OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — Omaha police say a woman reported that she was gang-raped after a man she met on a smartphone dating app showed up to their date with his friends.

Police say the 22-year-old woman met the man on Tinder and invited him to her apartment on March 14. They say the man arrived at her residence with several other men and they all sexually assaulted her.

No arrests have been announced as of Wednesday.

An Omaha police spokesman said the incident is an important safety reminder for people who use online dating websites. He urges those who use the sites to meet people in a public place and recommends they tell a friend or relative the location of the meeting.

NELIGH, Neb. (AP) — A county supervisor in northeast Nebraska has been convicted of theft.

Sixty-three-year-old Harlan Brandt, of Oakdale, had been charged with felony theft. Prosecutors say a State Patrol investigation found that Brandt had used a county credit card to buy gas for his personal use over an almost three-year period.

Court records say he pleaded no contest and was convicted of misdemeanor theft after a prosecutor lowered the charge. He’s agreed to pay back about $2,600 to the county.

Brandt is scheduled to be sentenced on May 27.

 

WOOD RIVER, Neb. (AP) — Farmers from the Wood River area are claiming that waterfowl conservation efforts along the Platte River are damaging Hall County roads and cropland.

Four farming families, who have land along the recently flooded Shoemaker Island Road, spoke with county supervisors Tuesday about their concerns. The families said that flood damage that occurred in February will happen again because of raised nesting islands that have been placed in the river by the Platte River Recovery Implementation Program.

The landowners say the program calls for increased river water flows and increased nesting grounds for water fowl. According to the farmers, the land has flooded twice since the nesting islands were placed in the river.

Platte River Recovery Executive Director Jerry Kenny said that analysis indicates that the flooding was not caused by the nesting islands.

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Kansas legislators have approved a proposed ban on a common second-trimester procedure described by abortion opponents as dismembering a fetus.

Activists on both sides said Kansas is the first in the nation to have legislators pass such a ban, which was model legislation written by the National Right to Life Committee.

The House voted 98-26 to outlaw the dilation and evacuation procedure. The procedure is used in about 8 percent of all abortions in Kansas.

The Senate approved the measure last month, so it goes to Republican Gov. Sam Brownback. He has promised to sign it.

Abortion foes call the procedure gruesome. Abortion rights supporters say it’s often the safest way for a woman terminating a pregnancy.

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — An Omaha woman says she returned home from vacation to discover that her sister had sold the family dog.

A 46-year-old woman filed a complaint with the Omaha Police Department claiming her 29-year-old sister sold the male Chihuahua named Milo for $250. Her sister had been house-sitting when the sale allegedly occurred.

According to the police report, the woman says her sister originally told her that the 2-year-old dog had escaped. She says her sister later told her three children that she had sold the dog.

The woman describes Milo as a tiny black Chihuahua with brown spots on his nose and belly. It is unclear whether he will be returned to her.

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — An Omaha man says his former girlfriend bilked him out of $125,000 — and now she won’t return his phone calls.

The 59-year-old man filed a complaint with the Omaha Police Department earlier this month, about a year after he discovered discrepancies in checks that he wrote to his ex-girlfriend.

The man tells police that he wrote two checks, one for $6,000 and another for $6,500, as gifts to a Council Bluffs woman he met at a bar and sporadically dated. He says he later discovered that the check amounts had been changed to $60,000 and $65,000, but that the woman promised to pay him back.

According to the police report, the woman has since blocked her phone number and he doesn’t know her address.

CENTRAL CITY, Neb. (AP) — A 75-year-old man has died after a fire that burned his apartment at a housing complex for senior citizens in Central City.

Police Chief Mark Hogue says 75-year-old Larry Ronnfeld Sr. died of his injuries after Monday afternoon’s fire at Bader Villa. Hogue says a lit cigarette likely started the blaze.

Ronnfeld called his son for help, and his son pulled his dad from the burning apartment after arriving. They were flown to a Lincoln hospital, where the older man died. His son was treated for smoke inhalation and released.

LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — Lincoln Public Schools will spend more than $3 million to make sure 32 schools in the district have secured entrances.

They are the last of the district schools to have physical barriers put in place between the entrance and the rest of the school. But it may not be an easy task. Older buildings have entrances that are far from school offices, making it difficult to place security in an ideal location. Another obstacle for placing security is that many visitors use doors that are convenient than the main entrance.

The project is one of the security measures implemented after a man walked into an elementary school about a decade ago and sexually assaulted a boy in a bathroom.

The district has been securing entrances since 2006.

CENTER, Neb. (AP) — A 66-year-old man has taken a plea deal and been convicted of second-degree murder in the slaying of his wife in northeast Nebraska.

Prosecutors had lowered the charge against Phillip Privett from first-degree murder. Privett also pleaded no contest to a weapons charge on Tuesday. He’s scheduled to be sentenced on May 26.

Prosecutors say Privett shot to death his wife, 66-year-old Linda Privett, at their home in Verdigre (VUR’-dih-gree) on Oct. 20.

Privett’s attorneys had been checking into having him plead insanity, but prosecutors say an evaluation of Privett earlier this month showed that he did not fulfill the criteria necessary for such a plea and that he would have been mentally competent to stand trial.

DENVER (AP) — Legalizing marijuana reduces drug arrests but doesn’t solve one of the central goals of drug-policy reformers — ending racial disparities in marijuana enforcement.

That’s according to a new review of Colorado’s criminal justice system before and after pot was made legal.

A report released Wednesday by the pro-legalization Drug Policy Alliance examined drug-related arrests in all 64 Colorado counties for two years before and two years after legalization in 2012.

Not surprisingly, the data showed that marijuana-related arrests all but vanished after voters made the drug legal in small amounts for adults over 21.

But the report noted continuing racial disparities in arrest data from the Colorado Bureau of Investigation. Even after legalization, black people were more likely than white people to be charged with marijuana-related crimes.