Safety walk postponed
From Staff Reports
The Spring Safety Walk scheduled
for 4 a.m. Saturday has been post
poned a week until 4 a.m. April 19.
Linda Cowdin, Parking Advisory
Committee recording secretary, said
organizers were concerned the snow
would illuminate the paths too much
and make it difficult to see which paths
needed better lighting.
On April 19, the group will leave
from the Parking Services building
near 18th and Y streets. The walk
takes about an hour to an hour and a
half. Those interested in joining the
safety walk can call 472-4455.
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Law & Order <
Assault
A Lincoln police officer tried to
arrest a man who ran from him,
then tried to grab the officer’s gun
in a scuffle Wednesday morning.
Lincoln Police Sgt. Ann
Heermann said Officer Todd Hruza
pulled the man over between 23rd
and 24th streets on Sumner Street
about 2:30 am.
Hruza was walking the man
back to his cruiser when the man
ran down an alley toward Euclid
Street.
Hruza caught up with him and
a scuffle ensued. Dining the scuffle,
the man tried grabbing Hruza’s
gun, but was unable to take it out
of the holster, Heermann said.
When Hruza searched the man,
he found a pocket knife and a bag
of white powder believed to be
methamphetamine. The man did
not have any identification,
Heermann said, so police are still
trying to identify him.
The man was cited for felony
assault of a police officer, posses
sion of methamphetamine and pos
session of drug paraphernalia.
- Narcotics
University police officers and
Abel Residence Hall staff followed
their noses, and two residents were
ticketed Wednesday for marijuana
related incidents.
St. Mylo Bushing said police
received a report of a marijuana
smell coming from one of the
rooms. When officers and a resi
dence director went to the room,
they smelled the drug.
Bushing said they knocked but
got no reply. They then heard a rus
tling in the room, and the residence
director unlocked the door with a
pass key.
The two women then gave of
ficers permission to search the
room, where they found a pipe and
less than an ounce of marijuana.
Freshmen Eryn Loucks and
Jamie Burke, both from Rock Port,
Mo., were cited for possession of
drug paraphernalia. Loucks was
also cited for possession of mari
juana.
Disturbance
A report that first started as a
second-degree assault with a knife
turned out to be a mutual school
boy brawl, in which the only
weapon used was a chain-link
fence.
Police said Tuesday that a 13
year-old boy was allegedly slashed
with a knife in a fight that spilled
out of a school bus.
Heermann said that after police
contacted the other boy involved,
they found that the cut the victim
received came from a collision with
a fence during the fight. A knife
was pulled, but not used in the
fight. -
Heermann said both boys would
now be cited for disturbing the
peace by fighting.
Buzz ON THE fuzz:
Radar watch
Lincoln Police radar units will
be on 16th and 17th streets, K to
Holdrege streets today. On Satur
day, they will be on O Street from
Ninth to 27th streets and on Ninth
and 10th streets, K to Van Dorn
streets.
Late-season storm
causes fatal accident
SNOW from page 1
Terrance Springer’s 1984 Dodge
pickup was driving north in the in
side lane and slammed into the pas
senger side of Eckhout’s car, fatally
injuring the boy. Clint Eckhout was
taken to Lincoln General Hospital and
pronounced dead.
Mari Eckhout sustained a broken
jaw in the wreck, and Springer was
not injured.
Lincoln streets were slick through
out the morning, snarling traffic and
making the commute to work and
campus a chore. As the day wore cm,
and the snow melted, the streets turned
; to a river of slush.
Public works trucks were out sand
ing and salting slick streets starting 8
a.m. Thursday. Plows started on emer
gency and bus routes and then moved
to major streets as snow kept falling.
Gov. Ben Nelson warned the state’s
residents to take precautions and be
aware of the hazardous conditions.
*T hope Nebraskans will take this
spring storm as seriously as they do
our winter snows,” Nelson said.
Matt Werner, an analyst at the
High Plains Climate Center cm East
Campus, said almost half of the past
50 Aprils have been fooled by spring
snow storms.
The biggest snow was just five
years ago, a dumping of 7.9 inches on
the capital city.
Lincoln averages I/2 inches oi
snow every April, but this year’s
spring snowfall has gone far above
that number, Werner said.
As much as 4 inches of snow have
fallen so far, and some forecasts have
called for a foot more.
Werner said this snowfall has cone
early in the spring months while hall
of the years with spring snows were
in the last week of the month.
Because this snowfall comes aftei
a few weeks of nice weather, people
are more shocked, Werner said.
“It’s really not that rare,” he said
“It’s relative to what you are used to.’
So Nebraskans bkter get used tc
snow.
A winter storm watch is in effect
for today because another storm sys
tem, which had been building in the
Rockies, plunged into the Plains
Thursday.
The forecast for today included a
90-percent chance of precipitation,
starting as rain but switching to more
snow as a gusty northeast wind will
hold temperatures to highs in the mid
to low-30s.
Legislators lobby to relieve
petition-related pressures
By Brian Carlson
Staff Reporter
Legislators wrestled with plans for
freeing petition drives from the grips
of paid petitioners Wednesday before
advancing a proposal also designed to
eliminate fraud.
Lamenting the drop of volunteer
petition drives, senators passed
Amendment 1311 to LR7CA, spon
sored by Sen. Doug Kristensen of
Minden.
Kristensen’s amendment, which
replaced original LR7CA sponsored
by Sen. DiAnna Schimek of Lincoln,
requires petition signing to be done at
a polling place or public building.
Currently, Kristensen said county
clerks are unable to check the legiti
macy of all petition signatures. If the
revised LR7CA becomes law, signa
tures could be verified at the time and
site of the petition drive.
He also said that by reducing fraud,
the proposal would combat the influ
ence of paid petition drives, which are
usually driven by political agendas and
money making and are more likely
than volunteers to be fraudulent.
“If you’re going to have a petition
drive, don’t go circulating petitions in
bars or in malls where you’re just try
ing to make money,” he said. “Those
people give volunteers a bad name.”
Some expressed concern that re
quiring petition signers to go to an ap
proved site would be burdensome.
Kristensen and Schimek said they
hoped to compensate by reducing the
number of signatures required for a
proposal to reach the ballot, although
the current bill has no such provision.
Schimek said a lower number of
required signatures would reduce the
influence of paid petition circulators
by cutting back on the need for highly
fUnded drives.
“The reason for the legislation is
to make it more possible for a volun
teer petition drive to succeed,”
Schimek said.
Her original proposal would have
meant signatures collected by volun
teer circulators would count twice.
That plan was opposed by Sen.
Merton “Cap” Dierks of Ewing.
Dierks agreed that paid petitioners had
gained too much influence in the sys
tem, but disagreed with counting one
citizen’s signature more than another.
Dierks expressed his desire to pre
serve petition drives’ long-time role
as a check on the state’s one-house
Legislature, invoking the man often
called the father of the Unicameral.
“This is not what George Norris
intended.”
Mentally retarded spared
OFFICERS from page 1
sequences in a slew of appeals from
death row convicts clamoring for IQ
tests.
“Do it with the expectation that
there will be another flurry of ap
peals,” Bromm said. “If I’m sitting on
death row ... who am I going to call?
My attorney.”
But Chambers said the bill could
not affect any death row cases because
the courts had already looked for pos
sibilities of mental defects.
Sen. John Hilgert of Omaha, who
also supported the amendment, said
those who had troubles with the
amendment should consider it as the
Legislature should lean toward pre
serving, not ending, life.
“If we’re going to err, let’s err on
the side of safety and life and protec
tion,” Hilgert said.
the new spring
from harold’s
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