Wayne Walter Knote (1973 – 2025)

(ALLIANCE, Neb.) — The community of Hemingford, Nebraska is morning the loss of a very kind and local businessman. Wayne Walter Knote (1973 – 2025) was the owner of Village Pizza in Hemingford.

Please Note : The official (corrected) press release came out on the 28th of October which was Tuesday morning. Alliance Police Department originally listed the day of the discovery of his remains as Monday, October 28th, when in fact it should have read Tuesday, October 28th. They made the correction and later reposted a new press release reflecting the correct date.

Wayne’s body was discovered at 7:55 a.m. Tuesday morning October 28th. That is a fact, as stated by Officer Dahlberg at APD.

This funeral home obituary provided by family is erroneously implying that his death occurred on the 27th. We learned that Wayne was missing for around 14 hours when they found his body. He went missing on the 27th but wasn’t found or officially declared deceased after they found his remains and made a positive identification on the 28th.

Furthermore, a simple internet search turns up results stating the obituary was posted 3 days ago.

The following search was generated on the 30th in the early morning hours, so 3 days ago would have been the 27th.

Did anyone notice that this immediately declared suicide was labeled as ‘passed away peacefully’ by the family in the obituary?

We have feelings and compassion and complete understanding of the magnitude of these situations. We mourn the loss of every soul, especially via declared suicide. We are not blind to compassion. However, we are noticing that these inconsistencies are causing a lot of tension in the community.

Obituary from Bates-Gould Funeral Home

Wayne Walter Knote, 52, of Hemingford, passed away peacefully on October 27, 2025.

Wayne was born on July 17, 1973, in Big Spring, Texas, to Daryl and Linda (Nicks) Knote. He lived a full and joyful life devoted to his family, community, and the Nebraska Husker football team.

When Wayne was one year old, his family moved to Alliance, Nebraska, where he later graduated from Alliance High School in 1991. On August 21, 1998, he married the love of his life, Amanda Grant, and together they raised their two daughters.

Wayne was an avid Husker football fan and was rarely seen without his Husker gear. He was employed by BNSF Railway for 27 years, working as a machinist. In addition, Wayne and Amanda owned and operated Village Pizza in Hemingford. He was an active member of the Alliance Eagles Club, where he was an integral part of the Thursday night hamburger feed.

During a family vacation, Wayne discovered a new passion for pickleball and went on to create the Hemingford Outdoor Pickleball Community, sharing his enthusiasm with others.

Wayne is survived by his wife of 27 years, Amanda; their daughters Emily Knote (Provo, UT) and Sara Knote (Scottsbluff, NE); sibling Thomas Knote (Lincoln, NE); his in-laws Larry and Barbara Grant (Marsland, NE); brother-in-law Shawn (Stacey) Grant; sisters-in-law Rebecca (Nick) Wignall (Alliance, NE) and Melissa (JD) Langston (Brighton, CO); three aunts; numerous nieces, nephews, great-niece, great-nephews, and cousins; and his close friend and concert-going buddy, Bret Lessert.

He was preceded in death by his parents and grandparents, T.G. and Lottie Nicks, and Wayne and Christine Knote.

A memorial service will be held at the Alliance Eagles Club on Monday, November 3, at 2 p.m. To honor Wayne’s memory and Husker pride, the family requests that those attending wear Husker gear. In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions may be made to the Hemingford Volunteer Firefighters Association and the Alliance Eagles Club.
To plant trees in memory, please visit the Sympathy Store.

According to the Chief of Police at the Alliance Police Department, he stated there will be no more information released on this case. That does not sound like the transparency that the public deserves.

We join the entire community in mourning the loss of a good man who did not deserve to die like this.

Editor’s Note:

Investigating a crime and being able to imagine all potential circumstances is not unethical or immoral. Let us know if you want to join our investigative team. We live and exist to discover the truth in all situations and are making no accusations at this time.

We simply want the truth.

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Friday May 1 2026 - Scanner News - Panhandle Scanner News

It's time for Scanner News, and I'm your host, Brian Hale, brought to you by RNC Welding in Gering, Nebraska. Another swatting incident took place in the Panhandle yesterday. This one, Gering High School was the target. A series of this type of calls is happening nationwide, with selected Walmarts being targeted recently, and now schools. On Thursday the 30th, at approximately 12:32 PM, the Scotts Bluff County Communications Center received a call on a non-emergent phone line indicating there was a threat at Gering High School. Officers from the Gering Police Department and deputies from the Scotts Bluff County Sheriff's Office responded. School officials placed the building on lockdown out of abundance of caution. Law enforcement entered the building and were able to clear it without incident. The investigation revealed that this incident was a swatting call, and there was no threat to any students, staff, or visitors at the school. Swatting incidents are intended to elicit a large emergency response and disrupt the functions of the targeted location. If you have any information related to this incident, we ask that you contact the Gearing Police Department. Very busy night over scanner traffic. Early this morning, there was a two vehicle accident with injuries, as well as several traffic complaints and fire calls. There was even a call for a vehicle versus pedestrian accident near East 27th Street and First Avenue near Pioneer Park in Scottsbluff. Scanner traffic indicated a 14-year-old female was hit by a car. We continue to ask people to please respect speed limits and school zones and the safety of our children. Please use an abundance of caution in school zones. With all of the recent power outages, we installed a new tab on our website listing all of the local power companies and their outage maps. Look for it today under resources. That's panhandlescanner.com. That's going to do it for today's scanner news. Thanks again for listening and may God bless. I'm Brian Hale.

This Marathon Called Life (You're Not Finished Yet) - Elevate Your Day with Andi and Brian Hale

From You’re Not Finished Yet with Christine Caine on YouVersion But Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.” – Matthew 19:26 I love to run, though I’m totally not a serious runner. My idea of running is a five-mile slow jog, and when I say slow, I mean mothers pushing their babies in strollers can overtake me. My friend Dawn, the one I hike mountains with, is the real runner. She regularly competes in marathons and has built both the physical and mental endurance to go such distances. She’s run enough to know what it’s like to hit a wall while running, a concept I’ve never experienced because apparently I’ve never run far enough! Hitting a wall is a place runners can overcome only with their minds. It’s more mental than physical, even when the physical is excruciating. Dawn once explained it to me by describing what happened in her first marathon. She was 23 miles in when she hit the infamous wall. She had 36 minutes to cover the remaining 3.2 miles. It would not have been an issue had she not already run for miles and didn’t have searing pain pounding in her left hip. As she tells it, the left side of her brain (the rational side) told her to stop and walk the rest of the way. Thoughts like, Don’t worry about meeting the goal. People will understand when they realize how hot it is and how badly I hurt, thundered in her head. But just as loud, the right side of her brain thundered back, There is still hope! The race isn’t over yet! It’s still possible to meet my goal. Don’t stop running! Have you ever felt yourself in such a mental war? When your mind is screaming at you? In a race this happens when you hit a wall, when you have nothing left to give, when you’ve expended every ounce of energy and everything within you wants to quit. And yet, as Dawn experienced, somewhere deep inside, the flicker of a goal or dream begs to not be extinguished. But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong. – 2 Corinthians 12:9-10 I’ve been in such a place, where I hit a wall spiritually, mentally, and emotionally. But at the same time, I had the Word of God in my heart and mind. I had God’s promises resounding in me at the same time my mind was screaming for me to stop. And because of His promises, that flicker of hope, I was able to keep going by focusing my mind on God and His Word. Despite how many times my mind fought me to quit, I kept redirecting my mind away from what it wanted to think and toward what God’s Word said was true. Maybe you’re in such a place right now. What is your mind screaming at you? That it’s not possible? That it’s too late? That you’re not equipped? Not smart enough? Young enough? Old enough? Educated enough? You can win the war in your mind by renewing it with God’s words. You can endure by making God’s voice louder than any other voice in your head. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. – Romans 12:2 Prayer Heavenly Father, thank You for Your Word. Help me be more acquainted with what it says so I can be transformed by the renewing of my mind, and so I can get through any wall. In Jesus’ name, amen.

Self Help to God's Help (Free Me From Me) - Elevate Your Day with Andi and Brian Hale

Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. But that is not the way you learned Christ!— assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness. Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another. Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and give no opportunity to the devil. Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need. Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you. – Ephesians 4:17-32 ESV We’ve looked at performance and comparison. Avoiding is another way to keep self at the center. It tends to happen in one of two ways. First, on those rare occasions when we actually feel like we’re doing and saying all the right things, we avoid our inner brokenness by thinking too highly of ourselves. The second (and more common for me) way we avoid is through the deflated self. The moment we fixate on just how imperfect we are instead of participating in life, we get down on ourselves and look for ways to avoid it altogether. Whether you’re puffed up or deflated, you’re making the same mistake. You’re placing yourself at the center of this story, thus inheriting the unrelenting pressure that comes with it. The apostle Paul said, “You have taken off your old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator” (Colossians 3:9-10 NIV). Self-reliance, or what Paul elsewhere called living according to “the flesh,” puts an enormous weight on your shoulders. Because the problem with being the one in charge is you are the one in charge. Do you know what’s a lot better than self-help? God’s help. And that takes us to one of the wildest things Jesus said. On the night he was betrayed, he told his disciples, “It is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you” (John 16:7 ESV). Jesus called the Holy Spirit the Helper. And he basically told the disciples, “As great as it’s been to have me here in person these last few years, the Helper is the better option now.” We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions. Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace. – Romans 6:9-14 ESV The same is true for us today. We’ve got a much better option than self-help; we’ve got God’s help. It’s time to let the Helper do what the Helper does best. Today’s Truth Statement: I am created in the image of a self-surrendering God.

Self Care to Soul Care (Free Me From Me) - Elevate Your Day with Andi and Brian Hale

If Jesus’s invitation “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28 NIV) sounds like an empty promise to you, there’s a good chance one last obstacle to your freedom is standing in the way—control. Maybe you (like me) tend to turn God into a vending machine. Where you decide you’ll put in a certain number of songs worshipping or hours praying and, in return, God will move in the exact way you want him to. Maybe you figured at this point you wouldn’t have any questions left about faith or struggle with any doubts, but you still do. So you try to control those thoughts by pushing them into a back room in your soul and locking the door. Maybe you’ve become impatient with the long work of God and have started scouring the internet for those quick-fix solutions. You still show up to church and read your Bible and all that, but if you’re honest, you’re way more interested in practices where you can be at the center. The challenge of control has existed ever since Adam and Eve ran, hid, blamed, and sewed together fig leaves in the garden. If that reminds you of you, try a new perspective. Imagine yourself standing with King David and staring up at a starry night sky, contemplating the God who created the whole universe. David prays, When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them? (Psalm 8:3-4 NIV) The One who hangs constellations in the night sky is mindful of you. He cares for you. Not some future version of you who better reflects his image—the you right here and now. Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths. – Proverbs 3:5-6 ESV You don’t have to get stuck in your insecurities. You don’t have to perform. You don’t have to get caught in the comparison trap. You don’t have to run away from the present moment. You don’t have to try to control any of it. You can be free from you, enjoying the scandalous freedom of trusting God. And it finally will feel like rest for your weary soul. Today’s Truth Statement: I am created in the image of a self-giving God. We hope you are encouraged by this reading plan. To learn more about FREE ME FROM ME by Ryan Wekenman, click here.