Three teenagers were convinced that a cheque-cashing business in
Commerce City, Colorado, offered ripe pickings for the criminally
minded. When emerging from Hi Lo Check Cashing with the haul from
the ensuing hold-up, this trio of masked and armed youths were proved
correct: their getaway car was no longer where they'd left it.
The police successfully chased down two of the youths while a fourth
criminal got away with the vehicle. In a further 'turnabout in foul
play is fair play' touch, the vehicle may have 'already been stolen',
according to authorities.
A woman showed up at the Atibaia, Brazil, police station with the
announcement 'I came to introduce myself, because I just cut off my
husband's penis'. The 34-year-old woman explained that, having
tempted him into the bedroom and tied him to the bed, she'd razored
off her spouse's appendage as retaliation for sexual intercourse with
her 15-year-old niece. Before flushing the problematic penis down the
loo - she had 'heard that it was possible to reattach it' - she took a
photograph of it for posterity.
While the 39-year-old man's condition is unclear, hers is that of an
inmate awaiting trial for attempted murder.
Razors aren't the only tool of mayhem to feature in this set of Clippings. The Catholic health-care organisation Hospital Sisters Health System has decided to remove all crucifixes from the emergency departments and patient rooms of its 15 Midwestern US hospitals. They explain that 'the general increase in healthcare workers experiencing workplace violence' is behind the decision, which affects both metal and wooden crosses. With Management of Aggressive Behaviors training having proved insufficient, a safer alternative 'keeping with the Franciscan standard' is to be implemented.
A Florida family suspected foul play when their cat died. Among their
reasons were a neighbour's threats earlier in the day to use poison for
keeping their pets out of her yard and the fact that their other cat
and their pregnant Chihuahua died a few hours later.
Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd reported that the neighbour in
question, Tamesha Knighten, denied the killings with claims that
'she's a nurse and had too much to lose'. She also denied owning a
foam bowl found nearby with a 'meaty substance' plus pesticide;
however, security cameras had captured a gloved Knighten handling it.
The 51-year-old woman then stated that she leaves out chicken with
'special seasoning' for neighbourhood critters.
Knighten faces three counts of felonious cruelty to animals.
Animals have something to fear elsewhere in Florida too: Pinellas County's Rudy Wilcox. Witnessing this 45-year-old man defecating on a dead possum 'in full view of the motoring public during busy traffic hours', the police caught him with his trousers down and arrested him. Wilcox, who has been charged with exposure of sexual organs and whose faecal matter was captured as physical evidence of said crime, has responded with the claim that the arresting officer 'doesn't see straight'.
They do things differently in Ohio - i.e., with Pringles cannisters. There, Noble County's Jack Allen Blakeslee has admitted to tossing an open-ended poo-enhanced crisp container into the car park of a victim-advocacy centre. Contesting his assertion that he flings such gifts into arbitrary locations while driving, the Ohio Supreme Court found it more likely that Blakeslee was targeting people he was due to face in court scant minutes later. Therefore, he has been suspended from practising as an attorney for at least six months.
In other Ohio jurisprudence, judge Timothy Gilligan castigated
Rosemary Hayne thus upon her conviction for hurling seemingly
unacceptable food in the face of Chipotle worker Emily Russell: 'This
is not Real Housewives of Parma. This behavior is not acceptable.'
Gilligan offered to cut 60 days off the 39-year-old Parma resident's
90-day jail term if she'd agree to work 20 hours a week at a fast-food
joint for two months.
Although accepting the deal, Hayne stressed the 'disgusting-looking'
nature of the the offending burrito bowl - and of the food she'd
received at the same restaurant a week after the burned Russell quit
her job there. Gilligan's response was 'I bet you won't be happy with
the food you are going to get in the jail'.
The manager-in-training at the High Point, North Carolina, McDonald's
rang her husband, 57-year-old Dwayne Waden, to share her frustrations
about 'disrespectful' co-workers. Waden, a pastor and part-time
lorry-driver, responded with deeds, not words: he hastened to her
workplace, where he proceeded to punch cook Theodore Garlington
several times in the face. According to an incident report, he then
placed his hands around Garlington's neck - expressing the Elevated
Life International Ministries philosophy of 'embracing the newness of
life that's in front of you'? - and pushed his head toward the deep
fryer.
The attempted baptism in oil earned Waden an arrest for assault
and battery, and his wife no longer has to worry about working at this
location.
Officials in Rome have 'permanently deprived' the Catholic pastor of Missouri's Our Lady of the Lake Parish from hearing confessions and from celebrating Mass in normal conditions. This comes after at least one person rang the Diocese of Jefferson City's Safe Environment abuse hotline to report Father Ignazio Medina for 'sexual solicitation of an adult on the occasion of the Sacrament of Reconciliation'. Medina, who did not contest reports that he'd asked for sex in a confessional booth, will now serve in the capacity of a retired priest.
An Alabama man, in contrast, simply tore off his clothes and got down to business. That business was to jump into a large aquarium at the Bass Pro Shop in the town of Leeds, where he'd just crashed his vehicle into a pole. When police officers arrived five minutes later, the man, later identified as 42-year-old George Owens, popped out of the water to yell at them. When he eventually emerged from the aquarium, he knocked himself out on the concrete floor. That simplified the process of handcuffing him, swaddling him in blankets, and conveying him to the county jail. Nonetheless, he managed to lengthen his charge sheet by damaging the back of the squad car along the way.
Meanwhile, the clues that someone had entered an animal enclosure at a
zoo in Pakistan came only after the fact. Staff cleaning the big
cats' dens at Sherbagh Zoo, in Punjab, noticed a shoe in the mouth of
one of its Panthera residents. Investigations led to a human body
that had been in the den for several hours.
At a press conference, Bahawalpur senior government official Zaheer
Anwar reported: 'Our assessment so far is that this appears to be a
lunatic, because a sensible person would not jump into the [secured]
den.'
India brings us a case of mistaken identity in which a private medical
college relied on a personnel-outsourcing company to indicate who had
died in an explosion centred on an air-conditioning unit. Upon
receiving news of her badly burned husband's death, the grief-stricken
wife of Dilip Samantray hanged herself. However, it was not long
after this that one of the people injured in the blast was released
from intensive care and identified himself as Samantray. Hi-Tech
Hospital CEO Smita Padhi stated that 'this led to confusion' and to
requests for a psychiatrist to check the man for identity delusions.
This patient, who indeed was the real Samantray, ended up dying days
later. It isn't clear which family will ultimately receive which
body. What is clear is that recriminations are likely to persist.
A woman calling herself 'Tunnel Girl' for an elaborate digging project at her home in Herndon, Virginia, has attracted the attention of half a million TikTok viewers but also her suburban neighbours. Excavating a series of passages to a sub-basement storm shelter six metres below ground, she chronicled more than a year of permit-free boring through concrete, installation of electrical and pumping systems, digging of a lift shaft, etc. She has now reported that town officials 'did give me a stop work order and are requiring an immediate evaluation by a professional engineer'.
Our next item involves holes of a rather different sort. A Minnesota
woman has filed a lawsuit against dentist Kevin Molldrem for how he
handled her tooth decay: allegedly via eight dental crowns, 20
fillings, and four root-canal procedures - all in a single visit.
While concurring that Molldren's diagnosis had been valid, with
'virtually every tooth' requiring attention, an expert witness
concluded that the treatment choices were poor. He also indicated that
Molldrem had used 960 mg of anaesthesia, nearly twice the 490 mg
recommended maximum for a 'long appointment', and had falsified the
associated records.
Gary, Indiana, brings us fisticuffs between two 40-something customers in the check-out area of a grocery store. The action escalated to one of the two men fatally shooting the other. Although the shooter left the scene, making sure to take his shopping with him, witnesses noticed that he'd left his debit card behind at the till. He was arrested while walking nearby.
Finally, Florida's James Paul Leach 'had issues with his nephew',
according to a witness who tattled on Leach for pouring a bottleful of
eye drops over the nephew's meatball sandwich. Reportedly, the witness's
remonstration that such poisoning 'could hurt someone' was met with
reassurance that the eye drops would merely make the younger man 'shit
himself and puke his brains out'.
The Pinellas Park police arrived after partial consumption of the
sandwich, and Leach, 45, now faces a charge of felonious poisoning.
Via a public defender, he has entered a plea of 'not guilty'.
Want more?
Follow the link for an earlier
bundle of Anna's News Clippings.
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February pile.
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