Dorchester Times: Jason Kotas Suspected Of Long List Of Burglaries

Monday, February 11, 2013

Jason Kotas Suspected Of Long List Of Burglaries

As we reported recently, former DHS student Jason Kotas, now of Lincoln, is scheduled to appear in district court March 25, facing multiple counts of burglary and drug possession. Kotas and his fiance are suspected by the Saline County Sheriff’s Office to have committed a string of burglaries and thefts in late 2012. The criminals have mostly targeted Saline County farms and fields, including rural Dorchester. The Friend Sentinel ran the following information as compiled by the Saline County Sheriff’s Office.

Oct. 29, 2012 – Burglary at a rural farmstead in the Crete area. Stick welder with cables and two gas cans taken.

Oct. 31, 2012 (or shortly before) – rural Friend area, Pivot radiator and battery taken;

Rural Friend area, close to the above location, Pivot radiator and battery taken;

Rural Friend area, close to the two previous above locations. Pivot radiator and battery taken;

Rural Dorchester area. Pivot radiator and battery taken; and

Rural Dorchester area, close to the above mentioned location. Pivot radiator and battery taken.

Nov. 7, 2012 – Burglary at rural farmstead in the rural Friend area. Numerous radiators, batteries, wire and misc. items of metal were taken.

Nov. 9, 2012 – Burglary at rural farmstead in the rural Milligan (Saline County) area. Numerous radiators, batteries, wire and misc. items of metal were taken along with air compressors and tools.

Nov. 13, 2012 – Burglary that occurred in the rural Crete area (same location as the Oct. 29, 2012, burglary investigation). Suspects forced entry and stole six vehicle batteries and two radiators from vehicles kept in a machine shed.

Nov. 14, 2012 – Burglary that occurred in the rural Friend area. Suspects forced entry into a machine shed and stole five vehicle batteries and two vehicle radiators from vehicle kept in the shed.

Nov. 7 to Dec. 2 – Burglary at rural farmstead in the Dorchester area. Restored 1990 GMC pickup bearing NE license plate 22 TF 304 stolen.

Nov. 25, 2012 – Burglary at rural farmstead in the Western area. Radiator, starter and a 5 hp boat motor stolen.

Nov. 28, 2012 – Burglary at rural farmstead in the Dorchester area where 3 large semi batteries were taken.

Dec. 3, 2012 – The Saline County Sheriff’s Office received a report from the Gage County Sheriff’s Office that the above mentioned stolen vehicle had been reported as a suspicious vehicle in the Barneston, Gage County, Nebraska on Nov. 29, 2012.

Dec. 8, 2012 – At approximately 3:50 a.m., the Saline County Sheriff’s Office received information of an active law enforcement pursuit that was occurring in the York and Seward Counties of Nebraska, with the suspects traveling in a dark colored Chevrolet pick-up truck. Troopers from the Nebraska State Patrol as well as deputies from the Seward, York and Saline County Sheriff’s Office engaged in the pursuit.

The pursuit ended in the rural areas of Seward County where the suspects -- Jason Kotas, 38, and Sheena Kotas, 28 --were apprehended after they attempted to flee from law enforcement by jumping into a body of water. The suspects were captured and lodged at the Seward County Jail. The vehicle was confirmed to have been the vehicle that was reported as being stolen from Saline County on Dec. 3, 2012, from the rural Dorchester area.

Sheena Kotas admitted to authorities in taking part in three burglaries in Saline County from October 2012 to December 2012. She reported that the stolen contents would be sold to Alter Scrap or Capital City Metal Recycling in Lincoln and they would buy methamphetamine with the money. Sheena reported that Jason Kotas and William Rasp would sell three pickup loads of metal per day as often as six days a week.

6 comments:

cynical richardFebruary 12, 2013 at 12:06 PM
.........just another reason no matter what no brain biden and his little toadie obama says .......................... this is one gun owner who aint disarmin ................................................................................... get over it ............................
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AnonymousFebruary 12, 2013 at 2:12 PM
"They attempted to flee from law enforcement by jumping into a body of water."

Really? In December? In Nebraska?

They must have indeed been high on meth.
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AnonymousFebruary 13, 2013 at 6:34 PM
Now we know what happened to courtney love and curt cobain
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AnonymousDecember 2, 2016 at 12:04 AM
Pretty sure this is NOT the same Jason Kotas who died this past Saturday at Milligan.
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Dorchester TimesDecember 2, 2016 at 11:33 AM
We can confirm that this Jason Kotas is not the Jason Kotas of Milligan and Geneva who recently passed away at age 40.
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Dorchester: A Good Little Family Town

Dorchester, Nebraska (est. population 630) is located in northern Saline county. Close in proximity to Interstate 80, Dorchester is only 25 minutes from the state capital of Lincoln (est. population 250,000) and about 55 minutes from Omaha (metro population 725,000).

Dorchester's median resident age is 37 years. In 2005, Dorchester had a median family income of approximately $35,600. The median house value was about $63,000. About 95 percent of Dorchester residents commute to work via Interstate and highways.

The village has a quality public school, which received a $4.1 million expansion and modernization in 2008; it offers a small classrooms and individualized attention. Total enrollment of grades K-12 is around 230-250 students.

Ancestries of the Dorchester area are primarily German (42.4%), Czech (24.9%), Irish (12.5%), English (5.4%), and Dutch (4.9%).

Dorchester Historical Facts

* On July 4, 1871, the railroad reached Dorchester.
* Incorporated in 1881, Dorchester's population grew from 200 to 500 by 1882.
* In 1882, Dorchester had 90 buildings, 35 of which were businesses or public facilities. Brick buildings lined both sides of Washington Avenue for two blocks.
* Dorchester's longest-running newspaper was The Dorchester Star, which was published until the late 1940s.
* By 1889, Dorchester's population is said to have reached 800, while the town housed an opera house, a two-story brick schoolhouse with a bell tower, and four churches.
* By the 1910s, Dorchester had electricity, a water tower and a fire department.
* Dorchester's main arteries, Highways 6 and 33, were graveled in the 1940s.
* Dorchester's first irrigation well was drilled on Chris Weber's farm and rural electrification was finished following WWII.

A Village with History

Dorchester is one of the "alphabet towns" on the Burlington & Missouri River Railroad line built west from Lincoln. The town site was selected for its pleasant location in the northern part of Saline County, about eight miles west of Crete. This situation is an attractive one, being on the level prairie land, midway between the West Blue River and Turkey Creek. The first named stream is three miles north, and the latter about the same distance south from the town. Dorchester was platted in 1870 and incorporated in 1881. The name "Dorchester" came from either for a suburb of Boston by that name or a town in England. No one is sure. Two of the very first settlers were James Seely and Edward McIntyre, who both made Dorchester their permanent home.

Dorchester: In The Beginning

Here is a look at Dorchester around 1890, less than a decade after its official incorporation, as documented by Andreas' History of the State of Nebraska:
* POPULATION: "About 300, and is made up of a substantial and progressive class of citizens, who are moral and industrious. ... The town grew but very little until the year 1879, for the reason that Pleasant Hill, on Turkey Creek, a short distance south, was the county seat and naturally drew a trade for quite a large scope of country."
* BUSINESS: "The business and professional interests of the town are represented by three general merchandise stores, two drug, one grocery, one furniture, two hardware, and two millinery stores, one bank, two restaurants, two hotels, three livery stables, a post office, one newspaper office, two elevators, two lumber yards, two coal yards, two blacksmith shops, two lawyers and four physicians."
* SCHOOL: "The schoolhouse is a good one. The schoolhouse was built in 1872, since which time the public schools have been continually kept up. The present schoolhouse is 24' x 40' in size, two stories high. The school is graded and consists of three departments. The house is found too small, and arrangements will soon be made to increase its size."
* CHURCHES: "There are three substantial churches."
* HOMES: "The residence portion of the village is made up of neat houses of different styles of architecture, but none of them very large."
* NEWSPAPER: "The Dorchester Star, which was established August 21, 1881, by H. C. Bittenbender, who edited it until January 19, 1882, when he sold it to Ryerson & Bullock, the present proprietors. The Star is a bright weekly paper, five-column quarto, in size, and is Republican in politics."