiscated more than $2.4 million from an RV during a traffic stop along Interstate 80 in Lincoln, plus nearly $607,000 and 10 pounds of marijuana in Chicago.

Melchior pleaded guilty to conspiracy to distribute marijuana, and Brennan pleaded guilty to misprision of a felony for failing to report her knowledge of what Melchior was doing.

COLUMBUS, Neb. (AP) — Columbus police are switching to a new digital radio system in a matter of weeks that would allow them to encrypt dispatches and restrict public access to their communications.

The change will come in a matter of weeks. Capt. Todd Thalken says the department requested encryption as a feature of the new system.

Currently, police dispatchers pass information to officers on police channels that the public can overhear with a scanner. The calls include everything from fender-bender accidents to high-speed chases and drug busts.

Police say they’re looking to balance transparency with the need to protect confidential information relayed in transmissions.

News outlets including the Telegram and many local residents monitor police channels as a way of keeping track of what’s happening in town.

LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — A team of fire investigators is trying to determine the cause of a natural gas explosion in Lincoln that damaged nearly 20 homes and gave two people life-threatening injuries.

Investigators and Lincoln police spent a second-day searching rubble for reasons behind Monday’s home explosion. Investigators didn’t find any evidence of a gas leak outside the home Tuesday, and Black Hills Energy officials reported no issues with its service lines to the home.

Chief Fire Investigator Bill Moody says investigators will try to determine if a mechanical failure, accident or foul play triggered the blast.

Fire officials say the explosion threw homeowners, Jim and Jeanne Jasa. A hospital spokesman says the couple remains in critical condition as of Wednesday.

HASTINGS, Neb. (AP) — Authorities say a 50-year-old Hastings man suspected of plastering racist posters on city utility poles has been ticketed.

Police had identified the man after receiving reports of the flyers, some posted near schools, on Wednesday.

The flyers, which included an obscenity, railed against “white guilt” and listed a white supremacist website.

The posters were removed, and the man was cited on suspicion of violating a city ordinance that bans posting on public property, which carries up to a $250 fine. He was also cited with misdemeanor criminal mischief, punishable by up to three months in jail.

Mayor Corey Stutte blasted the posters, saying, “this racist ideology is against everything that our community and our nation stands for.”

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — A man convicted in June in the road-rage shooting death of a motorist in an Omaha has been sentenced to up to 60 years in prison.

21-year-old Darwin Johnson was sentenced Wednesday in Douglas County District Court to 50 to 60 years in prison. He pleaded no contest in June to second-degree murder and a weapons count for the October 2016 shooting death of 32-year-old Cristian Pastrana-Marin.

Police say Pastrana-Marin and Johnson’s 18-year-old girlfriend got into a dispute in which Pastrana-Marin honked at her after one car cut off the other on U.S. Highway 75 near downtown Omaha. At a red light, Johnson got out of Green’s vehicle and fired seven times at Pastrana-Marin, hitting him once in the head. Pastrana-Marin died seven days later.

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — An Omaha man who was drunk when he caused a crash that left his young daughter severely injured has been sentenced to 22 to 25 years in prison.

36-year-old Benjamin Thompson was sentenced Wednesday in Douglas County District Court. Thompson was convicted in May of drunken driving, three counts of negligent child abuse and one count of failure to stop and render aid. It was his fifth drunken-driving conviction.

Police say he sped away from the October crash and was found later found dumping alcohol containers in a trash can. His three injured daughters were still in the car.

The crash left 8-year-old Kazlynn Thompson in a persistent vegetative state. Doctors say she will never recover. Her sisters, 6 and 1, were also injured.

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — Officials say a wild bald eagle that had skin graft surgery at an Omaha zoo is healing and won’t require more operations.

A news release from the Henry Doorly Zoo and Aquarium said the eagle was evaluated Monday by Dr. Coleen Stice, a plastic surgeon who’s been helping treat it, and a zoo veterinarian.

Fishermen spotted the ailing, underweight bird on the ground south of Syracuse in late May. There were no feathers on its head — just a scab. The malady stumped experts at the Fontenelle Forest Raptor Recovery center as they began nursing the adult male.

Last month Stice concluded it was an electrical burn, possibly suffered from hitting an electrical wire.

Recovery center director Janet Stander says the eagle has more healing to undergo before being released.

LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — Lincoln fire investigators say they believe natural gas caused an explosion that leveled a home and injured two people.

Fire investigators are seeking an internal cause for the explosion that destroyed the home Monday afternoon and damaged others nearby in southeast Lincoln.

A Black Hills Energy spokeswoman says Tuesday the utility has determined the explosion wasn’t due to the natural gas delivery system to the house’s gas meter.

The owners of the home, whose names haven’t been released, remained at a Lincoln hospital in critical condition.

The explosion shattered windows and knocked some neighboring homes off their foundations. Debris from the shattered home was scattered for blocks.

Neighbor Diana McCoy says she thought a plane hit her house: “The concussion of it was just incredible.”