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Lincoln police posted photographs Friday of a woman breaking out windows with a skateboard and spray-painting a statue of President Abraham Lincoln during the May 31 protest outside the County-City Building that turned violent.

The woman, wearing a black hooded jacket, black pants and boots, is shown on the local Crime Stoppers page. There is a photo of her face.

Anyone with information can post anonymously through Crime Stoppers or can contact Sgt. Chris Vigil at 402-441-7215.

Police are asking anyone who was a victim of a crime during the recent protests or has video evidence to share to contact them.

Photos, videos: Protests in Lincoln

A disgruntled customer who was escorted out of a Chick-fil-A restaurant in south Lincoln on Tuesday afternoon and then drove his pickup into the building, was shot and killed by a railroad officer, Lincoln Police said.

Officers were called to the restaurant at 6810 S. 27th St. shortly after 1 p.m. on an initial report that a vehicle had driven into the business, police said at an afternoon news conference.

On their arrival, police found the uniformed BNSF Railway senior special agent performing CPR on the suspect, who customers and employees described as a balding, middle-aged man dressed in black.

He died of injuries at the scene. Police are expected to release his name Wednesday.

According to witnesses, the man had begun to act erratically inside the restaurant just as the lunch rush began to slow.

Thomas Arias was working behind the counter when the 15-year-old heard a commotion in the dining room, looked over and saw a customer flipping tables and throwing food.

“He was yelling, ‘It’s just a f---ing sandwich.’”

A Chick-fil-A manager ordered employees to move toward the back of the restaurant and then out the rear door.

Todd Ogden, president and CEO of the Downtown Lincoln Association, who was at the restaurant with his wife, tackled the man from behind when he saw him screaming and attacking customers and then forced him outside.

The man then got into a silver 2018 Dodge pickup and drove it in reverse through a bank of windows on the northwest side of the restaurant, coming to rest against the front counter.

Employees and customers began to flee at that point, said 14-year-old David Arias, Thomas’ brother, who was also working Tuesday.

When the vehicle came to a stop, the man exited and continued to pursue customers and employees through the restaurant, carrying what witnesses described as a stun gun.

As he followed them outside, the man ran into the uniformed BNSF agent, an eight-year veteran who was in a marked vehicle in the drive-thru lane, witnesses said.

“The cop was like, ‘Calm down and back off,’ but the guy kept approaching,” Thomas Arias said. “So the cop pulled his gun and shot him.”

Ogden said the man appeared to tase the officer before witnesses heard two popsÌę— the sound of the BNSF agent shooting the man outside the business near the drive-thru area.

The agent, a commissioned Nebraska law enforcement officer, began to perform CPR on the man before emergency personnel arrived.

No one else was injured during the incident, Lincoln Police Chief Jeff Bliemeister said, and there is no ongoing public safety concern.

It is legal in Nebraska to possess a stun gun or Taser for self-defense, though misuse of one could result in criminal charges.

As the investigation began Tuesday afternoon, police said they aren’t sure what, if anything, led the man to begin to harass other customers inside the Chick-fil-A.

Bliemeister said “there has been absolutely no information reported to us” about the man “espousing any type of extremist beliefs.” Nothing tied the man to the restaurant other than him being a customer, the chief added.

Officers were serving a search warrant at the man’s Lincoln apartment later Tuesday, and have recovered the man’s weapon, although they did not say what kind of weapon it was. Investigators were also reviewing surveillance videos, as well as photos and videos taken inside the restaurant by witnesses.

The man was known to police, Bliemeister said, but did not have an arrest record.

The pickup lodged in Chick-fil-A was registered to a man who listed his address as Stone Ridge Estates, a gated, upscale apartment complex near 27th Street and Yankee Hill Road.

Just after 5 p.m. Tuesday, a single officer was standing next to his cruiser outside the man's apartment, but there was no other activity.

The restaurant was closed. Just after 8 p.m., a wrecker was removing the pickup from inside the restaurant, and a significant police presence was seen at the site.

BNSF agents are active in all law enforcement duties. They do uniformed patrols to combat trespassing and cargo theft, monitor crime trends and work with other state and local police agencies to investigate crimes occurring on railroad property. There are five agents in Nebraska.

A BNSF spokesman referred questions about the agent’s involvement to Lincoln Police.

About a mile away, Southwest High School went into lockout after the initial police response, meaning students and faculty were locked inside the building. Because Tuesday was an early release day, students generally would have been leaving about the time of the incident.

With the scene secured, onlookers watched as officers began their investigation.Ìę

As building and safety crews surveyed damage to the restaurant, police moved the approximately 25-30 witnesses to a corner of the parking lot opposite from where the shooting took place and began conducting interviews.

At about 2 p.m., employees and customers were escorted back into the building to collect their belongings and were allowed to leave.

Chick-fil-A, which is on the west side of SouthPointe Pavilions near 27th Street and Pine Lake Road, is a popular spot for lunch in the area.

Charlie Colon, the restaurant franchise owner, arrived shortly before 2 p.m. and huddled with his employees in the parking lot, many of whom had been joined by family members.

Colon praised his employees for their actions, saying he hired each because of their character, love and their compassion, and led a tearful prayer that included the deceased man, the BNSF agent, and everyone who was inside the restaurant.

“This will not define us,” Colon prayed. “(God’s) love will.”

Journal Star reporters Peter Salter, Matt Olberding and Riley Johnson contributed to this report.

Lincoln police are investigating an 11-year-old girl who brought a baggie of methamphetamine to school Wednesday.

A test identified the white substanceÌęto be meth, Capt. Robert Farber said. The bag was sent to a lab for further testing.

Police were called to Belmont Elementary School shortly after 1:30 p.m. when Principal Kim Rosenthal reported that a student showed up to school with the drugs.

The student said she found it Tuesday evening on a curb by her house. She claimed she inadvertently brought it to school, Farber said.

A note from school officials to Belmont parents said the student was showing it to classmates who notified a teacher.

Police continue to investigate how she came to have the drugs. The student was referred for possession of narcotics to the Lancaster County Attorney Office's juvenile division.

Josh Swain, a college student from Arizona, challenged other Josh Swains on Facebook to a duel over their name, randomly picking Lincoln as the battleground. On Saturday, hundreds gathered in Air Park to watch them fight with pool noodles.

RICHLAND — Before that morning, all of the farmer’s cows were still alive, and not decaying downstream.

All of his land could still grow enough corn to keep them fed, and wasn’t buried beneath tons of sand.

Then the water rose.

It came steadily, but not alarmingly, at first. Drew Wolfe did spend a few days moving hundreds of head — his own family farm’s cows and calves and the animals they fed for others — to higher ground on their land along the Platte River near Schuyler as a precaution.

He’d always told his wife, Kristi, their property wouldn’t flood. But then he called her from the field the morning of March 14.

“He said, ‘I think everyone should pack an overnight bag. Just in case.’”

She looked out the window later that morning and saw water swallowing their farm from two directions, a line of cows trying to stay in front of it, headed toward their yard.

She and their two daughters drove out through the pooling water. Drew Wolfe and their son stayed with the animals.

He admitted later they almost didn’t get out in time, that the floodwater washed over the hood of his truck in places.

“We should have left. We waited too long,” he said. “But we had all the livestock to take care of.”

* * *

The Platte kept climbing.

By late March 15, 100,000 cubic feet of water per second was roaring past the nearest gauge, 16 miles downstream near North Bend. That’s the equivalent of 6 million basketballs, still in their boxes, flowing through the banks every minute.

The normal flow for that day is 6,000 cubic feet per second.

On the Wolfe farm, the cows may have been the first to go.

Drew Wolfe had left many on the higher sand ridges of one of his cornfields, but the force and volume of the water washed the ridges out from under them.

Their carcasses were found scattered downstream, dozens tangled in the fence at their property line, dozens more in the neighbor’s field, some that will never be found.

“Maybe they’re in Missouri by now. Who knows? Maybe they’re in the Gulf,” he said. “We’ve had cattle float in that we didn’t know whose they were.”

A month later, Wolfe still doesn’t know the extent of his livestock losses. When the flooding wiped out his fences, some animals escaped the water by marching up the lane and making themselves at home in another neighbor’s field, 3 miles away. He’s also heard reports of rogue cows roaming the area.

He won’t know the number of deaths until sometime next month, when they get all the remaining animals sorted and ready to be trucked to central Nebraska to spend the summer grazing on grass.

But if he had to guess, the river killed hundreds of animals, he said. Maybe a third of what he had before that morning.

And that can be a gut-blow to a fifth-generation farmer.

“It is my job to provide for the cattle; that’s the way I look at it,” he said. “I’m their caretaker.”

Kristi Wolfe tells a story about her husband. About a week before the flood, they found a calf that had been stepped on. Drew did some Googling, cleaned off the table in the barn, lifted the calf up and made a cast for the animal.

He was devastated, she said, when they found the calf hadn’t survived the water.

Their family was out of their house for 16 days, but they returned daily to try to take care of the animals. They found hundreds trapped on newly carved islands with nothing to eat.

Wolfe tried to reach them but fell into a watery hole and never touched the bottom.

“It was inaccessible and unsafe. There was so much water.”

Those cows became momentarily famous on Twitter, when the Nebraska Army National Guard shared video of its soldiers climbing above Wolfe’s property in a Chinook helicopter and dropping 18 round bales to keep the animals alive.Later, as the water began receding, they could check on the animals by horse, foot, four-wheeler and boat. And when the cows heard the tractor running, they knew what that meant, and most made it home.

“A dinner bell,” he said. “They knew to come to get some grub.”

But even that became more complicated. The Wolfe farm is several miles of dirt and gravel from the end of the last paved street in Richland, and the semis that deliver protein-rich distillers grain couldn’t navigate the torn-up roads for more than a month.

“These cows are lactating, trying to raise a baby calf, let alone prepare to rebreed themselves next year,” Drew Wolfe said. “It’s been extremely tough on the livestock.”

* * *

They lost more than hundreds of cows. The water rushed through their trucks and trailers, it swept away fences, it toppled a power pole, it rearranged heavy concrete and steel feed bunkers, it flooded their calving barn, feed facility, shop and bunkhouse.

It washed out their farmyard roads, and they had to fill in gaps with broken bricks from the old Columbus high school. It swamped hay bales that had been on the ground, and when the bales started steaming — a sign they could combust — they had to drag them away and tear them up.

Drew and Kristi Wolfe operate the farm with his sister and her family. They have to repair all of this. At the same time, they have to keep performing all the daily chores that were required to keep the farm running before the flood.

“It’s just one thing after another,” Drew Wolfe said. “The first priority is the animals, and then you do a little day by day. The problem is it takes a lot more time to do the basic things right now. You’re not set up for it.”

But even all of that wasn’t the flood’s biggest hit to the farm.

* * *

The Wolfe farm unfolds for about a mile along the Platte, and most of the property next to the river is cropland irrigated by a pair of center pivots.

All of the corn they grew here kept their cows fed. It was almost enough to get through the year.

But the Platte was merciless in its taking, and its giving. First, the river carved a new channel, separating a swath of their land and turning it into an island, and then it buried the rest of their field in sand.

In some places, the sand is a foot deep, the remnants of last season’s cornstalks just poking through. In other places, it’s more than 5 feet deep, almost topping the tires on the pivot and covering the four-strand barbed wire fence at the property line.

“I always wanted to go to the beach,” Kristi Wolfe said. “And not have it come to me.”

She’s not joking. The sandy stretch of their Colfax County property is now about the same size as Venice Beach in Los Angeles — more than 200 acres.

UNL math professor Jim Lewis helped the Journal Star determine a rough estimate of the volume: If Wolfe’s 200-acre field is buried beneath an average of 2.5 feet of sand, the river dumped about 800,000 cubic yards.

And L.P. Stewart and Sons, which sells sand and gravel in Lincoln, helped with a rough estimate of what it would take to haul it away: More than 67,000 dump trucks.

Drew Wolfe scratches at the sand with the toe of his boot. This time last year, he was down here in his tractor, getting ready to plant, but nothing will grow here now. He can’t push it back into the river. He can’t haul it to the tree line. He doesn’t even know if there’s still topsoil beneath.

He doesn’t know what to do. Let the river win this round?

“I’m numb to it by now. My focus is on the cows and calves. We’ve got to take care of them.”

A little later, he adds: “We’re not the only ones. Not even close.”

* * *

After the flood, Nebraska Agriculture Director Steve Wellman toured the Wolfe farm with his predecessor, Greg Ibach, now the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s under secretary.

He had a hard time articulating what he saw in Colfax County.

“It‘s devastating. It’s hard for words to describe,” he said. “The same thing can be said for many others that were hit really hard by flooding in whatever part of the state they happened to be in.”

Farmers struggling all along the Platte. Up on the Niobrara. Next to the Loup, Elkhorn and Missouri.

A few days after those rivers rose, on Sunday, March 17, Wellman and others met to put a price tag on Nebraska’s agricultural damages.

They took a broad view for the governor’s request for a federal disaster declaration, factoring livestock loss, the cost to care for sick survivors, replacing fences, replenishing feed, additional hauling expenses because of damaged roads, equipment repair and pasture loss. The total: $400 million.

They did the same for grain-growers: $440 million.

They’ve revisited those estimates in the month since, he said, and they still stand.

The devastation is widespread. FEMA hired a contractor to dispose of dead livestock found on property not owned by producers and, as of last week, recovery crews had identified nearly 1,000 carcasses in 26 counties, said David Haldeman of the state Department of Environmental Quality. That doesn’t count the animals that died on their own farms.

News

9. 'Just a terrible mess' — Ranchers, farmers left with dead animals, flooded fields, work to be done

• Peter Salter
• 6 min to read

And a Farm Service Agency program to help producers restore flooded fields has generated about 1,000 applications so far from 45 of the 47 eligible counties.

“There’s probably going to be quite a number more than that,” said Nebraska Farm Service Agency spokeswoman Bobbie Kriz-Wicham. “Our offices have been taking hundreds of calls related to this program.”

The Emergency Conservation Program helps farmers with the costs of debris removal, grading and reshaping land, fence repair and conservation structure repair — such as rebuilding terraces.

The agency is fast-tracking debris removal and fence repair after this flood, she said, streamlining the required environmental and cultural consultations.

But there are limits. The program will reimburse farmers up to 75 percent of cleanup costs, but not more than half the market value of the land. And the most a farmer can receive is $500,000.

That math likely won’t work for producers with big fields buried beneath deep river sand, said Richard Hoppe, Wolfe’s downstream neighbor whose own land is blanketed by up to 5 feet of sand.

Even with federal reimbursement, the cost of cleanup would outstrip the land value.

“A foot of sand will screw you; there’s no ground around worth that much,” he said. “Your options are basically nothing. Leave it set.”

Some farmers might not make it, Wellman, the state’s ag director, acknowledged.

“It’s possible, some of the ones that were hit really hard. That’s up to their individual situations.”

But he’d rather talk about the support that poured into the state. The donations of hay, fencing, money.

“I think the response from people wanting to help has been very strong and very supportive of Nebraska,” he said. “We appreciate the people who offered help.”

* * *

And so did the Wolfe farm.

The National Guard helped them help their cows. A group of FFA members from northeast Iowa spent a weekend fixing fence. FFA and 4-H members arrived from York County. Donated feed arrived from all over the area.

“The support we have had is amazing. Every state around us and then some,” Drew Wolfe said. “The Midwest is a great place to live, just not by the Platte River on the 14th of March.”

What the Platte did that day is keeping them busy. But they can only take it one day at a time, he said.

So they’re replacing the power pole. Repairing the trucks and trailers. Cleaning out the shop and shed and calving barn. Caring for their remaining animals.

They don’t know when their farm, and their lives, will seem anything like they were before the water rose.

“But we are on the right path in trying to figure this out and make this work,” Kristi Wolfe said. “Because he couldn’t imagine never seeing cows come over the hill again.”

Clarice "Hap" Loomis had just left the ice cream stand she has operated near Pioneers Park for 40 years, bound for a dinner break at her home just a few blocks away, when the skies darkened and the winds whipped up.

Back at the C & L Dairy Sweet, her daughter, Chris Kliment, had just thrown a cheeseburger on the grill for some customers parked outside the walk-up business at Coddington Avenue and West Van Dorn Street.

And Kliment's daughter, Tiffany Blackwell, was leaving the business, too, just as a rapidly intensifying supercell thunderstorm reached the western outskirts of the city.

"I was just leaving, and you could faintly hear the sirens," Blackwell said Sunday evening, amid the debris caused by what witnesses described as a tornado.

"I could see the rotation, so I ran down there and I said 'Mom, the sirens are on, get the girls out,'" Blackwell recalled.

Two employees at the store ran across the parking lot to a neighboring home. Blackwell yelled to her mother — still tending the cheeseburger on the grill — to forget it and get to safety.

They followed their employees into a storm cellar just as the apparent twister struck around 6 o'clock, straining to hold the door shut.

"I would be dead if (Tiffany) wouldn't have told us," Kliment said only an hour or so later. She later pulled her ringing cellphone from the pile of what was the iconic ice cream business.

There were no immediate reports of injuries. As of 10 p.m., power was out to 4,000 homes and businesses across the city.

Staff from the National Weather Service in Valley will come to Lincoln on Monday morning to survey the damage, which included the roof to the Harley-Davidson dealership on West O Street, a plane at the Lincoln Airport and part of a car wash on Nebraska 2 between Van Dorn Street and Pioneers Boulevard.

It's too early to say if it was a tornado or strong straight-line winds, said Corey Mead of the Weather Service. But numerous videos and photos shared on social media displayed the rotating updraft associated with the storms as they moved from northwest of Lincoln into the southwest part of the city.

The Weather Service confirmed a tornado touchdown near Malcolm at 5:38 p.m., about the time when sirens sounded in Lincoln, prompting attendees at several events to seek shelter.

A sneak peek at the tigers, giraffes and spider monkeys at Lincoln's Children's Zoo's 10-acre expansion was cut short by the storm.

The invite-only event was winding down when zoo President and CEO John Chapo and his staff ushered the handful of remaining guests to the basement of the administrative building until the all-clear, about 40 minutes later.

At the Lied Center, the Lincoln's Symphony Orchestra show was delayed as the orchestra itself moved to the basement.

Jeff Eick, a driver for Haul Bikes, was sitting in his semi next to Frontier Harley-Davidson when the debris started flying.

"It was crazy," Eick said. "It just ripped the roof right back."

Eick watched as the storm moved south, toward the Dairy Sweet, where customers Jazmin Escobar and her mother, Yecenia, both of Crete — were waiting out the thunderstorm in their Chevy Silverado when the winds hit.

"We saw the big dust," Jazmin Escobar said.

The apparent tornado slid the red pickup 20 feet across the rock driveway where it had been parked. Twisted branches snapped from trees and other debris — rocks, roofing materials and other items — slammed into their vehicle, shattering the windows.

The Escobars ducked as low in the vehicle as they could. They were unharmed, but badly shaken.

Just feet away, the Dairy Sweet was lifted clean from its foundation and flipped upside down. Fixtures from the bathroom topped a pile of jagged wooden frames, refrigerators and ice cream machines. Spoons and cups littered the ground.

Catty-corner at another Lincoln icon, Lee's Chicken, Patrick Lohmeier was standing on a second floor landing on the north side of the building watching the storm roll in and recording the scene on his iPad.

"I watch storms come through here all the time," Lohmeier said. "Everybody was out in the parking lot watching the storm, but I started to see the clouds rotate and it just got wild. Everything happened so fast."

Lohmeier clambered across the roof to the south side to get a better view, but the intensity of the winds convinced him to turn back and seek shelter.

Inside, the winds and changes to the atmospheric pressure caused the windows to shake. Debris — staff are not sure entirely what — broke through several windows on the south side of the packed dining room. The power went out, causing the kitchen to fill with smoke as the vent hoods shut off.

Drake Kann, a grandson of the owners who works behind the bar, said a few customers crawled under tables at the height of the storm, but there were no reports of injuries.

Once it was over and the wait staff ensured everyone was OK, food embedded with shards of glass was replaced, candles were lit to provide enough light for the dinnertime rush, and bills were waived for the evening, said waitress Madelyn Walton.

Outside, however, the Lee's Chicken sign was shredded, unrecognizable, while Pioneer Pete, the restaurant's iconic chicken mascot, remained unharmed, still standing tall over the parking lot.

The storm also threw a mangled john boat into a line of trees on the west side of the building.

No one was sure how far it had traveled to get there.

Originally published March 2, 2009:

A man who apparently tried to mellow out his cat by stuffing her into a homemade bong is facing criminal charges — and catcalls from animal lovers.

Lancaster County Sheriff’s deputies went to the home Acea Schomaker shares with his grandfather at 5700 Saltillo Road Sunday morning on a domestic disturbance call, said Sgt. Andy Stebbing.

Deputies resolved the dispute and left the house, but returned minutes later after discovering there was an arrest warrant on Schomaker for possession of drug paraphernalia, Stebbing said.

When they went back in, he said, the deputies said they saw Schomaker, 20, smoking marijuana through a piece of garden hose attached to a duct-taped, 6-by-12-inch plexiglass box, into which the cat had been stuffed.

“This cat was just dazed,” Stebbing said. “She was on the front seat of the cop car, wrapped in a blanket, and never moved all the way to the humane society.”

Deputies said Schomaker told them the 6-month-old kitten, named Shadow, had been hyper and he was trying to calm her down.

Shadow was taken to the Capital Humane Society, where she was in good shape on Monday, Executive Director Bob Downey said.

“What the human mind doesn’t invent, huh?” Downey said.

Schomaker did not return voice or text messages left on his cell phone by The Associated Press.

He was cited for misdemeanor animal cruelty and taken to Lancaster County Jail on the arrest warrant. He was released after paying a $400 fine.

Now he faces new charges for possession of marijuana and paraphernalia stemming from Sunday.

Stebbing said the animal cruelty charge could be raised to a felony if the cat dies or is found to have suffered injury.

Downey said tests would be done to determine whether the cat suffered lung damage.

“To the eye, the cat looks OK,” he said. “It cowers in the back of its cage like it’s a little bit afraid but, obviously, given the way it’s been treated, that’s not surprising to me at all.”

Those trying their hand at the Bear Claw are supposed to plunk money in the arcade game and use a mechanical claw to pluck a toy from below. Then they use a joystick to maneuver their prize over a chute and drop it down.

But Kael Ireland didn’t play by the rules. He crawled his way up and into a promised land of toys.

Kael, 3, slipped out of his 24-year-old mother’s apartment about 5:30 p.m. Monday, while she was in the bathroom, Lincoln Police Officer Katie Flood said in an email.

He wandered across the street to Madsen’s Bowling & Billiards on Dudley Street, walked into the building unnoticed, crawled up the chute of the claw machine game and started, well, playing.

His mother, Ashley Ireland, said she always locks the apartment door. While Kael’s been able to unlock it for awhile, he’s never taken off before.

“He’s very energetic and social -- no fear at all,” Ireland said in a Facebook message.

Kael’s favorite toys right now: “He loves bears, but dinosaurs are his favorite right now ... and puppies,” his mom said.

A customer asked bartender Rachell Hildreth if anyone was looking for a missing child. No, she told him, and he led her to the Bear Claw, filled with plush stuffed animals -- and Kael.

“He was just having a heyday,” Hildreth said on Tuesday.

Customers and employees surrounded the machine to get a look at the boy who defied the rules.

“He didn’t notice anyone around him,” Hildreth said.

Hildreth said she was baffled as to how Kael got through the opening designed for toys to go out. It’s about the size of a mailbox opening.

Perhaps he got a little help from his name, which according to several baby websites means “slender” in Gaelic.

While Kael was busy playing, his mom came out of the bathroom, saw her son was gone and called police, Flood said.

“It was the most scared I’ve ever been,” Ireland said. “I’m just happy we found him safe.”

Kael's mom acted quickly and appropriately, Flood said, and police did not cite her for child abuse or neglect.

Ireland said she had the landlord install a chain lock on the door, high enough so Kael can't reach it.

“That’ll keep him contained a little bit in the future,” Ireland said. “Hopefully.”

Officers went to the apartment building on Orchard Street and a Madsen's customer came up to them and said a boy matching Kael's description was inside, Flood said.

The sergeant found him in the machine, “happily playing with stuffed animals,” Flood said.

Madsen’s employees called the company that owns the machine, and a worker came to let Kael out, although it’s not entirely clear he wanted to leave.

“He was just having fun in there,” Hildreth said. “I don’t think he wanted to get out.”

He didn’t leave empty-handed. Workers let him keep a stuffed animal from the machine, his mom said. One of his favorites, too: a purple teddy bear -- no claw required.

On a day when Nebraska football made national news for bagging a Beaver, a Husker defensive end was recovering from a tussle with a raccoon.

Jack Gangwish was driving north on 27th Street about 3 miles north of town Wednesday night when he spotted a raccoon on the side of the road and decided to take a picture.

The 21-year-old got out of his 2002 Chevy Duramax pickup truck and tried to take a photo with the animal using his cellphone, but the raccoon attacked, biting Gangwish in the calf.

“It was a raccoon selfie gone completely wrong,” Gangwish said Thursday evening, laughing.

He knew the animal should be tested for rabies, so he grabbed a crescent wrench with the aim of subduing it.

Things didn’t work out that way, unfortunately for the raccoon.

“It was death by crescent wrench,” the 6-foot-2, 260-pound Gangwish said.

Gangwish said authorities are testing the raccoon carcass for rabies.

A mom's night out to see the movie “Bad Moms” took a twist when seven Lincoln women were kicked out of East Park Cinema for ... well, being what theater management considered bad moms.

The baby sitter one of the women had lined up canceled at the last minute, so she took her 9-month-old along to Saturday’s 10:15 p.m. showing of the movie described as a lewd but safe comedy.

Marcus Theatres’ policy is that no child younger than 6 can attend an R-rated movie -- even with a parent.

Alexis Plouzek, one of the group of mothers who went to the movie, said the baby hadn't made a peep when theater management asked his mother to leave.

The women, all neighbors in the Links at HiMark, set the date for their night out in May and bought tickets for "Bad Moms" well in advance.

When they got to the theater a clerk mentioned they might have trouble getting in with a baby.

“We thought it was a joke,” Plouzek said.

That was before a security guard approached them after they were seated.

“I was told due to the policy I needed to leave or the cops would be called,” the baby's mother wrote on her Facebook page. “They were concerned with the content my child would be viewing. I informed him, my child would be sleeping within minutes, not only would he not be watching the movie but he also would not be disturbing to other patrons.”

According to Plouzek and her friend, who couldn't be reached on Monday, they were told repeatedly that if they did not remove the baby, police would be called.

“I stood up and with the 20-ish people in the theater (I) asked very kindly if anyone would like me to leave, I clearly would. ... everyone cheered and said ‘let her stay,’" the mother wrote.

“RAC (Rent A Cop for short) told me we didn't have to leave, just my baby (did). I told him, that was actually grounds to call the police, if I took my child out and left him and came back in.”Ìę

The entire group was then escorted out.

The discussion continued in the lobby -- and ultimately the women were refunded for their tickets. Before they left, the security guard, at their request, snapped a group photo that is now posted on their Facebook pages.

Marcus Theatres spokeswoman Lindsey Weix said the company's policy is clear.

“... One of the guests brought her infant son. We did not allow the two of them to stay for the movie given our policy on R-rated films," she said. "... Such movies are intended for mature audiences to enjoy in an adult setting. Marcus Theatres is committed to providing an unparalleled entertainment experience, and this policy was established with that in mind."

The kicker for the group of Lincoln moms: As the women left the theater, they saw another group who had just watched the earlier showing of “Bad Moms” -- and one of them had an infant in her arms.

When they asked about the consistency of enforcement, the assistant manager of the theater reportedly said she probably would have gotten away with taking her baby to the movie if she had smuggled him in.

"(The baby) was put to bed a good two hours past his normal bedtime," the mom who was booted wrote. "... and still no sound came out of him. He was with his mom. Happy. Whole. Content. Being a bad mom feels really, really, good!”

It was the parade float that elicited the loudest cheers Friday at Norfolk's Fourth of July parade. The crowd lining the streets clapped and laughed as the flatbed truck went by.

But one loud voice rose above the rest: “This is not OK," Glory Kathurima said. "That’s not OK.”

She kept repeating herself as the float passed, she says. She started to raise her phone to take a picture of the blue truck with the outhouse on its flatbed, along with a dark figurine in overalls propped up by a metal walker.

And nailed to the sides of the wooden privy, two signs in all-black capital letters: “OBAMA PRESIDENTIAL LIBRARY.”

Kathurima didn’t take the photo, though pictures of the float went viral on the Internet, sparking long threads of comments about freedom of expression and racism.

She didn’t take the photo because she was too busy trying to be heard, Kathurima said Saturday. Too busy trying to answer her 9-year-old daughter’s questions about the float.

“Mommy, what does that mean? What’s so funny?”

She has fielded Malaika’s tough questions before. The times her daughter comes home from the predominantly white school in Norfolk and asks why the kids don’t look like her. Why they always want to touch her hair.

Kathurima moved to Nebraska from Kenya when she was Malaika’s age and became a naturalized citizen a few years ago. She’s raised her daughter in Norfolk and has found ways to explain the meaning of skin color. She’s turned on the TV and pointed to President Obama, showing Malaika that there was someone that looked like her — half Kenyan, half American.

“I’m angry and I’m scared,” Kathurima said. “This float was not just political; this was absolutely a racial statement.”

Parade committee member Rick Konopasek said the float wasn’t meant to be any more offensive than a political cartoon would be. The only restriction for entering a float is that it can’t be considered morally objectionable. That basically translates to a ban on nudity to sexually explicit messages, Konopasek said.

“We don’t feel its right to tell someone what they can and can’t express,” he said. “This was political satire. If we start saying no to certain floats, we might as well not have a parade at all.”

Konopasek and parade announcer Wally Sonnenschein said the outhouse float was the most popular one in the parade, and the three judges awarded it an honorable mention.

“It’s obvious the majority of the community liked it,” Konopasek said. “So should we deny the 95 percent of those that liked it their rights, just for the 5 percent of people who are upset?”

This year’s parade also included a float of Pete Ricketts supporters. Had a liberal-oriented float been entered, the parade committee would have welcomed it as well, Konopasek said.

“For the most part, this is a strong conservative community,” Sonnenschein said. “I really don’t see anything wrong with the Obama float and I’m kind of amazed anyone is complaining.”

Sonnenschein and Konopasek said the man who built the float has been a longstanding member of the community, and people shouldn’t be quick to judge him for expressing his opinions.

“This was a day to celebrate independence and part of that is speech and expression,” Konopasek said. “He exercised his rights.”

Kathurima wasn’t surprised by the float. There are many photos floating around the Internet of the same joke — an outhouse labeled as Obama's library. Somehow, Glory had hoped her community wouldn’t stand for that.

“We are supposed to be celebrating independence but people are quick to forget about 300 years of history,” she said.

“My daughter keeps asking me, 'Why?' and I don’t have an answer for her. We made this place our home, but right now it doesn’t feel like it. It’s shameful.”

The parade committee plans to meet in the next week to discuss the float and possible policy changes for future parades.

An Auburn woman calling herself an ambassador for God and his son, Jesus Christ, filed a federal lawsuit Friday against all homosexuals.

Sylvia Driskell, 66, said in the suit that she is petitioning the U.S. District Court of Omaha to be heard "in the matter of homosexuality. Is homosexuality a sin, or not a sin?"

In a seven-page letter framed as a lawsuit, she cited Bible passages that described homosexuality as an abomination and against nature, and she said never before has the nation or the state been "besiege(d) by sin."

"Will all the judges of this nation judge God to be a lier [sic]?" Driskell asked.

She said she petitioned the court because she feels it imperative to stand up for the moral principles on which the nation was founded.

You may have seen the picture on Facebook: a blue Honda Civic sinking in the fresh concrete at 48th and Old Cheney.

The driver was not initially ticketed, but he -- or his insurance company -- is responsible for the damage he caused Wednesday.

The stretch of fresh concrete is part of the Old Cheney pavement repair project from 40th to Nebraska 2 in south Lincoln.

Thomas Shafer, a city engineer,Ìęanswered the most common questions about that incident, along with a reminder to be careful driving in construction areas.

What happened?

A driver mistakenly drove behind the traffic control devices and into fresh concrete. Removing the car resulted in traffic being delayed in the area.

Who pays for the repairs to the road work?Ìę

The person who did the damage is responsible for the cost of repairs.

And how much do we expect those repairs to cost?Ìę

The contractor has estimated this may be in excess of $10,000, accounting for crew time, removal operations, new concrete and delays.

Any idea how much this will delay project, if at all?Ìę

All fresh concrete needs to mature, cure and set up before cars and other heavy vehicles can be on it. Because this is adjacent to other concrete that needs to cure, the city will need to let it set up before the removal process can begin. This probably delays the work in this area by three to four days.

The city continues to ask drivers to be especially careful in construction areas to protect workers and to prevent this kind of damage, Shafer said.