A Douglas County jury convicted 44-year-old Omaha woman Erika Mims on all counts Monday in the killings of two men, finding that she lured both victims into a residence before shooting them and disposing of their bodies. The verdict closes out a case that stretched across an 11-month span of violence in 2022 and 2023, and Mims now awaits sentencing in mid-December.
According to KETV, Mims was convicted on two counts of first-degree murder, two counts of tampering with physical evidence and four separate felony weapons charges. The station reported that prosecutors laid out how Mims lured her victims into a home, shot them multiple times, then cleaned up and disposed of their bodies. Her sentencing date is now set for Dec. 17, the station noted.
Court filings detailed by the Journal Star laid out a timeline of escalating violence tied to Mims: wounding Ron Townsend in a March 2022 shooting, killing 46-year-old Lamar Nedd in July 2022, and killing Laron Hodges, 39, in February 2023. The same report noted that all three victims were shot with .22-caliber AR-style rifles.
A Survivor and Two Lives Lost
Townsend survived the earliest attack. Per the same account, prosecutors said Mims shot at Townsend at least 11 times on March 30, 2022, wounding him in the right shin. Mims is also charged with first-degree assault in connection with that separate shooting, according to KETV.
Nedd's killing followed months later. The Journal Star account stated that Nedd was shot and killed inside Mims' apartment in late July 2022, but his body was not found until Aug. 7, 2022. Hodges was the final victim: the same report said he was invited to Mims' apartment on Feb. 2, 2023, where he was shot, and his body was not discovered until March 10, 2023 — more than a month later.
Conflicting Details From Earlier Coverage
Reporting on the case has not always lined up cleanly. Earlier coverage identified Mims at various points as 41, 42 or 44 years old, while the conviction report from KETV lists her as 44. Pretrial reporting from the Journal Star also described a different set of charges — two murder counts, one attempted first-degree assault count, three firearm-use counts, three felon-in-possession counts and two evidence-tampering counts — than the two murder counts, two tampering counts and four weapons charges listed in the conviction report. Neither discrepancy has been reconciled in the available record.
The case was also covered locally by the Wahoo Newspaper, which confirmed the jury's Monday verdict against the Omaha woman. With sentencing now scheduled for Dec. 17, Mims faces the two first-degree murder convictions along with the tampering and weapons charges returned by the Douglas County jury.
