Accidentally ringing the police instead of one's drug dealer is becoming more popular. In Salisbury, North Carolina, sheriff's deputy Jagger Naves was recently awakened four times in one night by phone calls about drug purchases. Some of the callers complained about the quality of drugs they had bought earlier, while others just wanted more drugs. Naves met all of the callers, in turn, and all were arrested.
The BBC have reported on a 17-year-old Australian girl who took a photo while visiting her grandmother in Sydney. Helping the elderly woman count her savings, the girl decided to photograph the 'large sum of cash' and post the image to Facebook. About seven hours later, two masked and armed men entered her family home, in the town of Bundanoon. The men told the girl's mother and others in the home that they wanted to know where the money was. Told that the girl didn't live there anymore, the men took a small amount of money and left.
John Rodriguez, the manager of a store in Brockton, Massachusetts, arrived at work in the morning to find a would-be burglar trapped under a garage door. The 53-year-old man had used a piece of metal to keep the roll-up door open. When the piece of metal slipped, he found himself kissing concrete for the next nine hours. Rodriguez said that when he 'saw that little head sticking out', the man claimed that he had been trying to fix the door. The police took him into custody.
Not getting off as lightly was Duwayne Masure, a Sutton, Vermont, man whose corpse was found in the kitchen of an unoccupied home in the town of Burke. He had broken a window and climbed inside. The latter process involved severe cuts, which caused the 73-year-old Masure to bleed to death.
![[IMG: Green dude in Brazil]](images/hulk.jpg)
Brazil's Paulo Henrique dos Santos decided to portray the Incredible
Hulk in Rio de Janeiro's Challenge for Peace run. The brand of body
paint he had used once before to adopt a Hulk-green hue wasn't
available, so he bought a different type. Later he discovered that
it was a type that wouldn't come off. After several hours in the bath
and nights spent on plastic bags on the floor in order to avoid
getting green on the bed sheets, he reported plans to sue the shop for
not warning him that the paint, normally used for munitions and
submarines, wouldn't be good for the intended purpose.
A marathon of 25 baths later, the 35-year-old man is finally no
longer green, but he remains angry.
![[IMG: Head x-ray]](images/xray.jpg)
Florida's Yasser Lopez, 16, decided to go fishing with a friend. As they were
loading equipment onto the boat, a fishing spear was launched into
Lopez's head. It entered above his right eye and extended through
the back of his skull. Lopez was airlifted to a hospital, for a
three-hour operation involving a high-speed drill. Though Lopez
doesn't remember the incident, medics report that no vital structures
of the brain were damaged by the harpoon.
A Utah juvenile-court judge found 13-year-old Kaytlen Lopan and her 11-year-old
friend guilty of endearing themselves to a three-year-old girl at a
McDonald's restaurant and then using scissors to 'cut several
inches of hair from her head'. Judge Scott Johansen offered to reduce
the older girl's community-service sentence from 276 to 126 hours if
Lopan's mother, Valerie Bruno, would agree to remove Lopan's
ponytail in court. When Bruno proved timid with the judge's scissors,
the three-year-old's mother told her to go 'all the way to the rubber
band'. Lopan's friend agreed to a similar option.
Bruno has filed a formal complaint against Johansen. She said that
her daughter 'definitely needed to be punished for what had happened,
but I never dreamt it would be that much of a punishment'.
The McDonald's drive-through isn't enough anymore. Boxford, Massachusetts, police lieutenant James Riter says that he heard screaming when responding to a report of bovines on the loose. The cows had, he reported, chased off some young adults in a home's back garden and were lapping up spilt beer. After knocking over beer cans on a table and partaking of the results, the animals headed for the cans destined for recycling. The cows' owner and others eventually herded them back home.
Organisers of a Sault Symphony Orchestra fund-raising event in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, were pleased when one of the symphony board members, Betts MacKenzie, offered the use of her company's debit machine for the event. The problem emerged later, when supporters started to receive their bank statements. Several were unhappy that the purchase point for their food or silent-auction items was listed as MacKenzie's business, Amore, which sells lingerie, sex toys, and videos. Co-ordinator Robin Wilson said: 'It was quite a shock to us when people seemed to be upset by this.'
Shelley Zenner likes rabbits. So she kept a few at home. Following a
raid in which animal protection officers removed 589 rabbits from her
two-storey home, she has received a fine and a perpetual ban from
owning more than one pet. The 44-year-old woman was also ordered to
obtain counselling. All of this comes after the removal of more than
500 rabbits from the home in the previous three years.
Almost all of the rabbits have been put to sleep, as they had a
contagious disease, and many of the rest were missing eyes or limbs.
Brett Sigworth explained what happened after he used spray-on
sunscreen: 'I walked over to my grill, took one of the holders to move
some of the charcoal briquettes around and all of a sudden [fire] went
up my arm.' Sigworth showed television crews the lines where he had
sprayed the flammable substance, marked by second-degree burns.
Sigworth said that he didn't think the label's warnings meant that
the sunscreen could catch fire while on the skin. The manufacturer,
Banana Boat, stated that it will look into the matter.
German media report that police in Dusseldorf were able to track down a
suspect in a robbery and shooting more easily because he covered
his face. The 25-year-old man hid his face with a t-shirt referring
to rapper Xatar and threw the shirt in a nearby bin after the crime.
Police say that only three shirts of that design and size, sold over
the Internet, had been sent to Dusseldorf. Two of the purchasers
didn't match the suspect's age, and the third matched the DNA on the
shirt, according to Guido Adler, head of homicide investigation.
The man, named as Marcel S., confessed and is, like Xatar, now in
jail.
David Price is a homeless man who decided that life on the streets of Florida wasn't for him. Waiting until guests at the Ritz Carlton and similar establishments left their assigned room, he would slip inside and ring the front desk to extend the guest's stay by several days. Joseph Barak, who had stayed at Loews Portofino Bay, reported that Price created roughly $9,000 in charges at this luxury hotel, for 'like the best wines, the best restaurants, room service [...] clothes and the whole ball of wax'. After two years of staying at hotels at others' expense, Price has been arrested and is now staying in jail at others' expense.
Reuters reports that a woman in Nezahualcoyotl, Mexico, tore out her five-year-old son's eyes during what state prosecution spokesperson Laura Uribe described as 'some kind of ceremony inside a house'. The mother has been arrested, along with the boy's father and five other people. Apparently, the boy had refused to close his eyes during the ritual.
Ohio motorist John Davis says that he decided to hand some money to a panhandler who was sitting in a wheelchair at a highway exit. He held some money through his car window. When a $1 note fell to the ground, the panhandler bent to pick it up. Davis drove on. A short while later, a police officer pulled Davis over for littering. He was given a $500 fine for the offence 'Throw paper out window (money to panhandler)'. Davis plans to contest the fine in court.
The Straits Times reports that Jumiah, a 24-year-old Indonesian maid in Singapore, has pleaded guilty of committing mischief against her 38-year-old employer of one year. While working at his flat in Choa Chu Kang, she added some of her menstrual blood to his coffee. It is unclear whether this was because of a grievance or in an attempt at magic.
Montana's Livingston Enterprise reports that a Canadian lorry-driver noticed that he had a fuel leak when he stopped at a truckers' restaurant. The driver tried to mend the leaking tank with duct tape, then fell asleep in the cab of his vehicle, at about 3am. A few hours later, firefighters arrived to deal with the still-sleeping man's diesel leak - fire chief Dann Babcox estimated that about 400 litres of fuel had pooled around the lorry.
Chris Marshall has been arrested yet again for masturbation in public with a cuddly toy. The 28-year-old Cincinnati, Ohio, man was recently using a teddy bear for sexual gratification in a public alley, where he was spotted and reported by employees at the Elm Street Health Clinic. Three teddy-bear-masturbation offences earlier, in February 2010, he confessed to 'engaging in masturbation with a teddy bear in a men's bathroom'.
![[IMG: Double-ended mushroom]](images/mushroom.jpg)
Villagers in the Chinese village of Liucunbu contacted the local media
when they found a strange object 80 metres down while drilling the
shaft for a new well. They believed it to be a rare lingzhi mushroom,
and it was preserved in a bucket of water. Television reporter Ye Yunfeng
completed an investigative piece on Xi'an Up Close in which she
examined the mystery growth and drew no definitive conclusion.
However, several viewers were able to identify it, letting the station
know that the object is a double-ended sex toy.
The programme's producers wrote on their Sina Weibo profile page:
'As our reporter was still very young and unwise to the ways of the
world, this report has brought great inconvenience to everyone [...].
Please forgive our oversight!'
Indiana's John Gross brought the cremated remains of his grandfather
back home - or at least as far as Orlando International Airport, where
a TSA screener opened the jar labelled 'Human Remains'. While
sifting through the ashes and bone fragments with her fingers, she knocked
about a third of the contents onto the floor.
Gross, who said that he simply wants the woman to apologise, stated:
'She started laughing. I was on my hands and knees picking up bone
fragments. [...] [T]here was a long line behind me.' TSA procedures
call for x-ray equipment to be used in dealing with human remains,
which 'under no circumstances' should be opened for inspection.
William Martinez, 31, sought medical help after experiencing chest pains, shortness of breath, high blood pressure, and an irregular heartbeat. A jury has ruled that, because medics didn't diagnose him correctly with atherosclerotic coronary artery disease or warn him against strenuous activity, they were 60% responsible for his death from a heart attack during sex with another man and a woman at an Atlanta airport motel. The jury awarded Martinez's wife (who was not present at the motel) $3 million.
A woman in Palo Alto, California, was upset when teenagers in a passing Range Rover threw a vanilla milkshake in her face. Police believe that she retaliated by throwing her alligator-skin handbag at the vehicle. According to police sergeant Brian Philip, the bag, whose contents included $2,000 in cash, entered an open window and left the scene of the incident.
Rother McLennon rang emergency services from the Grateful Deli, in
East Hartford, Connecticut. At one point, the dispatcher asked:
'You're calling 911 because you don't like the way they're making your
sandwich?' and he replied 'Exactly', adding that the staff 'are
playing games with me, so I was just wondering if you could come by'.
The dispatcher advised him not to buy the sandwich.
McLennon later rang the delicatessen to apologise for the call,
which he had placed from the server's telephone.
Also in Connecticut, Frank Rega drove into a pedestrian. He decided to flee the scene. The only problem was that the 23-year-old victim was still stuck to the driver's-side fender of his van. She began yelling at Rega to stop and even hit him in the face, but he still didn't stop. She eventually fell to the road and suffered a head injury that sent her to hospital. Rega, 56, faces quite a few charges. In response, he claimed that he had been acting in self-defence.
Perhaps bank teller Lisa Jarvis figured that the nature of Kenneth
Costello's financial transactions meant that he wouldn't make a fuss
if she were to take some of his money for herself. Jarvis created a
debit card for the 49-year-old man's account, which she used to
spend about $100,000 of his money. As the police found out once he
complained to the police, it wasn't exactly his money either - he had
deposited about $545,000 in refunds from fraudulent state income tax
returns.
Both have been charged with theft by deception and tax offences.
Costello faces a charge of money-laundering also.
In New Jersey, we have 72-year-old Daniel Collins, Jr, who accused
a neighbour of farting as he walked past the door to Collins's flat.
In the lobby of the building, police say, Collins produced a silver
revolver and told the 47-year-old neighbour that 'I'm going to put a
hole in your head' on account of the wind-breaking.
The neighbour rang the police, and Collins has been charged with
aggravated assault, unlawful possession of a firearm, possession of a
weapon for an unlawful purpose, and making of terroristic threats.