Fleeing the wildfires in Colorado, 19-year-old Kristan McCann placed her valued possessions in her car and headed for her father's home in Oregon. On the way through Idaho, she clipped another car, causing her vehicle to fly off the highway and burst into flames. Before firefighters arrived, the blaze destroyed her car, her mother's wedding dress and the other possessions within, and about 8 km2 of surrounding land. McCann later said: 'I was pretty devastated. I didn't want to do anything like that.'
In Canada, police officer Jim Brown is the subject of an investigation into possible misconduct in connection with images on a sexual-fetish social-networking Web site. Brown, who goes by the name 'Kilted Knight' on the bondage and discipline site, is featured naked in RCMP riding boots as he pretends to carry out violent crimes of the sort he is charged with investigating, such as a knife attack on a bound, naked woman. Brown has been assigned administrative duties while an internal and external investigation are conducted.
Catherine Venusto used to work as a secretary for the school district
that her two children attended in Pennsylvania. While there, she
used a boss's computer password to change her daughter's failing mark
in one of her classes to an 'M' (for 'medical exception'). Her son
wasn't left out: his 98% was changed to a 99%.
The 45-year-old Venusto, who is accused of using the login
credentials more than 100 times to access the school district's online
grading system, claims that she knew her actions weren't ethical but
that she thought they were legal.
In Anchorage, Alaska, four men posted bail for Jonathan Hill, who was
awaiting trial for felonious possession of drugs. The men loaded him
into a car, which soon became the scene of a fight: when the men
stopped for petrol, Hill tried to exit the vehicle and was prevented
from doing so. Police were summoned, and the four men were arrested;
they are charged with kidnapping. One of the men, Jonathan Walls,
explained that Hill had stolen some marijuana from him. Walls wanted
it back.
An investigation did not uncover any marijuana, according to
officers. Hill was released.
Dan Rivet is the owner of a New York motel. He is also a paramedic. Rivet recently responded to an emergency call at his own motel. The occasion was a group trip by a police motorcycle club, during which a 37-year-old man sharing a room with two officers was shot. One of the officers, the victim's father, had been sleeping in the room when he heard a noise. It is unclear whether he thought his son, Matthew Leach, was an intruder or simply suffered a flashback. Either way, Leach was fatally shot in the back.
In other fun with guns, Canadian hunter Dale Whitmell was camping near a lake when he encountered a mouse. Whitmell, 40, decided to kill it with the butt of his rifle. He managed to discharge the weapon in so doing. The bullet grazed his forehead. Whitmell, who is being charged with careless use of a firearm. later said that he didn't know the weapon was loaded.
In the US state of Georgia, 36-year-old William Bonner rang the police to
report that attackers had set his head on fire. He changed his story
after surveillance-camera footage emerged. According to police
lieutenant Blaise Dresser, the man had bet his friends that his face
could be set on fire. He'd encouraged them to douse his
head with Bacardi 151 and set it alight, and it worked on the second
try. Bonner, having won the bet, had companions at one of the tables
put out the flames with other liquids.
After his release from hospital, where he was in critical
condition, he was let off the hook by police, who said that he
won't be charged with a crime, since he has suffered enough.
A couple arriving in the United Arab Emirates by air from Egypt were held at Immigration on Friday, 6 July, because they didn't have a visa for their five-month-old child. They were told they would have to wait for the visa office to re-open, on Sunday. Therefore, after the Saturday-morning shift change, they placed the baby in their luggage and rejoined the queue. According to The National, an inspector noticed the outline of a baby on the baggage-scanner, whereupon the couple were pulled aside for interrogation.
At his home, Florida's John Pardus, 30, accidentally shot himself in
the hand. At hospital, he and his wife asked police officers to
accompany them home and help to unload his guns as well as show the
couple how to store guns safely.
Officers couldn't help but notice the scent of marijuana in the
home, and they followed it upstairs, where there were 46 plants
growing. Mr Pardus later claimed that only his wife uses the second
floor of the home, but both Parduses have been charged with
cultivation and possession of marijuana.
![[IMG: 'Darth Vader' about to disconnect cables in the morning]](images/polewithpole.jpg)
Polish media report on a 44-year-old building manager in Krakow who
didn't like certain of his tenants, such as a travel agency and
advertising agency (who had been tenants longer than he had been
building manager). When they started finding their electricity
and telecommunications cables cut, tenants installed CCTV cameras,
which soon captured a man in mask and black cape cutting cables
from the rooftops, armed with a pair of garden shears taped to a pole.
It was not long before this footage of 'Darth Vader' was linked to
the building manager, who had previously tried to get the tenants
evicted via the court system. He is charged with performing six
illegal disconnections over the last year and a half.
In 2009, Scotland's Gavin Bradford was accused of making
food-fetish-related improper suggestions to more than 20 female
students, as young as 12, at a college where he taught in Canada.
These included asking them to smear ketchup and eggs over their bodies
and pour sour milk into their knickers. Allegedly, one girl was asked
to stuff a pie down Bradford's pants.
The 37-year-old Bradford returned to Glasgow, where he took on a job
as a performing-arts lecturer at a college. Ontario authorities
recently discovered this, so they reported his past conduct to
Scottish authorities. Bradford did not attend his hearing, and the
General Teaching Council Scotland have judged him unfit to teach.
Krystle Marie Reyes filed for a $2.1 million tax refund on Oregon
state income taxes. The system flagged this as a case of possible
fraud, necessitating three people's review before a refund could be
issued. The case was reviewed, after a fashion - those involved
didn't open her file, which included her employer's reports of her
approx. $15,000 annual income - and the refund was approved.
Reyes, 25, was caught only because she received the refund on a
debit card and then reported the card lost or stolen. Twice. The
state has recovered all but $200,000, and Reyes has been sentenced to
5.5 years of jail time.
Rodney Dwayne Valentine, a 37-year-old man with no fixed address,
served two months in a North Carolina jail for injury to personal
property. At the end of that time, he didn't want to leave jail, and
he insisted that officers at least drive him to a motel. Policy is
that officers do not transport people once they are released from
jail.
The ensuing argument lasted five hours and ended with Valentine
being arrested for trespassing on jail premises. He faces 75 more
days behind bars.