LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — The Nebraska Supreme Court has suspended for three years the law license of a Wahoo lawyer who was convicted of filing a false federal tax return.

The state’s high court said Friday that 63-year-old Kent Trembly admitted the felony conviction and noted that a referee recommended Trembly be suspended for 18 months. But the high court said that after its review of the case, it concluded a three-year suspension was proper.

Court records show Trembly didn’t report any of the more than $1.1 million in gross receipts from his legal work or work as a veterinarian or investment broker for the 2006 and 2007 tax years. In late 2016, Trembly was sentenced to two years’ probation and ordered to pay more than $110,000 in restitution.

PAPILLION, Neb. (AP) — An eastern Nebraska man accused of knocking down a sanitation worker with his vehicle during an argument has pleaded no contest to third-degree assault.

Omaha television station WOWT reports that Dennis Stenner entered the plea Friday.

Cellphone video recorded by a Bellevue sanitation worker shows Stenner behind the wheel of his sport utility vehicle last year and blocking a garbage truck on a street. Witnesses say he was angry because the garbage truck was blocking a street. Sanitation worker Jesse Witzke got out of the garbage truck and asked Stenner to move. The video shows Stenner briefly backing up the SUV, then lurching forward and hitting Witzke. Witzke suffered only minor injuries.

Stenner drove off and was found at his home down the street.

Stenner will be sentenced Aug. 15.

LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — Lincoln’s police chief says the #MeToo movement has propelled an increase in sexual assault reports to his department.

Chief Jeff Bliemeister told The Lincoln Journal Star that one-third of the 128 rapes reported between Jan. 1 and May 23 occurred at least one year before officers were notified. The Police Department’s analysis shows only 11 percent of the reported sexual assaults in 2015 occurred at least one year prior.

The average report in 2018 was made 17 months after the rape occurred, according to the department’s findings.

Bliemeister credited the reporting trend to the dozens of accusers who made sexual misconduct allegations against movie mogul Harvey Weinstein and others in the entertainment industry. The #MeToo movement gained momentum in October after journalists documented the allegations, sparking women across the U.S. to speak out about the prevalence of sexual assault and harassment.

“There’s nothing else that had occurred that would lead to that kind of change,” Bliemeister said.

The majority of those coming forward to report rape are women and girls ranging in age from 11 to 25, according to the department’s analysis.

“There are groups who feel they’ve been empowered by this particular awareness movement and they want us to know but they fully recognize from the beginning of their reporting that prosecution could be difficult,” the police chief said.

These cases are being handled by investigators that are specifically trained to handle rape cases in which substantial time has passed, Bliemeister said. Investigators in these cases face challenges such as a lack of physical evidence, lost digital evidence and witnesses who have trouble recalling what happened, he said.

Bliemeister said he’s encouraged by seeing more victims come forward to report these crimes, which have long held a stigma.

Troopers with the Nebraska State Patrol have arrested two men and seized 149 pounds of marijuana during a traffic stop on Interstate 80.

At approximately 10:30 p.m. Wednesday, June 13, a trooper stopped an eastbound 2017 Dodge Caravan for failing to signal near York, at mile marker 353. During the stop, the trooper observed a vacuum-sealed bag of marijuana plainly visible inside the vehicle.

Troopers and deputies from the York County Sheriff’s Office searched the vehicle and discovered 149 pounds of marijuana. The estimated street value of the marijuana is $447,000.

The driver, Robert Rosenwasser, 56, of Florida, and Milton Coore, 53, of Jamaica, were arrested for possession of marijuana – more than one pound, possession with intent to deliver, and no Drug Tax stamp. Both men were lodged in York County Jail.

COUNCIL BLUFFS, Iowa (AP) — Authorities say a Nebraska man is expected to recover from his near drowning on a western Iowa lake.

The Iowa Natural Resources Department said in a news release Wednesday that the man fell into the water Saturday evening at Lake Manawa in Council Bluffs from a personal watercraft driven by his wife. Conservation officer Adam Arnold says another person on a personal watercraft spotted the man and took him to safety on shore. He was soon taken to a Council Bluffs hospital.

The injured man was identified as 54-year-old Lawrence Wieneke. His wife was identified as 59-year-old Geralyn Wieneke. They live in Omaha.

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — Authorities have identified a convenience store clerk shot by a robber shot in Omaha.

Police say 50-year-old Thomas Foster was shot around 3:30 a.m. Wednesday on the southeast side of the city during a robbery.

Police say the robber walked in and demanded cash. Police say Foster took some from the register, but the robber grew angry when Foster couldn’t open the store’s safe. The robber then took money from the register and fired once as he left the store.

Police say the bullet hit one of Foster’s forearms and hips. He’s expected to survive.

No arrest has been reported. Omaha Crimestoppers is offering a $10,000 reward for a tip leading to the arrest of the suspect.

By MARGERY A. BECK, Associated Press

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — Attorneys for a former doctor convicted of killing four people connected to an Omaha medical school began the effort Wednesday to spare him from the death penalty — even as he refused to help in his own defense.

Anthony Garcia appeared disheveled, with a heavy beard and unkempt hair, when he was wheeled into a Douglas County courtroom in a wheelchair. He appeared to sleep throughout the hearing and refused to engage in conversation with his attorneys, who presented hundreds of documents and interviews collected over years intended to show that he was mentally ill at the time of the killings.

Garcia’s lawyers hoped to present any mitigating factors — such as impaired mental capacity — that might save him from execution. Much of the evidence Garcia’s lawyers presented Wednesday sought to show Garcia as an alcoholic who suffered depression since childhood and mental illness that caused him to have invasive thoughts of hurting people.

Garcia, 45, of Terre Haute, Indiana, was convicted of fatally stabbing 11-year-old Thomas Hunter, son of Creighton University School of Medicine faculty member Dr. William Hunter, and the family’s housekeeper, 57-year-old Shirlee Sherman, in 2008 at the family’s home in an upscale Omaha neighborhood.

Garcia also was found guilty of two other killings in a separate incident five years later, the 2013 Mother’s Day deaths of another Creighton pathology doctor, Roger Brumback, and his wife, Mary, in their Omaha home.

Prosecutors say Garcia blamed Hunter and Brumback for his 2001 firing from Creighton’s pathology residency program.

His lead attorney, Jeff Pickens with the Nebraska Commission on Public Advocacy, on Wednesday, painted the medical residency programs to which Garcia was accepted — including the Creighton program where Garcia worked for about a year — as “poor programs” that accepted Garcia simply to fill open positions.

“There’s a cruelty built into this case in that Mr. Garcia was set up to fail,” Pickens said.

Garcia’s parents attended the hearing, but Pickens said he did not plan to have them testify on Garcia’s behalf.

The jurors who convicted Garcia found evidence of several aggravating circumstances that could lead to his execution. A three-judge panel in Omaha will determine whether he will be sentenced to death or to life in prison. The sentence is not expected to be announced for at least a month.

Nebraska has not executed an inmate since 1997 when the state’s method of execution was the electric chair. The state has since adopted a lethal injection protocol that has been fraught with controversy, legal challenges, and difficulty in obtaining some of the drugs used to carry out lethal injection.

Twelve people are on Nebraska’s death row.

COLUMBUS, Neb. (AP) — A Columbus police officer wounded during a gunbattle has left an Omaha hospital.

Sgt. Brad Wangler was released Monday from Nebraska Medical Center.

He was shot Thursday evening after he and another officer arrived at a Columbus home to serve a Hall County arrest warrant. But police officials say the suspect met him with a handgun and fired. The two exchanged several shots. Police say Wangler was hit twice, and 24-year-old Jorge Robledo was hit five or six times. Court records also list his first name as Jorje.

Police Capt. Todd Thalken told the Columbus Telegram that the ordeal has been trying for the 19-year-veteran of the force and his family.

Robledo remains in the hospital.

By MARGERY A. BECK, Associated Press
OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — A Nebraska woman who went missing in November was still alive when the duo accused of killing her was caught on store surveillance video buying the tools that police think they used to dismember her, prosecutors allege in newly unsealed court documents.
Aubrey Trail, 51, and Bailey Boswell, 23, appeared in Saline County Court on Tuesday to face charges of first-degree murder and the improper disposal of human skeletal remains in the killing of 24-year-old Sydney Loofe, of Lincoln. Trail is representing himself. The Nebraska Commission on Public Advocacy, which is representing Boswell, declined to comment Tuesday.
Since he and Boswell were arrested weeks after Loofe’s disappearance, Trail has told several news outlets that her death was accidental, though he didn’t elaborate. In the unsealed arrest affidavit, though, investigators said Trail and Boswell were captured on video at a Home Depot in Lincoln on Nov. 15 buying tools used to dismember Loofe, hours before Loofe’s death and while she was still at work.
Authorities say Loofe met Boswell through the Tinder dating app and that they went on a date Nov. 14 and planned a second one for the following night. Loofe’s mother reported her missing on Nov. 16, and her dismembered body was found in December stuffed into garbage bags that had been dumped in a field near Edgar, about 90 miles (145 kilometers) southwest of Lincoln.
In the newly unsealed documents, prosecutors allege that Trail told investigators he strangled Sydney Loofe with an extension cord. Investigators believe Boswell, who lived with Trail in Wilber, helped Trail dismember Loofe and get rid of her remains.
Trail and Boswell were quickly named as people of interest in the case and were arrested in late November in Branson, Missouri, on unrelated fraud charges. They have been held in the Saline County jail since then, though the charges in Loofe’s death weren’t announced until Monday.
Authorities haven’t suggested a motive for the killing. The Nebraska Attorney General’s office, which is prosecuting the case, said it is considering seeking the death penalty.
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