SOUTH SIOUX CITY, Neb. (AP) — A blaze that spread from a backyard fire pit has damaged a house in South Sioux City.

Firefighters were sent to the home around noon on Sunday.

The homeowner says a toy caught fire in the pit, and the flames spread to the house exterior. The house sustained major damage outside and water damage inside. No injuries have been reported.

BELLEVUE, Neb. (AP) — Two Bellevue police officers sent to keep the peace have been treated for minor injuries after a fracas erupted over the towing of a vehicle.

The incident occurred outside an apartment building around 9:30 a.m. Sunday. The two officers were dispatched to calm a dispute between the tow truck driver and the vehicle owner and relatives.

Bellevue police Lt. Kurt Stroeher says the fracas began when officers tried to arrest someone who’d been blocking the tow truck. Stroeher says two of the people arrested kicked out windows in the police cruisers, and one of the officers was cut by the broken glass as he wrestled with one of the people.

Police say a total of four people eventually were arrested and will face a variety of charges.

CENTENNIAL, Colo. (AP) — James Holmes was becoming unhinged in the months before he dressed in a gas mask and body armor and began shooting at a packed midnight “Batman” premiere.

Prosecutors say the 24-year-old neuroscience graduate student told a classmate he wanted to kill people. He also threatened his psychiatrist, and began massing an arsenal of weapons, including thousands of bullets and enough chemicals to rig his apartment into a potentially deadly booby trap.

His trial starting Monday could finally help explain why a promising scientist-in-training would kill 12 people and wound 70 more during the July 20, 2012 attack in suburban Denver.

But experts say anyone looking for a single trigger or tipping point may be disappointed, since mass shootings often mark the end of a killer’s long decline.

 

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — Hospital staff and friends turned 16-year-old Madison Hurd’s room into a prom when they learned she wouldn’t be able to attend the dance she helped plan at school.

Madison Hurd is being treated at Children’s Hospital in Omaha for a sepsis infection, so she was going to miss Milford High School’s prom.

Madison Hurd had been looking forward to the dance and had even worked a part-time job to pay for her dress.

Hurd’s mother, Catrece Hurd, said the nurses did a wonderful job of helping make prom happen for her daughter this weekend.

Madison Hurd says it’s awesome that everyone did so much work to make her hospital prom happen. Her boyfriend even dressed in a tuxedo and brought her a corsage.

GRAND ISLAND, Neb. (AP) — Roughly once a week someone is arrested while entering the Hall County Courthouse either because of an outstanding warrant or something in their pockets.

Sheriff Jerry Watson said he tries to have a uniformed officer on hand at the security checkpoint in case an arrest needs to be made.

Between July 1, 2013, and June 30, 2014, 89 people were arrested on warrants at the courthouse. That’s up from 77 the previous year.

Sometimes people forget what they have in their pockets and go through the security checkpoint with something illegal, such as drug paraphernalia or a weapon.

LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — A 20-year-old University of Nebraska-Lincoln student is accused of taking nearly $9,000 from the fraternity for which he served as treasurer.

Dakota Grimm was charged Thursday.

Prosecutors say Grimm has worked as treasurer for the Theta Chi fraternity since March 2014. UNL police say that during that time, Grimm wrote 29 checks totaling $8,941 and took the money.

Assistant Chief Todd Duncan says members of the fraternity discovered the theft and reported it to UNL police Tuesday night.

Grimm, a sophomore, is charged with felony theft. Grimm has been released on $2,500 bond.

A telephone listing for Grimm could not be found Saturday. The Lancaster County Public Defender’s Office, which is representing him, could not be reached for comment Saturday.

ASHLAND, Neb. (AP) — For years, the Strategic Air & Space Museum near Ashland has been colloquially known simply as “the SAC museum.”

Later this year, the museum’s name will officially include a direct reference to the Strategic Air Command, the Air Force unit that made its home at Offutt Air Force Base until 1992 and gave the museum its start in 1966.

The museum’s board recently approved a plan to change the museum’s name.

Museum officials will work with an advertising agency to come up with as many as five ideas for a new name and logo that will reflect the museum’s connection to the Strategic Air Command.

The choices will be presented to the museum’s board in June.

HASTINGS, Neb. (AP) — Hastings College officials have broken ground on the $8.5 million Jackson Dinsdale Art Center, expected to open in August 2016.

The building will be the new home of the college’s art department, where Jackson Dinsdale studied.

Dinsdale died last year at age 21 after an accident in St. Paul. The building was announced in November and will be funded primarily by a $5 million donation from Dinsdale’s parents, Kim and Tom Dinsdale.

The groundbreaking ceremony for the center was held Friday.

The new building will include studios for glassblowing, painting, sculpture, printmaking and ceramics, as well as individual studio space, critique rooms, classrooms and gallery space.

YORK, Neb. (AP) — A southeastern Nebraska judge is again contemplating whether to delay the resentencing of a man convicted of killing his 12-year-old sister when he was 14.

York County District Judge James Stecker is weighing whether to move ahead with the resentencing of 42-year-old Sydney Thieszen, or wait until the U.S. Supreme Court clarifies guidelines on the sentencing of juvenile killers.

In 1987, Thieszen bludgeoned and shot his adopted 12-year-old sister in their Henderson-area home. Prosecutors said he was afraid she would tell police he was running away.

In December, the judge sided with prosecutors to delay the sentencing until the Supreme Court ruled in a Louisiana case, which had been expected this spring. But that case settled in February.

CRISP POINT, Mich. (AP) — Two sisters from Oklahoma and Nebraska missing for nearly two weeks in Michigan have been found alive in the Upper Peninsula.

State police Sgt. Brent Rosten describes Leslie Roy and Lee Marie Wright as a “little weak” but “alive and well.”

Police say their vehicle became stuck near Crisp Point on Lake Superior, in a remote area of Luce (Loose) County. There is a lighthouse there. The sisters stayed with the vehicle, which was spotted Friday by a helicopter.

Roy and Wright have been missing since April 11 when they checked out of a motel in Ishpeming after visiting relatives. They had planned to spend that night in Mackinaw City, a three-hour drive to Michigan’s Lower Peninsula.

Roy is from Valley, Nebraska, and Wright lives in Depew, Oklahoma.