(AP) — A June trial has been set for a 23-year-old man accused of threatening three students at Northeast Community College in Norfolk.

John Ertzner pleaded not guilty on Monday in Madison County District Court.

Officials say an armed man approached three students at the school early last month. A court affidavit says the students reported that the man followed them on a campus road and stopped next to them when they stopped, pointing a gun at two of them.

Ertzner told an investigator he mistook the three for other men who’d chased him earlier in Norfolk. He said he’d put his BB pistol on his car console but didn’t point it at the students.

His trial is scheduled to begin on June 9.

(AP) — A Nebraska inmate has pleaded no contest to manslaughter in the death of a Lincoln woman who was struck and killed by a state prison van he was driving.

36-year-old Jeremy Dobbe entered the plea Monday in the death of 47-year-old Joyce Meeks. She was killed on June 25 in Lincoln. A no-contest plea acknowledges there’s sufficient evidence to convict but is not an admittance of guilt.

Dobbe was seen speeding and swerving before he struck Meeks’ minivan. Dobbe was transporting inmates as part of a state work-release program.

Deputy Lancaster County Attorney Nick Freeman said that in exchange for the plea, the state agreed not to file additional charges.

Dobbe faces up to 20 years in prison when he’s sentenced in June.

(AP) — A Nebraska man convicted of killing four people shortly after he was released from prison last summer will have lawyers representing him when it’s decided whether he should be executed.

Douglas County District Judge Peter Bataillon (buh-TAL’-yuhn) decided to reappoint lawyers for 27-year-old Nikko Jenkins after accepting his no contest pleas last Wednesday.

Bataillon wrote in court documents that he decided to reappoint lawyers because of the complexity of the death penalty sentencing process.

Jenkins had been representing himself in court for the past several months.

Jenkins has been convicted of fatally shooting Juan Uribe-Pena, Jorge Cajiga-Ruiz, Curtis Bradford and Andrea Kruger in three separate ambushes over 10 days last summer after his July 30 release from prison without supervision.

 

(AP) — An estimated 1,000 Nebraskans will receive insurance coverage for autism therapies under a new state law.

Gov. Dave Heineman signed the bill into law Monday standing alongside two families with autistic children.

The proposal allows for up to 25 hours per week of covered therapy until the insured person turns 21 years old. Required coverage would include applied behavioral analysis, a treatment method that has been shown to help autistic children learn to function better.

Certain insurance plans will be exempt from the autism requirement, including those that are sold in the individual and small group markets under the new federal health care marketplace.

(AP) — Police are investigating a woman’s death in southeast Lincoln as a homicide, and have taken her husband into custody.

The woman was found dead at a home near 84th Street and Pioneers Boulevard shortly after noon on Monday. Police did not identify the woman or her husband, saying they had not yet notified relatives.

Lincoln Police Capt. David Beggs says officers were called to check on the woman after she failed to show up for work. Beggs says authorities are confident that there’s no immediate threat to the public.

Police have not said how the woman was killed. Beggs says the investigation is still in its early stages.

(AP) — Supporters have begun searching for more money to maintain Bader Memorial Park in central Nebraska.

The Hamilton County Board of Commissioners has decided not to continue its funding agreement with adjacent Merrick County to support the park. The popular park sits southeast of Chapman, in Merrick County.

Pat Carlson is director of Platte Peer Group, which manages the park. Carlson says receipts, donations and concessions bring in about $75,000 a year. She says the park needs about $110,000 a year to keep it maintained.

(AP) — Authorities have released the name of a 9-year-old boy who died after he was struck and pinned by a skid steer loader near Greenwood in eastern Nebraska.

The boy was identified Sunday as Grant Johnson. He was a third-grade student at Ashland Elementary School.

Authorities say the boy stepped into the path of the machine as it was backed up around 4 p.m. Saturday. The machine was being used by 35-year-old Augusto Figueroa to clear brush and debris in a grove of trees.

Capt. Dave Lamprecht with the Cass County Sheriff’s Office says the death appears to be a “total accident.”

(AP) — There’s new evidence that the potent painkiller codeine is being given to hundreds of thousands of children in emergency rooms despite guidelines on limiting its use.

That is the conclusion of a study based on an analysis of 10 years of national data.

Codeine prescriptions were given in about 3 percent of kids’ ER visits in 2010. But that amounts to more than half a million visits.

The Food and Drug Administration issued its strictest warning last year about a rare risk for life-threatening complications or death in children given the drug after certain surgeries. It advises using codeine for children’s pain only if anticipated benefits outweigh the risks.

The study was published online Monday in Pediatrics.

(AP) — Lincoln’s city council will decide on whether to lease land for a new police shooting range, but the police chief is looking at larger options.

Council members will decide whether to lease 80 acres of land for a shooting range. Lincoln Police Chief Jim Peschong says he is talking with other local and state agencies about pooling their money for a Lancaster County public safety training campus.

Peschong says a larger, county training campus could include three or four classrooms, half a dozen offices and a course where crews could practice emergency driving.

Lincoln officers have stopped using the old shooting range on the east side of Lincoln Airport Authority Land.

(AP) — Omaha police are investigating an early-morning drive-by shooting that injured a 16-year-old girl.

Police said the girl was a passenger in a maroon Chrysler when a gray car pulled up beside her, and someone opened fire around 1:30 a.m. Sunday.

Police say the girl’s injuries were not life-threatening. Multiple bullet holes were found in the car. Two other girls with her in the car were not injured, and they were still able to drive to the hospital.