(AP) — A 33-year-old Lincoln man has been given eight to 12 years in prison for trying to knife his girlfriend and two officers.

Online court records say Pedro Renteria was sentenced last week. Records say he’s also known as Chino Renteria.

Police say Renteria was arguing with his girlfriend over a set of car keys on May 2. An intoxicated Renteria swiped at her chest 10 times with the knife. The knife did not cut the woman’s skin, but she received several punches to the head.

Police say Renteria tried to attack two responding officers with the knife but missed.

(AP) — Plans for an $80 million veterans home that would be built west of the existing Grand Island Veterans Home are ready to be sent to officials in Washington, D.C.

The plans flesh out an alternative to the proposed $121 million Central Nebraska Veterans Home that Gov. Dave Heineman has said would be built in Kearney.

Supporters of the Grand Island home sent a proposal Sept. 26 to Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki. The proposal says renovations and a new addition to the existing Grand Island home could save 40 percent of the state’s proposed cost.

The Grand Island plans have 224 rooms total, with room for expansion.

The Department of Veterans Affairs has said it will honor Heineman’s right to choose the facility’s location.

(AP) — Some Gage County inmates have been eagerly buying e-cigarettes since they went on sale at the jail commissary.

The jail bought 100 e-cigarettes for $2.55 each and is selling them to inmates for $7 each.

The jail administrator, Lt. Tony Shepardson, told a county Board of Supervisors committee on Friday that the water vapor cigarettes have “been selling like hotcakes.”

E-cigarettes are plastic tubes the shape and size of a rolled cigarette. They carry nicotine into the lungs through water vapor.

Gage County has banned smoke and smokeless tobacco products from county property. A proposed ban of e-cigarettes has been added to a revised draft of the county employee handbook.

Sheriff Millard “Gus” Gustafson says he’s seeking an exemption for e-cigarettes at the jail.

PLATTSMOUTH, Neb. (AP) — Authorities are investigating a collision that killed one person and critically injured three others in southeast Nebraska.

The crash happened around 10 a.m. Sunday on U.S. Highway 75 south of Plattsmouth.

Officials say two vehicles collided nearly head-on. Both vehicles had two occupants.

One person died at the scene of the crash. Two were flown to hospitals by helicopter, and one was taken by ambulance.

None of the victims were immediately identified, and officials didn’t say what caused the crash.

(AP) — A 21-year-old Lincoln man is facing charges after being arrested on suspicion of punching an 8-year-old boy in the back.

Lincoln Police Capt. Michon Morrow says the boy called police to report the incident around 2 a.m. Saturday.

The boy told officers he was playing with a Christmas present when his mother’s boyfriend hit him and left welts.

Police located the suspect around 3:30 a.m., but he resisted when officers tried to arrest him. So Morrow says officers used a stun gun to subdue the man.

The man is facing charges of child abuse, resisting arrest and failure to comply.

LITTLETON, Colo. (AP) — A Colorado hospital says a suburban Denver high school student has died more than a week after being shot by a classmate who then killed himself.

Seventeen-year-old Claire Davis had been in critical condition after being shot at point-blank range at Arapahoe High School on Dec. 13. Friends and well-wishers had been posting prayers online and raising money to help pay for her medical care.

Arapahoe County Sheriff Grayson Robinson says Davis appeared to be a random target.

Authorities say 18-year-old Karl Pierson was likely targeting a librarian who had disciplined him when he entered the school with a shotgun, a machete and three Molotov cocktails. Robinson says Pierson shot Davis before killing himself. The librarian escaped the school unharmed.

Statement from the Davis Family on Littleton Adventist Hospital Facebook Page:

It is with unspeakable sadness that we write and say that Claire has passed away from the gunshot wound she received at Arapahoe High School on December 13, 2013. Although we have lost our precious daughter, we will always be grateful for the indelible journey she took us on over the last 17 years—we were truly blessed to be Claire’s parents. The grace, laughter and light she brought to this world will not be extinguished by her death; to the contrary, it will only get stronger. 

Last week was truly a paradox in that we lost our daughter, yet we witnessed the wonderful love that exists in the world through the tremendous outpouring of support we received. We’d like to take this opportunity to thank the first responders, the school resource officer, security guard and vice principal at Arapahoe High School, the Arapahoe County Sheriff’s office, and the physicians, nurses and staff at Littleton Adventist Hospital. Each played a significant role in giving Claire a chance to live, and demonstrated extreme amounts of professionalism, courage and love. Please know that we will never forget the extraordinary work you did on Claire’s behalf. 

We ask that you give us time to grieve the death of our daughter by respecting our wishes for privacy.

With much loving-kindness,
The Davis Family

LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — The University of Nebraska-Lincoln is now offering a “cattle tracker” app.

The app helps producers keep track of weaning, pregnancy checks and calving. Richard Randle, a veterinarian at the university’s Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources, says the app helps document information that needs to be recorded in real time.

The app isn’t a record-keeping program, but a way to collect data. The data can then be emailed as a spreadsheet file, allowing producers to keep records from year to year.

The app is available at https://real.unl.edu.

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — Most of Nebraska avoided snow this weekend, but the southeast corner of the state received as much as 7 inches of snow.

The deepest snow was reported in Pawnee City, but 4 to 8 inches of snow was common across far southeast Nebraska.

Nearly 7 inches of snow fell near Rulo and about 6 inches of snow fell in Auburn and Humboldt.

Only about an inch of snow fell in Omaha. That was enough to create some slick roads in the state’s largest city, but not many serious problems.

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — A federal judge has ruled that Creighton University’s medical school must provide a deaf student with special equipment and interpreters to allow him to finish his last two years of medical school.

But the judge deemed that the university does not have to reimburse Michael Argenyi (ar-GEN’-ee) for more than $100,000 of his own money he spent in his first two years for those aids.

Argenyi was accepted to Creighton’s medical school in 2008 after disclosing that he was hearing-impaired and requesting accommodations for his disability to allow him to follow lectures and communicate with patients.

He sued in 2009, after leaving the school when the university refused his requests for interpreters — even though he offered to pay for them himself.

 

LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — A 35-year-old woman who escaped from a Lancaster County jail guard in August and got caught a day later when she sought medical help for chest pains has been sentenced to 18 months in jail.

Corrine Kucera was sentenced Thursday after pleading guilty to an escape charge and attempt to possess the painkiller hydrocodone.

Kucera escaped early on Aug. 7 when she got out of a correctional van and ran while she was being transported from a minimum-security facility to the Lancaster County Jail. She then called for an ambulance from an auto repair shop the next morning.

She ran when police showed up, but she was arrested in a nearby field.