Crash: Item entity <####> has no item?!

I loaded up a fairly new world which I think was created in Minecraft 1.8.8. After playing for about 25 minutes, the game crashed with the following notable errors in the launcher:

[16:49:20] [Chunk Batcher 0/WARN]: Needed to grow BufferBuilder buffer: Old size 524288 bytes, new size 2621440 bytes.
[16:49:21] [Chunk Batcher 1/WARN]: Needed to grow BufferBuilder buffer: Old size 524288 bytes, new size 2621440 bytes.
[16:49:27] [Chunk Batcher 1/WARN]: Needed to grow BufferBuilder buffer: Old size 524288 bytes, new size 2621440 bytes.
[16:51:13] [Client thread/ERROR]: Item entity 13174 has no item?!
[16:51:13] [Client thread/ERROR]: Item entity 13174 has no item?!
[16:54:21] [Chunk Batcher 0/WARN]: Needed to grow BufferBuilder buffer: Old size 524288 bytes, new size 2621440 bytes.
[16:54:55] [Chunk Batcher 0/WARN]: Needed to grow BufferBuilder buffer: Old size 524288 bytes, new size 2621440 bytes.
AL lib: (EE) alc_cleanup: 1 device not closed
Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM warning: Using incremental CMS is deprecated and will likely be removed in a future release

Steps to reproduce:
Unknown, but the crash occurred after I did the following:
1) Cut down some trees
2) Ran across a prairie
3) Destroyed multiple tall grasses
4) Place three torches on dirt blocks
5) Tried to place five upside-down spruce stairs on the side of my building.

The game crashed when I right-clicked to place another stair block.

Please note that Java has been updated recently on this computer, and I suspect this is related to the issue. You see in the launcher message that Java HotSpot displays a message and mentions that some deprecated functionality is being used.

Attached is the manual debug crash log, "crash-2015-11-22_17.08.56-client.txt".