A door-to-door salesman visited a 20-year-old Detroit man who had been drinking. The result was that the resident fired a rifle at the unwanted visitor, once inside his home and then once outside. The latter shot hit the resident's car, while the salesman was unharmed. Police lieutenant Luke Riley said that the resident is expected to face charges of illegally discharging a firearm.
Responding to a burglar alarm at a Lincoln, Nebraska, grocery store,
police officers found two receipts on the ground nearby. One was for
the purchase of a hammer earlier in the day - the same hammer police
believe was used to break into the grocery store - and the other bore
the name and address of one Kenvon Erving.
Meanwhile, someone stole 12 laptop computers from an area school. A
receipt was left behind at this crime scene also, with the name of
Lance Arurang. Visiting Arurang's flat, the police found the laptops,
Arurang, Erving's hammer, and Erving.
Also in Lincoln, Nebraska, an advertising saleswoman hired earlier this year by the Lincoln Weekly newspaper is in trouble. Because Sandra Anderson would receive extra money if she were to place more advertisements in the paper, she did so. When the newspaper's owner began seeking payment for these advertisements, it emerged that the businesses concerned had never commissioned the ads. Anderson, who had placed $12,000 worth of fake ads, has been charged with theft by deception.
A New Jersey company hired Critter Ridder to trap a squirrel for them. The head of the Monmouth County Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals reports that the animal was found 'cooked to death on the hot roof' the next day. The head of Critter Ridder, Kathleen Buck, said that customers usually call when an animal is caught but that in this case there was a misunderstanding. She faces four counts of cruelty to animals, including one for not giving the squirrel adequate food, water, and shelter.
Chen Fuchao caused a traffic pile-up with his threats
of jumping to his death at the Haizhu bridge in Guangzhou, China.
After five hours of snarled traffic, 66-year-old Lai Jiansheng had had
enough. He offered to talk Chen away from the bridge. When police
refused Lai's offer, he broke through a police cordon and gave Chen
a handshake, then a push. Lai, a retired soldier, saluted the crowd
as Chen fell. Chen landed on a partially inflated air
cushion that the police had placed below, and he is recovering.
Lai explained: 'Jumpers like Chen [...] do
not really dare to kill themselves. Instead, they just want to raise
the relevant government authorities' attention to their appeals,'
according to Xinhua news agency.
Also failing to die was a student with a noose around his neck in Canberra. Reuters reports that a Laidley State High School English class, supervised by at least one teacher, held a mock hanging as part of a class project. While they were taking photos, the student with the rope around his neck fell from the table. He had begun to turn blue before students and teachers cut him free. Queensland state education minister Geoff Wilson said afterward that 'it beggars belief that such an incident could take place'.
![[IMG: Wheel-free, photo from Kapo SG]](images/wheels.jpg)
According to a police report, a car switching from winter to summer
wheels in St. Margrethen, Switzerland, created a slight surprise. The
passengers performed the wheel change beside the motorway and were soon on
their way again; however, they had used the wrong lug nuts. When they
hit a slight curve, all of the wheels disconnected and the car came to
an abrupt halt. No-one was injured, except at the level of pride.
Russia's RIA news agency has reported that the Russian navy accidentally fired artillery at a village in the Vyborg area. A navy spokesman is quoted as saying that on 28 May 'a small anti-submarine ship from the Baltic fleet was working on a host of exercises in the gulf of Finland including artillery fire at aerial targets' and didn't get the aim 100% right. No-one was injured.
When signing in for treatment at the Serbian Orthodox Church's Crna Reka treatment centre, young drug addicts must sign a form approving the use of violence 'for therapeutic purposes', as must their parents. The centre has now been charged with human rights violations, after the release of videos showing what went on in one icon-filled room at the 200-patient centre: priest Branislav Peranovic and one of the centre's employees repeatedly beating patients with a shovel and kicking them. Bishop Artemije has decided against closing the 200-patient centre 'after numerous pleadings by the patients and their parents' but has ordered an inquiry.
Maine's Danforth Ross was stripped of his driving licence, so he and a friend didn't have a convenient way to fetch more beer. The 51-year-old Ross and his friend therefore boarded a riding lawnmower and headed for the local liquor store. Police officers responding to numerous motorists' calls arrested the two men just after they had collected two cases of beer. Ross has been charged with operating under the influence of an intoxicant.
Police in Daytona Beach, Florida, caught suspected bank robber Randall Fredric Walker and getaway-SUV-driver Jason Warren Dietrich rather easily. Dietrich's SUV ran out of fuel a short distance from the bank, so the pair abandoned the vehicle. The police found it, and it was rather easy to trace to Dietrich, who is its registered owner.
A California woman decided to kidnap her daughter's boyfriend and haul him to another part of the state. The mother, 35-year-old Anna Gaffney, and an older woman of no fixed address showed up at the man's home with duct tape and explained their plan for getting him to leave the daughter, 21-year-old Savannah Lackey, alone. The would-be kidnappers were arrested. Lackey was arrested later for her attempts to get her boyfriend to tell the police he'd made up the story.
Jennifer Morales says that she rang the New York police in early May to report her 59-year-old father as missing. While the police cannot find her report, they did find the missing George Morales recently, when an attempt was made to tow his minivan from beneath an expressway flyover. Morales had died of heart trouble while in the vehicle, and, in the weeks that followed, ticketing officers had added roughly one parking ticket a day to its windscreen. While the minivan had tinted windows, one was rolled down slightly, and witnesses had reported a foul smell nearby.
Oregon's Raibin Osman was unhappy with the service at McDonald's. The 20-year-old man rang the emergency services to complain that the McDonald's employee had been impolite and not given him the orange juice he'd ordered. Sheriff's sergeant David Thompson said that Osman rebuffed officers who told him the emergency number should not be used for fixing fast-food orders. Meanwhile, a McDonald's employee rang 911 to complain that Osman and those with him were blocking the drive-through lane and knocking repeatedly on the McDonald's windows.
Rochelle Wyler, an analyst at the Connecticut Police Academy, claims that co-worker Police Captain Francis Woodruff annoyed her by calling her a clerk. She replied 'Bite me!' and Woodruff was arrested a short while later for doing just that. At the time of the arrest, Wyler was found to have tooth marks and bruising on the back of her left arm. Woodruff explained that he was joking.
Pennsylvania's Pocono Record reports on Raymond Vangeldren of Tobyhanna, who had trouble returning to his gated community. The 52-year-old man, leaning out of his pickup truck to use his key, fell to the ground, where he was run over by the rear of his truck. The vehicle ended up in some trees, and Vangeldren ended up at a hospital, where police determined that alcohol had been involved.
Guards at Arkansas's Miller County Jail caught 20-year-old Bobby Finley at the facility's chain-link fence with bolt-cutters. Finley was on the outside and trying to get in. He had cocaine and marijuana on him, which he is accused of planning to sell to inmates. Minus the contraband, he is now serving a sentence in jail.
At a ceremony recognising heads of Texas schools for their state test scores, schools superintendent Lorenzo Garcia gave high-fives to the principals - with the exception of Barron Elementary School principal Mary Helen Lechuga. Lechuga did not raise her hand, and thus Garcia's hand hit her head lightly instead. Lechuga claims she felt pain and was left fearing what Garcia would do next. Garcia, by contrast, claims that she is a disgruntled employee who had been demoted a short while earlier and that the complaint is without merit.
In Salem, New Hampshire, two workmates spent an evening drinking. One result was a $10 bar tab, which resulted in an argument. The result of the argument was that one of the two men, 23-year-old Andrew Monzon, decided to drive into his co-worker, flipping him onto the bonnet. After then leaving his co-worker's home, Monzon returned in order to crash into a garage door and a lamp post and lay waste to some lawn statues. Monzon also intentionally drove into his co-worker's father, who had emerged from the home to investigate the noise. Monzon now has more to worry about than a $10 bill.