Fernando Caignet Aguilera was sleeping in a Miami park when he spied an alligator. He decided that it would be a good idea to put the metre-plus animal into a box and offer it to the staff of a nearby convenience store in exchange for a 12-pack of beer. While an undeterred Aguilera was attempting to sell the alligator to customers outside, the clerk rang the police. The alligator has been relocated, and Aguilera is in trouble with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.
A 41-year-old man in North Charleston, South Carolina, rang the police at shortly after midnight on Christmas morning. When officers arrived, Helen Williams, 44, told them that the man had fallen and cut himself. However, she too was covered in blood, so his story seemed more credible: He had returned home without beer, because the shops were closed, so she had hit and stabbed him with a ceramic squirrel. Williams is being charged with criminal domestic violence.
Also thirsty over the holidays was Rosie Pate of Memphis, Tennessee.
According to UPI reports, she was annoyed that her
grand-daughter wouldn't buy beer for her on New Year's Day. Pate told the
police that she slapped and scratched the younger woman and then rang
the emergency services. Police reports state that Pate asked the 911
dispatcher for 'assistance getting beer'. Despite having admitted to
doing so, she later said: 'I have lived to be 68 years old and I never dialled
no police to bring me beer.'
Pate was arrested for domestic assault and making a non-emergency 911
call.
Diario de Avisos reports that three police officers responding to a New Year's Day emergency call from Tenerife found a 24-year-old man wrapped up to his neck in a blanket in a car boot. When paramedics roused him to consciousness, he said that he vaguely recalled his brother, a cousin, and a friend placing him in the car boot the previous night because he was inebriated.
In other New Year's revelry, thelocal.de reports that a six-year-old boy in Hösbach, Germany, wandered into his parents' bedroom and found their intimate belongings. When he returned, he was sporting furry handcuffs that the various members of the family gathered at the home could not unfasten. The boy's mother and grandmother brought him to the local police station, where the handcuffs were removed.
Meanwhile, Boston police spokeswoman Nicole Grant reports on a New
Year's Eve party at which one woman asked another whether she would
like to 'hook up'. This aggravated the latter woman's boyfriend, and
the resulting screaming led the host of the party to start punching
the first woman for ruining the mood of the party.
Reportedly, he followed her when she fled the house, and another
physical altercation erupted outside - in which he bit off her left little toe.
Police in Oregon received several reports about Andrew Frey - first, that he had refused to pay a locksmith for services rendered and later that he was masturbating in front of the taps at Iggy's Bar and Grill, in Salem. By the time officers arrived at Iggy's, the 37-year-old Frey had moved his activities to the loo. Officers report that he resisted arrest and, after multiple Taser hits had no effect, fought off several officers. Finally, at least 15 police officers, from three counties, were able to restrain Frey, who later explained that the had used methamphetamine the previous day and had no recollection of recent events.
Chinese obstetrician Zhang Shuxia is on trial for selling at least seven
newborn babies to interested parties over the course of 2.5
years. Parents went to the police with suspicions of child abduction,
explaining that she had told them the babies were so ill that someone
else should care for them. Several of the babies have since been
found in neighbouring provinces.
Zhang, who has admitted her guilt, is a suspect in 26 further
cases. Four others who worked at the hospital are on trial in
connection with the case, including its former head.
A man attempted to flee the scene after crashing a stolen
sport-utility vehicle into the divider of the busy interstate highway south of San
Francisco. After running across the northbound lanes, he realised
that the road was elevated quite a way above the streets below and
that jumping would not be a sensible option. Neither was trying his
luck on the other side of the road: after getting into a fist fight
with concerned witnesses who were trying to stop him, he ran back across
traffic, climbed over the divider, and was then struck by quite a few
cars.
According to the California Highway Patrol's Michael Ferguson, the
pieces of corpse were intact enough that they could be sure the ID
carried by the man was not his own.
According to the newspaper al-Qabas, a woman in Kuwait filed for
divorce after roughly a week of wedded bliss, explaining that the way her new husband eats his
peas is such a 'shocking sight' that the problem could not be solved.
He scoops them up with bread rather than using a fork.
In another case, from last year, a Kuwaiti woman sought a divorce
because of toothpaste issues: 'We are always arguing. I keep telling
him that he should squeeze in the end of the tube, but he stubbornly
refuses and keeps squeezing it in the middle.'
In a slightly more romantic item, an Oklahoma police officer spotted Justin Harrel near the Christmas display in Elk City's central park and, noting that there were warrants out for the 32-year-old man's arrest, handcuffed him and began marching him off. However, Harrel then explained that he had been about to propose marriage to his girlfriend. The officer told Harrel that he could complete the marriage proposal, which Harrel's girlfriend accepted. It then fell to the police officer to take the engagement ring from Harrel's coat pocket and hand it to the girlfriend.
Finally, a man in Mooroopna, Australia, decided to hide from his girlfriend, then jump out and surprise her. The nude man climbed into a top-loading washing machine, in what police sergeant Michelle De Araugo called 'a game gone wrong'. Firefighters, paramedics, and a search-and-rescue squad arrived on the scene. The man had a smoke while waiting to be freed, in a process that took about 20 minutes and involved use of olive oil as a lubricant.
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© 2014 Anna Shefl