A 26-year-old man was robbed by two women Thursday morning in his central Lincoln apartment after he'd met one of the women online, he told Lincoln Police.
The man called authorities to his apartment, near 10th and C streets, at about 11 a.m. Thursday after the women had left with two pairs of Jordan shoes, his debit card and $2,000 cash, Lincoln Police Sgt. Chris Vollmer said.
The victim told police he met one of the women online and that they planned to meet at his apartment, Vollmer said.
But when the man arrived, both women had already entered his apartment and were holding his shoes when he walked in, he told police.
When the man confronted the women, they took his wallet before fleeing, Vollmer said.
An investigation into the robbery is ongoing.
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Two years ago: Jan. 6 protests in Lincoln and Nebraska reaction to US Capitol riot
Rep. Jeff Fortenberry said late Wednesday afternoon that President Donald Trump needs to step up now and call upon his supporters to end the kind of post-election violence that swept into the nation's Capitol earlier in the day.
Asked if the president bears responsibility for the violence after summoning supporters to Washington for what he said would be a "wild" event, Fortenberry said Trump needs to speak to them now.Ìý
"These are his most heartfelt supporters," the Republican congressman said during a telephone conversation from his office. "They will listen to him. Violence has to stop."
Fortenberry, who represents eastern Nebraska's 1st District including Lincoln, said "people are very upset" following Trump's defeat in November and "people will be very upset with me for voting to certify the election results" that have been submitted to Congress by the Electoral College.
There is nothing wrong with "marching peacefully," he said, but "these fools who invaded the Capitol" moved beyond peaceful and acceptable protest.
"I suspect that the vast majority of people who came here to exercise their rights and participate in a peaceful manner were also upset" by the violence, Fortenberry said.
Fortenberry was quarantined in his House office during Wednesday's events after exposure to COVID-19. When he casts his vote to accept the Electoral College results, he said he'll be wearing a mask and face shield and be segregated in the gallery.
"I wanted to be on the floor," he said, but he will be escorted to the gallery for the vote and leave after his vote is cast.
Others in Nebraska's congressional delegation also decried the breach of the U.S. Capitol by a mob intent on disrupting the certification of the electoral votes confirming Joe Biden as the next U.S. president.
Rep. Adrian Smith, the lone congressional member from Nebraska objecting to the certification of the electoral votes, called for calm at the Capitol.
"While many protesters are exercising their constitutional right to be heard peacefully, I urge all protestors to do so and to follow the directions of law enforcement," the 3rd District congressman said in a statement.
"We are working to ensure concerns about the conduct of the presidential election in several states are heard through the existing legal process, and illegal disruptions of this process are unacceptable and not constructive."
It wasn't immediately clear where other members of the Nebraska delegation were when the Capitol was locked down and lawmakers were rushed from the building as some protesters backing Trump swarmed the building, reaching the Senate floor and the office of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
As they occupied the building, Sen. Deb Fischer said the rioters have no constitutional right to harm police.Ìý
"We are a nation of laws, not some banana republic," Fischer said. "This must end now."
In a statement, Sen. Ben Sasse singled out Trump, calling it the "ugly outcome of the President's addiction to constantly stoking division."
"Today, the United States Capitol — the world’s greatest symbol of self-government — was ransacked while the leader of the free world cowered behind his keyboard — tweeting against his Vice President for fulfilling the duties of his oath to the Constitution."
Later, speaking on the Senate floor after the certification process resumed, Sasse encouraged Americans to love their neighbor.
"When something’s ugly, talking about beauty isn’t just permissible, talking about beauty is obligatory," Sasse said in providing a ray of optimism on what can only be described as a dark day.
Rep. Don Bacon, who represents Omaha's 2nd District, was in his office watching House proceedingsÌý— there were virus-related limits on the number of people in the chamberÌý— and monitoring the protests when television networks showed people breaking into the Capitol.
Bacon condemned the violence as "reprehensible" and "embarrassing," adding that he understands the roots of what occurred Wednesday.
"Tensions have been boiling on both sides for years," he said. "And there's this escalatory behavior on both sides. Today, we saw, and we've seen with the President in the last couple months, the delegitimizing of Joe Biden, and you see this resistance to any acknowledgement of a peaceful transition of power. It's not right."
Bacon said the anger that played out among some of those rioting in Washington was a response to those who have delegitimized President Trump for four years.
"We have so many blessings here, but a lot of people don't even know it. All they have is anger," Bacon said. "We need leaders to point out just what a great country we have. That's part of leadership. And we don't have leaders right now framing it in a positive way."
To appease those who came to Washington to protest peacefully, Bacon suggested that Congress call for an investigation into allegations of Trump's voter fraud claims.
"I think if you do a deep dive on this, and you disprove it, that's good. And if you find some fraud, that's good to know, too, and we fix it."
On Twitter, Gov. Pete Ricketts called the events in D.C. unacceptable and called for the crowds that descended on the Capitol to disband.
Asked whether Trump encouraged the violence, Ricketts told the Omaha World-Herald that people need to take responsibility for themselves.
"Every one of those people showed up on their own accord and acted under their own volition," Ricketts said.
Doug Peterson, Nebraska's attorney general, condemned the violence in a statement, calling the U.S. a nation of laws designed to maintain order and protect individual freedoms.
"We as a people are better than this," Peterson said in a statement.
Ricketts and Peterson, like all members of Nebraska's congressional delegation, are Republicans.
Lincoln Mayor Leirion Gaylor Baird, a Democrat, made a bipartisan plea for an end to violence allowing for the certification of the Electoral College.
"The peaceful transition of power is fundamental to our democracy," she said. "These acts of aggression at our nation's Capitol are antithetical to our values."
The Nebraska Democratic Party blasted the "violent Republican thugs" who were "allowed to just storm the building."
“The GOP owes Americans an apology for the disgusting behavior that they have enabled," said Jane Kleeb, the party's chair, in a news release. "There is no sidestepping this. There is no looking the other way. The Republican Party must own the behavior that they enabled from their radical base.â€
OMAHA — The Trump-supporting extremist groups who led Wednesday's raid on the U.S. Capitol are pleased with the results and likely to plan more such activities in the future, the leader of a new counterterrorism center at the University of Nebraska at Omaha said.
"How they're portraying it on their channels is that this is a success," said Gina Ligon, co-founder of UNO's National Counterterrorism Innovation, Technology, and Education Center. "I think you'll see more of this at the state level."
The center was established at UNO last year with a $36.5 million grant from the Department of Homeland Security and includes more than 50 academics at universities across the country.
The center's researchers routinely monitor the online communications of both foreign and domestic terror groups. Ligon said the Proud Boys, (a white-supremacist group) and the Oath Keepers (a far-right militia group) were both heavily involved in the raid. So were "accelerationist" groups, which believe in an imminent, apocalyptic race war, and are looking for signs that it has started.
"They were definitely part of inciting the violence," she said.
Ligon described what happened Wednesday as a "textbook" example of a social movement turning violent. The initial rally was a nonviolent protest, perfectly legal. She stressed that most of the people who attended the rally neither committed a crime nor intended to.
President Donald Trump's speech inflamed the crowd over his false claims of a "stolen" election, she said. He cited historical and biblical justifications for their grievances.
"Then he said, 'We're going to the Capitol,'" Ligon said, although he didn't go with them.
When the crowd reached the building where the House and Senate had convened to count the electoral votes, Ligon said, a few leaders from these organized groups led the crowd in lawless actions. Video of the beginning of the riot, posted Thursday on social media, shows the crowd knocking down portable barricades put up by the U.S. Capitol Police and beating some of them with clubs, chanting "U-S-A, U-S-A."
Then the mob moved toward the Capitol and broke in, scaling walls and climbing through windows.
Ligon said the videos posted to social mediaÌý— many by the rioters themselvesÌý— show them committing crimes.
"The people that were on video breaking the windows, brandishing weaponsÌý— those are all terrorist acts," she said.
Ligon said monitoring international terror groups' reaction is also important, because they can learn from the tactics pro-Trump extremists used to overcome the building's stunningly weak defenses.
"This is why centers like ours exist," Ligon said. "We have pretty good knowledge of groups like this. We know where to look to find out what they're talking about."
Images of rioting on the Lincoln Mall following protests over police brutality last summer brought tears to the eyes of Fanchon Blythe.
But Blythe of Lincoln, who was near the U.S. Capitol steps Wednesday when a pro-Trump mob stormed the building, said events some U.S. leaders called insurrection were nothing like the Black Lives Matter protests she condemned.
Crowds had peaceably gathered outside the Capitol on Wednesday morning into the afternoon to remind lawmakers counting electoral votes inside who they represent and that "this is our house," Blythe said.
"Probably a few people took that too literally," she said, adding she disagreed with their actions.
The people who sent congressional leaders into lockdown were overzealous, Blythe said.Ìý
Some in the crowd rushed barricades, clashed with police and got into an armed confrontation inside with police officers.Ìý
One woman shot inside the Capitol during the riot died, the Associated Press reported.Ìý
What happened inside the Capitol where rioters took over the building for about four hours wasn't fully clear to Blythe until she returned to her hotel mid-afternoon.Ìý
Blythe said she heard from people who had been tear-gassed by Capitol Police and saw another person carrying a rubber bullet that officers had fired. As law enforcement presence heightened, Blythe and her companions moved away from the Capitol as a precaution.Ìý
Blythe, a Lincoln cosmetologist, went to Washington on Tuesday with her sister and a friend to attend rallies and demonstrations in support of President Donald Trump as Congress convened to certify the votes that would confirm Joe Biden as the next president.Ìý
Crowds upset over the 2020 election results had been largely peaceful, joyful and what she considered patriotic early Wednesday.
Asked whether she would have attended the Trump rallies in Washington if she knew they would turn violent, Blythe said she had no regrets.Ìý
"I would be back here in a heartbeat," she said.
Gov. Pete Ricketts says demonstrators, not President Trump, are responsible for the assault on the nation's Capitol.
In answer to questions during a coronavirus briefing Friday, Ricketts said the violence by supporters of Trump following a rally this week where he urged them to march to the Capitol was the protesters' responsibility.
"The president asked for people to protest, but the protesters are the ones who decided to raid the Capitol building," the governor said. "It was completely unacceptable."
"Peaceful protest is the American way," he said. "Violent protest is not acceptable."
Wednesday's event was "a disgrace to our country," he said.
Ricketts noted that demonstrators in Lincoln who protested the election results outside the state Capitol remained peaceful on the same day.ÌýÌý
The governor said calls for Trump to resign or for impeachment of the president in the wake of this week's events are "a distraction (when we) need to concentrate on the transfer of power" to President-elect Joe Biden on Jan. 20.
A mob invading the U.S. Capitol. Police officers with guns drawn inside the House of Representatives. Lawmakers hiding from intruders seeking …