LICKING, Mo. (AP) — A 53-year-old Missouri man convicted of raping a 13-year-old girl has died in prison.

David Owen, spokesman for the Missouri Department of Corrections, said Larry Mahoney died early Wednesday at the South Central Correctional Center in Licking.

Owen said Mahoney’s death was “unexpected,” and an autopsy would be performed. He said the department does not suspect foul play.

Mahoney was serving a 40-year sentence for two counts of forcible rape, three counts of forcible sodomy and kidnapping from Greene County. He has been in prison since 2001 when he was sentenced for raping the girl repeatedly near Lake Springfield.

Owen said there were no other details about the death of Mahoney, who would have been eligible for parole at age 73.

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — The Nebraska Court of Appeals has rejected a father’s request for custody of his daughters to get them out of the home of a registered sex offender.

The Central City man argued that a Phelps County District judge was wrong to find there was no significant risk to his 16- and 14-year-old daughters if they remain in the house with their stepfather.

 

Court documents say the stepfather testified that he served four years in prison for sexually assaulting his 15-year-old stepdaughter from a previous marriage.

A three-judge panel of the state appeals court said Tuesday that the lower court relied on a therapist’s testimony that the stepfather wasn’t likely to re-offend. The appeals panel also said the lower court properly considered what was in the best interests of the children.

WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach is trading barbs over social media with Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton on voting rights.

The spat was sparked by Kobach’s proposal to throw out after 90 days names of more than 34,000 potential voters who registered in the state, but didn’t provide proof-of-citizenship documents like a birth certificate or naturalization papers.

Clinton’s campaign late Monday posted a comment on Twitter calling the plan a “targeted attack on voting rights,” including a link to a story from The Associated Press about it.

Koback retorted the next day on Facebook that it is not a purge as “left-wing knuckleheads” claim because those people just have to fill out another voter registration form again. He said Clinton is “getting her pantsuit in a twist over nothing.”

Suspect dies of self-inflicted gunshot wound.

MONETA, Va. (AP) — A law enforcement official says the suspect in the on-air shooting of two TV station employees died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Franklin County Sheriff W.Q. “Bill” Overton Jr. gave that detail Wednesday during a news conference.

Officials say they don’t yet know a motive in the fatal on-air shooting of a reporter and a cameraman from a TV station in Virginia.

Authorities say they know the suspect, Vester Flanagan, was a former employee at the station, WDBJ-TV. They say they don’t know if the shooting was racially motivated. Flanagan was black and had formerly complained about racial bias at the station.

Flanagan died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound hours after the Wednesday morning shooting. He went by Bryce Williams on the air.

Virginia State Police say that as they were pursuing the suspect in an on-air fatal shooting, he ran off the road and crashed, and was found suffering from a gunshot wound.

Police say that shortly before 11:30 a.m., they initiated a traffic stop on the suspect vehicle on Interstate 66. Police say the driver refused to stop and sped away from the trooper, but ran off the road and crashed. Police say the troopers approached and found the driver suffering from a gunshot wound, and he is being taken to a hospital.

Suspect’s Twitter feed includes allegations of workplace conflicts

MONETA, Va. (AP) — A Twitter account under an apparent alias of a man suspected of killing a TV reporter and cameraman describes what he claims were workplace conflicts with the pair.

The suspect, 41-year-old Vester Flanagan, appeared on air at WDBJ in Virginia under the name Bryce Williams. The tweets posted just hours after the killings of 24-year-old Alison Parker and 27-year-old cameraman Adam Ward claim Parker made racist comments.

The tweets also say Williams filed a report with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and that Parker was still hired despite that report. The tweets also say the cameraman had reported Williams to human resources after working with him one time. The nature of that complaint was not described.

UPDATE: Station GM says suspect was angry man who was fired

MONETA, Va. (AP) — The general manager of a TV station where two employees were fatally shot during a live broadcast describes the suspect as an unhappy, angry man who eventually was fired.

Jeffrey Marks of WDBJ-TV in Virginia talked briefly on air about Vester Flanagan— who went by Bryce Williams on the air — on Wednesday afternoon. Marks says Flanagan was hired as a reporter a few years ago after a while out of the TV news business.

Marks says the man had a reputation of being difficult to work with and being on the lookout for people to say things he could take offense to.

Marks says: “Eventually, after many incidents of his anger coming to the fore, we dismissed him. He did not take that well.”

Marks says that when Flanagan was fired, police had to escort him from the building.

Marks said that Flanagan alleged that other employees made racially-tinged comments to him and that he filed a complaint with the EEOC. But Marks says the allegations couldn’t be corroborated. He says the claim was dismissed.

Marks says Flanagan remained in town after being fired, and every now and then, station employee ran into him.

WDBJ listed Bryce Williams as a reporter at the station on its website on Jan. 17, 2013. By Feb. 8 that same year, his name no longer

NEW: Slain TV reporter, cameraman were team working on careers

MONETA, Va. (AP) — The television reporter and cameraman killed while they were doing a live shot are being described as a team who were at the beginning of their careers.

Friends and colleagues said Wednesday that Alison Parker and Adam Ward were part of a close-knit family at TV station WDBJ in Roanoke, Virginia.

The 24-year-old Parker was hired at WDBJ full time about a year ago. The 27-year-old Ward had worked at the station for several years, first in the production department, then as a video journalist.

They both found love at the station. Parker was dating an anchor. Ward was engaged to a producer.

The gunman has been described as a disgruntled former station employee. He is at a hospital with a life-threatening gunshot wound.

Wounded woman is stable

MONETA, Va. (AP) — A woman shot and wounded while she was being interviewed by a television crew during a live broadcast is in stable condition after undergoing surgery.

Carilion Roanoke Memorial Hospital said on its Facebook page Wednesday that Vicki Gardner, a local economic development official who also was on the hospital’s board of directors, was recovering after the surgery. It did not elaborate on the nature of her wounds.

The hospital statement also says that hospital staff had gotten to know the two journalists killed, 24-year-old Alison Parker and 27-year-old Adam Ward, through many live reports from the hospital’s facilities. It says the two were more than just journalists — “they were good friends who will be missed.”

EAST ST. LOUIS, Ill. (AP) — A Missouri couple is accused of orchestrating a cross-country prostitution ring involving at least five girls.

A federal complaint accuses 28-year-old Marcus Dewayne Thompson and 24-year-old Robin Thompson of conspiracy and sex trafficking. The Thompsons are from Park Hills, Missouri.

One of the girls, described as being 15 and from Madison, Illinois, told authorities she was enticed into getting into Marcus Thompson’s pickup truck in June while walking in her hometown.

She says she later was enlisted into prostitution in Florida, Texas, New Mexico, Tennessee and Missouri. She alleges that a girl died in her arms, and that they were beaten and threatened with being fed to alligators if they tried to escape.

Marcus Thompson’s attorney declined to comment Wednesday. Online court records don’t show an attorney for his wife.

ST. LOUIS (AP) — In a violent year in St. Louis, a theme has emerged: The gun used in the crime was probably stolen.

The city is on pace for around 200 homicides in 2015, the most in 20 years. Meanwhile, gun theft reports are up nearly 70 percent. It’s not homes or gun stores being targeted: It’s cars and trucks.

Many people coming into the city bring guns, but venues such as sports stadiums and theaters prohibit them — so they get left in the car. Police Chief Sam Dotson says criminals know that.

In the St. Louis region, both sales and applications for concealed-carry permits have spiked since the unrest that followed the fatal shooting of Michael Brown last year.

Experts say that with more guns come more gun thefts.

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — The September murder trial of a man accused of killing four people with ties to an Omaha medical school has been put on hold.

A judge on Tuesday ordered that the suspect, Anthony Garcia, undergo a mental-health evaluation following his allegations of being sexually abused by jail guards.

In documents obtained by The Omaha World-Herald, officials say jailhouse videos don’t support Garcia’s allegations.

Garcia is charged with first-degree murder in the 2008 deaths of the 11-year-old son of Creighton University pathologist William Hunter and the family’s housekeeper, and the May 2013 deaths of Creighton pathologist Roger Brumback and his wife.

Authorities say Garcia was motivated by revenge for being fired from Creighton’s pathology department in 2001.

His trial was scheduled to start Sept. 14. A new date hasn’t been set.

ST. LOUIS (AP) — St. Louis’ governing board has advanced a compromise measure that would raise the city’s minimum wage to $11 by 2018. The St. Louis Board of Aldermen began Tuesday’s special meeting by considering a measure that would have boosted the local minimum wage to $13 by 2020.

But the board, by a 15-6 vote, eventually signed off the more modest plan.

Opponents argue that the measure would drive small businesses out of the city and into St. Louis County, which has declined to adopt its own minimum wage. They also insist the bill would force employers to reduce the number of minimum wage jobs.

Proponents counter that raising the wage would help workers struggling to survive on the state-mandated $7.65 minimum hourly wage.

The measure still requires another vote.

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — Police have arrested a robbery suspect while she was shopping at a drugstore across an Omaha street from a bank branch that had just been robbed.

Police say a woman went into the U.S. Bank branch a little before 10 a.m. Tuesday and gave a teller a note. The teller gave the robber an undisclosed amount of cash, and the robber left.

Police say the robber then went across a street to the drugstore to shop and was arrested there. She was taken back to the bank branch, where witnesses confirmed to police that she was the robber.

The woman’s name hasn’t been released.