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January 2023


14 January 2023

Citing a litany of 'fraudulent schemes' concocted during a 2021 case, a judge has barred Devon M. Barclay from practising law in Colorado's federal bankruptcy court for three years. Among the offences listed in the 46-page suspension order are recommending that his clients infect a rival attorney with SARS-CoV-2, forging signatures, trying to manipulate the filing-fee system, and promising an ultimately whistle-blowing third-party creditor kick-backs for supporting false contentions. Barclay alleges in return that Judge Thomas McNamara merely has a vendetta against him.

A look back at the holidays directs our gaze to Angarrack, Cornwall, where at least nine people in Santa Claus suits drove a vintage armoured personnel carrier into the village. The Father Christmases, who bore more than a passing resemblance to inebriated historical re-enactment enthusiasts, should have stuck with an airborne sleigh and reindeer - their tracks were set wider than the local roads.
Devon and Cornwall Police officers had ample time to respond to an alert that 'a tank had caused damage to a parked car'. According to a fisherman surnamed Jepson, the group's pub crawl was interrupted for at least two hours while they dealt with being stuck, someone falling from the back of the vehicle, and requests for photos.

When advised that his wife would be transported to hospital by ambulance, a 45-year-old Utah man phoned in a threat to 'blow up the hospital and throw spikes in the ambulance bay'. A security guard advised him not to make threats and that the police would be informed. The Spanish Fork police officer who followed up on the case reported that our hero only reiterated that, as a painter, he could - and indeed would - explode the facility were he to receive an ambulance bill. Not long after that, he expanded his repertoire to threats of blowing up the ambulance itself and was arrested.

Our next item comes from that Clippings mainstay Florida, where Brevard County sheriff's officers Andrew Lawson and Austin Walsh were roommates. According to Sheriff Wayne Ivey, the two were taking a break from a late-night video-gaming session when Lawson, 22, 'jokingly' pointed what he'd thought to be a non-loaded handgun at the 23-year-old Walsh. The astute reader can guess what happened next.
Ivey reported that a devastated Lawson turned himself in after his best friend's death and that investigation into this 'extremely dumb and totally avoidable accident' is continuing.

Also in Florida, an SUV rear-ended another vehicle and then barrelled through the front windows of a West Melbourne retail store and showroom, killing the 53-year-old man behind the wheel and igniting much of the stock at Phantom Fireworks. Staff escaped injury, while 30 firefighters had a more protracted ordeal on their hands as shells and mortars shot across the car park.
Passer-by Richard Griffin pointed out that spectators complicated matters, in that 'those things can go 100 yards or more when you shoot them straight in the air [...] and I could not believe how close people were' to the sparkling blaze.

Kentucky's Joheim Bandy was two years into a 13-year prison sentence for robbery and assault when he received a full and complete pardon on Governor Matt Bevin's final days in office. In the three years since, Bandy, now 20, managed to rack up charges in three separate strangulation cases. A jury has heard one of these so far, finding him guilty.
Another of the hundreds of pardon recipients was Patrick Baker, a murderer whose family had raised funds for Bevin. He has now been sentenced to a 42-year prison term for another drugs-linked killing.

Although Missouri's Reginald Bagley is only just nearing retirement age, he has amassed $197,329 in Social Security benefits since 1 April 1994. It is no coincidence that his mother died on 12 March 1994. His attorney characterised the case thus: 'The money just kept being used and kept coming in and kept being used'; by the time the Social Security Administration wondered why the woman's Medicare benefits weren't being used, he was 'in over his head'.
Bagley, whose response to the SSA's letter was merely to close the relevant bank account, has pleaded guilty to felonious theft of money belonging to the United States. He could face prison time and fines of up to 1.25 times his ill-gotten gains.

Eight social-media friends, aged 13-16, decided to meet up in person in Toronto, where their actions caught the attention of the police's homicide unit. Within the space of three minutes, the teenaged girls allegedly approached a man and woman who were smoking outside a homeless shelter, tried to take the woman's alcohol, and stabbed her newly homeless protector badly enough that said 59-year-old man died not long after paramedics arrived.
The girls have been linked to a similar but less deadly 'swarming' earlier in the evening. They face charges of second-degree murder.

After a concerned parent in Newport News, Virginia, reported that a boy at her son's primary school had shown off 'golden shiny bullets' and was considering bringing 'his gun' too, officials checked with the bullet-toting child's parents and reassured her that only a Nerf bullet - not known for shininess or goldness - had been involved. They also pointed out that the school has metal-detectors installed.
The following week saw a six-year-old boy there raise his mother's handgun during a lesson and fire a single round into teacher Abby Zwerner's chest. Students reported that, after the deliberate shooting, a member of staff restrained the boy while Zwerner, 25, shepherded her other charges into another classroom before staggering to the front office with a 'call 911; I've been shot' request.
She is recovering from life-threatening injuries while Mayor Phillip Jones, in his first week in office, wrestles with the state's application of the 'infancy doctrine' to detention and prosecution.

An official complaint about a Wells Fargo executive's behaviour on a Tata-run Air India flight in November has roused the airline to action. A 72-year-old woman wrote that, after a fellow business-class passenger drunkenly urinated on her, she'd had to endure much of the trip between New York and Delhi in her saturated seat while other seats were available. The cabin crew did spray disinfectant on her shoes and bag, and they gave her disposable slippers and pyjamas so that she could shed her urine-soaked clothes. They also - against her express wishes - brought the offender to her to apologise profusely for what he'd done while 'sleepy'.
In recent weeks, the police undertook a multi-city hunt for the man, 34-year-old Shankar Mishra, who had turned off his mobile phone. They arrested him after a stake-out and have sought statements from airline staff. Wells Fargo have sacked him as Vice President of Operations for India. And Air India have given him a one-month flight ban.
At a hearing, he has now claimed that the woman urinated on herself, though this contradicts accounts such as that of US physician Sugata Bhattacharjee, whose same-day complaint to Air India about his seat-row-mate's actions 'went nowhere'.

Investigation of a Colorado undertaker's sale of gold fillings expanded to cover more than 500 corpses sold by Sunset Mesa Funeral Home director Megan Hess without relatives' consent - and sometimes against their express wishes. This is how one woman discovered that her father's remains were not in her urn but in a human-body exhibit abroad, and some pacifists posthumously contributed to explosives research. Not all purchasers were happy either, with several being informed that HIV or hepatitis was the cause of death listed for the 'disease-free' bodies posted or flown to them.
Hess, the 46-year-old owner of the relevant funeral home, crematory, and body broker's, has been sentenced to 20+ years in prison, with her mother receiving a 15-year sentence for assisting in the three businesses' problematic operations.

Leo Lamont Toney, 42, placed an order with Primo's Pizza, in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. When the delivery driver started to leave without providing the fizzy drink that he expected, Toney pulled him inside the home as a hostage, apparently in hopes of drunkenly negotiating the release of a carbonated beverage to his custody. Per the driver's later police report, pushing past Toney and unlocking the door secured him his freedom. Toney, on the other hand, could end up imprisoned for false imprisonment.


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