An accidental phone call to emergency services in Danville, Kentucky,
meant that dispatchers learned the details in real time as Robert
Bourne and David Grigsby discussed their plans to rob a barbecue
restaurant.
Inside Mike Sutherland's busy eatery, police chief Tony Gray
soon pushed back his chair and entered the car park, where the two
would-be robbers were sitting in a vehicle. The men were arrested
only for public intoxication - Gray doesn't believe they had any real
plans to go through with their plans. Nonetheless, Sutherland has
made clear that Bourne and Grigsby are now former regulars at his
establishment.
Meanwhile in Louisiana, Assumption Parish Sheriff Leland Falcon reported on a misdirected text message from Dwayne Paul Herbert. The 39-year-old man wanted information about where to make a delivery of crystal meth. The sheriff's officer who received the text message answered with the necessary details for the drug sale, and Herbert obliged by bringing the methamphetamine and two firearms to the agreed point. He has been arrested.
Melissa Kitcher recently decided to run her first half-marathon, in
Sarasota County, Florida. Some way through the race, which takes
place on Jeep trails, she wondered: 'Wow, how do people run these
trails? I can't even walk them.' The answer was that they don't:
In the absence of sign-posting, she had run about 10 km off course.
Kitcher was located about 12 hours after setting off on the wrong
Jeep trail. Race director Thierry Rouillard later said that she will
receive a gift package that includes an award for the longest Trail
Hog half-marathon in the history of the event Kitcher plans to try
again in March, on a street circuit.
The Kazan Reporter Web site tells of Ruslan Nurtdinov, who bashed his car through the terminal door at Tatarstan's Kazan Airport. He drove past the check-in desk, to a departure gate where there is a railway connection. In court, the 40-year-old man later explained that he had planned his route carefully, in order to greet his lady friend at the railway platform. 'I was fighting for love!' he declared. The airport administration declared that alcohol too was a factor.
The Santa Fe New Mexican reports that epidemiologists with the state health department are investigating a case in which 70 people fell ill after a luncheon in December. This was the Department of Health's Christmas party, attended by about 200 people. Health Secretary Lynn Gallagher said that the outbreak is likely to have been caused by Bacillus cereus or Clostridium perfringens on the food.
Shortly before Christmas, a man rang the police in Nashua, New Hampshire, to report having just chased off a burglar who had kicked in the door. Officers didn't need to look far: they found a man on a rooftop about two blocks away, with Christmas gifts and ornaments. The man was not Santa Claus but Carl Kirsch, hiding out on his own roof. The gifts have been returned to the victim, and Kirsch has been charged with burglary.
Brenda Guerrero, 52, decided to put a cute jumper on the family dog, Scarface. The pit bull mix had other ideas and attacked her, causing serious injuries. Guerrerro's husband, Ismael, tried to pull the dog off her, and he too was attacked. Finally, their son, 22-year-old Antoine Harris, stabbed Scarface in the head and neck with a knife, giving his parents time to escape into the house. He too suffered injuries before fleeing. When the police arrived with a bean-bag gun and stun gun, the dog pulled the prongs out of their Taser and entered the home. In the end, animal control officers' tranquiliser gun ultimately did the trick. Scarface has been put down, and the Guerrerros are in hospital.
When police officers stopped Ross Lebeau for failing to use his car
lights correctly, he made the mistake of admitting to possessing
marijuana and then consenting to allow the police to search his
vehicle. The officers found a sock that Lebeau's father had put in
the boot of the car as a 'life hack' to prevent the windscreen from
fogging up. Lebeau didn't know what was inside the sock, but the
sheriff's office stated that 'these "nuggets" tested positive for
methamphetamine'.
His father later reported that the substance was kitty litter, and
lab tests confirmed that no illegal materials were present. The
charges against Lebeau have been dropped, but he wants an apology too
and is trying to get the arrest expunged from his record.
Shortly after midnight, New York's Gjyste Margilaj heard a crash near
her ground-floor flat's kitchen vent and then 'someone panting and
breathing like they were in obvious pain - they were freaking out'.
She opened the vent so that the man in her wall, who was shouting for
help by this point, could breathe. She then rang the emergency
services, still not entirely convinced that the whole thing wasn't a
prank.
More than 40 firefighters converged on the scene to extract the
30-year-old man from the narrow shaft, using tin snips. When he
emerged, clad in only underwear, it emerged that he was a new resident
of the building and had been with friends on the roof. He told
emergency crews that he had decided to return to his flat via the
ventilation system, though he had earlier told Margilaj something
about a swimming pool in the basement.
According to the Belfast Telegraph, a man was looking for a place to park his Mini Cooper. An ambulance was blocking the desired area, so the unnamed man, age 50, released the parking brake and moved the emergency vehicle, while paramedics were treating a woman in the back. Investigating officer Nick Easener said that authorities are looking for the man, whose actions could have caused very serious problems for the patient, who was receiving care for a life-threatening condition at the time.
In Pennsylvania, police sergeant Darrick Keppley happened upon the scene of a car accident, where a vehicle had skidded off the icy road. Inside were a surgeon, a surgical assistant, and a donated liver. The team had been heading between York Hospital and Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, where a patient was already on the operating table. With lights and siren on, Keppley ferried the team and liver to the destination hospital, and the transplant is reported to have gone 'very, very well'.
Antonieta Roble Saouda caught prison guards' attention with her struggles to roll a pink suitcase out of Venezuela's José Antonio Anzoátegui prison. The 25-year-old woman hadn't had such a hard time with her carry-in bag when first arriving there, to visit boyfriend Ibrain Jose Vargas Garcia. Sure enough, guards opened the suitcase and found him curled up within, alongside some of his daughter's toys. He may now have time added to his initial 9+ years for vehicle theft, Saouda has been arrested, and the six-year-old daughter - who had accompanied her on the prison visit - is now in state care.
In New Jersey, brothers Kevin and Jason Hemmerich entered the
Hopatcong police station. Kevin, who was there to turn himself in on
an outstanding warrant, was wearing a bunny costume. He also was
carrying an air horn, which he began sounding repeatedly. Told to
cease, he did not. Then officer Nicholas Maresca, Jr, asked him
why he was doing this and slapped him in the face.
Jason had been videoing the proceedings, so Maresca has been charged
with simple assault on the basis of the recording. Charges of
harassment, obstruction, and resisting arrest were filed against Kevin
and similar ones against Jason, but these were dropped on account of
insufficient evidence. Kevin now faces a lone charge of disorderly
conduct.
Two teenagers decided to sneak through a gap in the fence of an abandoned prison in Illinois and play around. One of the girls managed to lock herself inside a cell at Collins Street Prison, according to Joliet Fire Department Battalion Chief Mike Stromberg, whose department took the resulting phone call. Firefighters broke through a brick wall to free the teenager. While 'her jail time was about 45 minutes', she and her friend will still face charges of trespassing.
A police officer in Menominie, Wisconsin, pulled over a university student for speeding. The young man explained to Officer Martin Folczyk that, scheduled to give a classroom presentation, he had been rushing to a friend's home for help - the friend knew how to tie a necktie. Folczyk asked for the tie and then the young man's driving licence and proof of insurance. Folczyk tied and adjusted the tie and let the student off with just a warning.
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© 2017 Anna Shefl