Police in Hartford, Connecticut, reported that 20-year-old Angel Rolon lost control of his sport utility vehicle, crashing into parked cars and then rolling the vehicle. Rolon explained that the two baby snakes in his trouser pockets had escaped shortly before and that he and a passenger were simply trying to catch them near the accelerator and brake pedals at the time of the accident. Animal control officers captured the pet snakes later.
New York tow-truck driver Nicholas Sparks admitted that he'd been
having a mobile phone conversation when he crashed into a car and then
drove through a fence and into a house before rolling into a swimming pool.
Contributing to the accident was that he was using a second mobile
phone simultaneously, to compose text messages.
The woman driving the car he was towing suffered head injuries, and
her eight-year-old niece sustained minor injuries.
A sheriff's deputy in Michigan's Decatur Township asked a 49-year-old woman to cease her repeated requests for her neighbours to give her money for cigarettes. The woman then asked the deputy to lend her money for cigarettes. He declined. When she tried bargaining for various amounts of money, he arrested her for disorderly conduct.
Reuters reports that two Swedes on holiday in Italy caused a surprise for themselves with their GPS unit. The couple didn't notice that they had typed 'Carpi' rather than 'Capri' into the unit, until they visited the northern industrial town's tourist information office and asked how to get to the Blue Grotto. They were only 650 kilometres from the island resort they had intended to visit. Giovanni Medici, a spokesman for Carpi's regional government, said that the surprised couple simply 'got back in the car and started driving south'.
Otty Sanchez is accused of beheading her three-week-old son with a knife
and two samurai swords and then eating some of his body parts. San Antonio,
Texas, police chief William McManus reported that Sanchez ate part of
the child's brain and bit off three of his toes. She then stabbed
herself twice.
McManus said that authorities may have missed some warning signs, such as that
Sanchez had stopped taking her medication for schizophrenia, was
depressed after giving birth, and was in a home with swords. The
boy's father, whom Sanchez had told of her mental illness a week
before the killing and who does take his anti-psychotics, said that
she'd seemed fine.
Media in Jefferson County, Missouri, report that a local man has placed a sign reading 'Registered Offender' in his window. There is no record of the man being on the sex offender list or having a substantial criminal record. There is, however, record of a neighbouring lessor being unhappy that the sign is discouraging families with children from renting his home. The man refused to comment on the point of the sign.
A 54-year-old man tried to buy Park Place and Boardwalk from a female friend in a game of Monopoly at her home in Fraser, Michigan. When she refused, he hit her in the head and broke her glasses. Police lieutenant Dan Kolke reported that the man was arrested and charged with misdemeanour assault and battery. There is no report yet as to whether he will get out of jail free.
According to AP reports, a woman in Hildesheim, Germany, asked mechanics to drive her car back to her house and park it in her garage when it was repaired, leaving the keys and papers in her mailbox. Later, she collected the keys and papers, but the car was nowhere to be found, so she reported it stolen. That was two years ago. The 82-year-old woman now has her car back. It was found under a layer of dust in her neighbour's garage.
The Swedish embassy in Berlin invited 60 young people from around Europe to a special lunch prompted by the work of a Swedish group for sufferers of coeliac disease. Speaking for the embassy, Andreas von Beckerath said that about 12 of the attendees became ill and began vomiting at the meal, after being served pasta that contains a gluten they could not tolerate. 'This is a very regrettable incident, especially for the Swedish ambassador, who is allergic to gluten herself,' he added.
In Utah, Weber County Sheriff's Captain Klint Anderson reports that officers were called in to respond to reports of a child driving recklessly. The seven-year-old boy proceeded to evade officers in a car chase, driving through several stop signs before parking at his family's home and running upstairs. When officers spoke to the boy's father, 'they had to explain to him they had chased his car', Anderson said. The boy, who is too young to be prosecuted, explained that he'd taken the car because he didn't want to go to church.
A slightly older boy wanted to go on a joy ride in a Cincinnati park. The boy, age 11, decided to hijack one of a pair of scooters belonging to an eight- and 10-year-old boy. To accomplish this, he brandished a toy gun. The boys rode away rather than surrender, and their assailant was taken to a juvenile detention centre.
Police in Greenacres, Florida, report that a 32-year-old man entered a
local restaurant and asked for change for a $10 note. When the
cashier asked to see the $10, the man reportedly began screaming 'I
want change!' and then grabbed about $40 from a tip box. He then
hefted the till and ran out.
Meanwhile, police officers had just finished watching security
camera footage connected with a theft of lottery tickets at a nearby
convenience store. As they emerged from the shop, they saw the man
running down the street with the cashier's till. He was arrested for
stealing the tips, the till (containing $300), and also those lottery
tickets.
According to the Daily Telegraph, a 26-year-old woman from Crete,
later named as Marina Fanouraki, is facing an investigation for
inflicting injuries on a British man in a club at the resort
of Malia. According to a police statement, the Briton had begun
waving his genitalia at a group of women and 'forcibly fondled' her.
After asking him to leave her alone, she poured a glassful of sambuca on the
genitals. He continued his advances, whereupon she grabbed someone's
cigarette lighter and set the alcohol on fire. She later turned herself
in to police.
The parents of Briton Stuart Feltham, who is recovering at the
private St. George clinic with second-degree burns, tell his side of the story: he was
sitting on a bar stool talking to another man when Fanouraki threw
'some party trick fuel' from behind the bar at him. According to his
father, his genitals weren't even burned, while the Daily
Telegraph reports that sources at St. George clinic indicate
otherwise.
A minister with the Church of Sweden posted comments on a Christian dating site saying things such as: 'You look really drab and dreary. You probably have to pay for sex.' The operators of the site, Seventh Heaven, provided the minister's supervisors with copies of the comments, and he was stripped of his collar. The man is suing the site for lost income, and the Swedish Data Inspection Board is investigating the site operators' actions.
In another story from Sweden, police raided the home of a 33-year-old Halmstad man in connection with abuse and illegal imprisonment allegations. In the home, they saw a photo of the man dancing with the mascot of Gothenburg's Liseberg amusement park. The problem with this is that the man had collected the equivalent of 300,000 euros since 2005 to pay people to help him with daily tasks associated with being wheelchair-bound. The Social Insurance Agency is investigating.
The Times reports that an illegal immigrant sneaked into the UK via the Channel Tunnel. This may or may not be an unusual occurrence. What is worthy of note is that the coach under which he hid was contracted by the UK Border Agency and was carrying at least 20 border control agents. The man was spotted dropping from the bus to the road, but the agents were unable to catch him, and he remains at large.
George Vera was arrested for selling illegal copies of compact discs and sent to Texas's Harris County Jail. While in jail, Vera confessed to a guard that he was carrying a 9 mm pistol. The 225-kilo Vera had been searched at multiple jail facilities, but the weapon was hidden in his rolls of fat. He now faces additional charges.
Betty Lichtenstein, 56, was happily working as a nurse at a clinic in Norwalk, Connecticut, when trouble arrived in connection with her designation as 'Nurse of the Year'. After a dinner feting her accomplishments in nursing, it came to light that she had received no such honour - she had paid for the dinner herself. It also emerged she was not a nurse.
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© 2009 Anna Shefl