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April 2011


7 April 2011

Thirteen people tried to sneak into the United States from Mexico by dressing up as Marines. They had authentic, stolen uniforms; real US government number plates; and military haircuts. However, Border Patrol spokesman Michael Jimenez said, their entry raised red flags because the plate number had been altered amateurishly and each of the 13 had a name tag reading 'Perez'. Three Perezes are being held as witnesses, while the other 10 have been sent back to Mexico.

In another case involving illegal entry, a 27-year-old woman thought to have stolen from a Scranton, Pennsylvania, bar was arrested after crashing her car. A search revealed three bags of heroin in Karin Mackaliunas's jacket, but more was yet to be discovered. Officer Nancy Bauman noticed her fidgeting suspiciously in the back of the patrol car and began a more thorough search back at the station. At this point, Mackaliunas asked to speak to a superior officer and admitted to having stashed drugs in her vagina. In hospital, the tally was put at 54 bags of heroin, 31 empty bags, 8.5 prescription pill, and $51.22 in cash, according to the Scranton Times Tribune.

Wearing a badge and toting a gun, former police officer Edward Justin LaPorte arrived at a massage parlour in southern California to perform an inspection. This inspection involved a 30-minute back rub. After that, he explained that it would also require a frontal massage and a $200 inspection fee.
The manager was suspicious and rang the local licensing offices. The 47-year-old LaPorte left when a real inspector arrived. He was tracked down on the basis of his licence plate number.

David Pease, 33, was in a hurry to get where he was going, so he didn't let a simple car accident slow him down. The woman whose car he hit followed him to his destination, the Kane County, Illinois, courthouse, where he was due to begin a jail term for driving while intoxicated and without a licence. Pease blamed the accident on his girlfriend but still isn't off the hook.

Jerry Blasingame's dog defecated in neighbour Terry Tenhet's yard. The ensuing argument led to some shooting: Blasingame says that Tenhet shot his dog and then threatened to kill both Tenhet and the dog 'over poop'. Blasingame responded to this by fetching his own gun. He says that Tenhet 'shot once; I returned fire'. Tenhet, 52, was hit in the chest, arm, and hip. He is in hospital. Blasingame, 60, is in jail. Both men probably are in trouble.

A Korean man, not so helpfully identified as Kim, posted a photo online of a loaf of bread containing a dead rat. The 35-year-old man claimed that he'd bought the loaf from a leading bakery franchise. However, the photo was found to be faked and Kim was found to be the owner of a branch of another bakery franchise. The Seoul Central District Court gave him an 18-month custodial sentence 'because he had intentionally planned the crime, causing losses to the rival bakery's business and spreading distrust about food safety among the public'.

According to AFP reports, Igor Blinnikov too has been given an 18-month sentence. He'd broken into a computer system and altered the contents of a video billboard beside a Moscow highway. Motorists were treated to about 10 minutes of a pornographic video in what he later termed a 'joke that went wrong'. Congested roads were reported at the time.

Indian policeman Mahesh Rajguru was fearless and felt that he deserved a medal for this. Accordingly, while on personal protection duty at a former politician's house, he shot himself, then claimed that six men had attempted an attack and then made their escape after wounding him. Additional Commissioner of Police Arun Macya said that senior officials arriving on the scene 'found his statements and crime scene suspicious'. Rajguru then admitted to having shot himself in the stomach and arm in order to claim a gallantry award.
Investigators found that all of the shell casings belonged to Rajguru's own gun, and also that he'd been keeping narcotics at his home.

Early-morning screams for help at New York's Paesan's Pizza revealed a grease-covered man dangling from an air event above a hot fryer. Timothy Cipriani, 46, told the police that 'he thought he was going to die' when the vent opened over the fryer. He might now think twice before trying to break into restaurants via rooftop air ducts.

After a three-hour standoff, police officers in San Antonio, Texas, used tear gas to force an angry gun-toting man from the hotel room where he had barricaded himself after firing at police officers. The officers had been called in after he'd fired at a Taco Bell employee. According to restaurant manager Brian Tillerson, the man's rage had initially been prompted by the price of a Beefy Crunch Burrito increasing from 99 cents to $1.49.

Police in Albuquerque, New Mexico, arrested a woman who was found digging up someone else's back garden. Ebelyn Saenz, 28, had explained to the woman there that she'd come to retrieve money that belonged to a Mexican cartel. A psychic had told the shovel-packing Saenz that the money was there. She is in jail now.

Florida's Helen Staudinger just wanted a kiss. When neighbour Dwight Bettner, 53, refused, the 92-year-old Staudinger fired a pistol four times at his house. A shower of breaking window glass interrupted former cop Bettner's phone call. His car was also damaged. Staudinger has been arrested, and Bettner said that he'll probably move away, as 'I don't need the stress or the hassle - I thought this only happened to younger people'.

A private security guard at a federal office building in Detroit found a package abandoned outside and put it in the 'lost and found' area. A few weeks later, someone decided to x-ray it. The Federal Protection Service summoned the police bomb squad, who took it back outside and safely detonated it.

An air stewardess struggling to lift her free luggage allowance at a German airport attracted the attention of a customs officer. The thousands of one- and two-euro coins in her bag led to discovery of a coin fraud operation involving coins that had been removed from circulation through separation of their inner portion and outer ring. After the coins were shipped to China to be scrapped, they were simply put back together and returned to the EU, where some Lufthansa employees cashed them in at the Bundesbank.

William Logan, of Lincoln, Nebraska, masterminded a slightly smaller operation. The 40-year-old man was caught on video as he entered the laundry room of a block of flats, where he removed a hoover from his backpack, pulled open the coin tray of a laundry machine, and sucked out the money. He repeated the procedure with several other machines.
Logan has been ticketed and no longer has possession of the vacuum cleaner.

Keleigh Townsend refused a naked man's request for clothes. The man, who had just fallen through the ceiling of her Mississippi home, therefore just grabbed a coat and ran outside. Townsend rang the police, who explained that the man was wanted fugitive Patrick Williams, who lived in the same block of flats and had escaped police earlier by hoisting himself into the crawl space above his flat. He'd then decided to crawl between units.
He has been arrested.

California's Michelle Elaine Astumian was dreading her court date: she was to be sentenced for forging drug prescriptions. Astumian, 41, therefore presented a doctor's note asking for a postponement. The prosecutor rang the relevant physician, who confirmed that the note indeed was a forgery.
At this point, the judge ordered Astumian to be taken into custody, so she collapsed to the floor and was taken to a local hospital by ambulance. She is to be sentenced later.

Officers with Ontario's city police were called to the scene of a domestic dispute in the wee hours. A man was trying to force his way through the window of his ex-girlfriend's basement flat after she'd kicked him out. The man fled but was quickly found despite his cunning camouflage: he was hiding behind a curtain, attached to its rod. In the middle of a nearby park. Police said that the 27-year-old man was intoxicated at the time.

In another 'alcohol may have been involved' story, Thomas Johnson and Seth Davis of Massachusetts were apparently 'goofing around', roughhousing near the loo in the back of the bus after a group tour of New Hampshire brew pubs, when things went wrong. Fellow passenger Sherry Clement says she heard a thump, the air grew cold, and people found the loo window open. She says: 'I went to the front of the bus to tell the driver, and he said "there's no way people fell out of the bus". I said: "Dude, I'm telling you, two people are missing."'
The men were found in the breakdown lane. Davis, 34, has been hospitalised, and Johnson was declared dead.

The Swedish National Board for Consumer Disputes has ordered the organisers of a colon-cleansing course to refund a woman's admission fee because they had provided inadequate toilet facilities. The woman had been forced to empty her bowels outside. 'The board assumes that the vast majority would prefer, and even take for granted, the possibility to defecate in private, unless otherwise apparent from the event's information' stated the decision.

In the US state of Georgia, we have Eugene Ashley, who explains that he doesn't remember what he did while drunk. The police and children's welfare workers, however, have a longer memory. In 2009, he tattooed 'DB', for 'Daddy's Boy', on his now-three-year-old son's shoulder. The tattoo was discovered during a home visit by social workers. The 26-year-old Ashley will no longer have contact with his son.
The prosecutor has termed the case 'egregious', while the judge has stated that 'I am trying to figure out why this is illegal. Is it illegal to pierce your little girl's ears?'

In the country of Georgia, interior ministry spokesman Zura Gvenetadze said that a 75-year-old woman 'found [a] cable while collecting scrap metal and cut it with a view to stealing it'. In so doing, she cut off Internet access for much of Georgia and about 90% of users in Armenia. She has been arrested for damaging property and faces up to three years in prison.
The head of marketing for Georgian Railway Telecom, who own the relevant seriously damaged fibre-optic cable, said: 'I cannot understand how this lady managed to find and damage the cable. It has robust protection and such incidents are extremely rare.'

New York's Jason Maloney had seen a television programme in which a small aeroplane landed on an Alaska beach. That looked cool, so, while flying his own plane, he asked an air traffic controller at John F. Kennedy airport whether he'd be allowed to land on the local beach. After being told that such landings are reserved for emergencies, he waited a short while, then reported that 'my engine might be running a little teensy bit rough' and sought permission for a precautionary landing. The controller said: 'Landing will be at your own risk' so Maloney then claimed to be a paramedic with a sick passenger on board.
Police units and ambulances met him on the beach. Maloney's response of 'What's the big deal? It happens all the time in Alaska' was met by a detective's terse 'Welcome to New York'.

In Pakistan, brothers Arif and Farman Ali were found to be responsible for a recently deceased woman vanishing from her grave. An investigation of the disappearance led to their house, where, a police official said, '[t]hey had cut a part of the corpse and were cooking it when we appeared on the scene'. The pair allegedly have also admitted to eating local dogs. There is no clear motive.
'We have charged them under the anti-terrorism act,' said Inspector Abdur Rahman of Darya Khan.


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© 2011 Anna Shefl