Receiving reports of 'a vehicle driving all over the road', officers with the Montana Highway Patrol found a driver transporting five beehives. Thousands of Russian honey bees were flying about in the car. Checking in with headquarters, the troopers learned that this method of hauling bees does not require a permit; however, Montana's state apiarist did deem it 'very unsafe', so the driver was ticketed for careless driving.
Logan Shaulis, a 19-year-old man from Somerset, Pennsylvania, decided to set up a drink-driving checkpoint. At about 4am, he parked diagonally across the state highway and set up road flares. While one motorist, asked to produce his insurance papers, driving licence, and vehicle registration documents, was stopped at the one-man checkpoint, real officers showed up. At this point, Shaulis tried to give his 'service weapon', a BB pistol, to the passenger in the civilian vehicle, explaining: 'I can't get caught with this.' Shaulis, who was drunk at the time, faces various charges.
In other alcohol-related news, Kevin Kroll is a 41-year-old Dunbar Township, Pennsylvania, man who had a court appointment to be fingerprinted after a drink-driving arrest. When he walked into the courthouse, he had alcohol on his breath, so officers gave him a breath and blood test. He failed both and added a second drink-driving offense to his charge sheet.
A 58-year-old man was tending a sloped lawn near an embankment in
Wyoming County, New York, when his foot became stuck under the riding
lawnmower he was using. His cries for help were heard by Christopher Ratcliffe,
who attached a rope to the lawnmower, intending to pull the other man
to safety. Instead of reversing, the would-be Good Samaritan drove
forward, sending the victim, the lawnmower, and Ratcliffe's own
vehicle over the four-metre embankment. Although the lawnmower landed atop its
rider, he suffered only minor injuries.
Ratcliffe received a ticket for driving an uninsured, uninspected,
and unregistered vehicle. He was later thrown in jail - on the same
day, he had solicited donations for a bogus foundation and been caught
with a bag of marijuana.
In Reno County, Kansas, sheriff's officers received a phone call from a motorist who had seen a car stranded in a ditch. Arriving on the scene, they found the vehicle's owner, 37-year-old Guy Allen Currie, asleep on top of it. Patrol captain Darrian Campbell reports: 'He was asleep with a plastic bag over him to keep moisture off, and he was wearing one rubber boot.' Awakened and asked for his ID, Currie pulled air out of his pocket to hand to the deputies. He has been charged with operating a motor vehicle while intoxicated and violating probation.
Emily Titterington was a mildly autistic teenager from Cornwall whose phobia of using the toilet sometimes left her avoiding defecation for extended periods. Her family tried to address her bowel issues by such means as homeopathy. These did not help: she ended up dying from a heart attack caused by constipation after having gone three months without a bowel movement. At a recent inquest, paramedics described arriving at the 16-year-old Titterington's home to find her 'vomiting faeces' and with a 'grossly extended abdomen'. One stated: 'Her lower ribs had been pushed out further than her pubic bone - I was shocked.' They had visited earlier in the evening in response to pain between the girl's shoulder blades, but she'd refused to go to hospital.
According to the Shanghai Daily, police officers in Heilongjiang province's Mundanjiang were called to the site of a roadside advertising screen that faces a local hospital. The screen, belonging to estate agent Hongyun, had begun showing pornographic video clips. After physically unplugging the video feed to the screen, which had been withdrawn from active use in May, officers visited the estate agent's office, where a man they identified as Meng was arrested. He had been viewing various videos on the computer that, unbeknownst to him, was still synched with the outdoor screen. Meng has been ordered to spend 10 days at a detention centre.
According to Micky Rosenfeld, a spokesman for the Israeli police forces, a woman at a petrol station requested a cigarette from a man who was filling his tank. Then, says Rosenfeld, 'when he refused to give it to her she pulled out a lighter from her pocket and ignited the petrol pump'. Workers at the station extinguished the fire, and no-one was injured. The woman was arrested and later denied having set the fire deliberately.
On Valentine's Day last year, Ketut Pujayasa, a crew member on a
Holland America cruise liner, used a master key to enter a 31-year-old
female passenger's room and hide on her balcony until she returned to
her cabin. Passengers reported her cries for help to the ship's
staff, but security officers didn't arrive until 45 minutes later,
then struggled to enter her room. Meanwhile, Pujayasa was beating her
with various objects, raping her, and attempting to throw her
overboard.
He has now pleaded guilty to a host of charges and been sentenced to
30 years in prison. In response to the victim's lawsuit alleging
negligence, Holland America stated: 'We do strongly refute the
statement that emergency calls to our staff related to this situation
were given anything but the highest priority.'
Illinois's Walter Thomas, 91, had a very short list of things he wants to do before he dies. In fact, it consisted of only one item. His grand-daughter explains that 'he always wanted to back a car through the garage door - he always wondered if the garage door would pop off, or if the frame would come down with it'. Friends of one of Thomas's grandsons recently decided to demolish their garage, and his other grandson found a 1998 Isuzo Rodeo. Thomas can now report that the garage door was shattered.
In 2010, Spain's Maria Ángeles Durán laid claim to the sun, pointing out that the UN Outer Space Treaty rules out 'national appropriation' but not ownership by individuals. While she hasn't begun the promised billing of users of solar energy, she did, in 2013, commence eBay sales of square-metre plots of the sun, accompanied by ownership documents. After she had sold 1,000+ solar plots, eBay closed her shop page for breach of the site's rules against selling intangible goods. Arguing that the sun is tangible, she responded by suing eBay for breach of contract, and a Spanish court has now agreed to hear the case.
According to UPI reports, a 20-something man in Golden Valley, Minnesota, fell from a hot tub on the upper level of a home. He ended up with his thigh impaled on a wrought-iron fence post. The bleeding man was able to support his weight on a ladder until firefighters arrived and removed the relevant portion of fence so that the victim could be conveyed to an area hospital. Police sergeant Dave Born reported that alcohol was involved.
![[IMG: Road paint spill]](images/yellow_and_white.jpg)
The Maryland State Highway Administration had quite a task involving
road markings near the town of Hancock. A driver was sending text
messages on his mobile phone when he lost control of his vehicle on
Interstate 68. The vehicle in question was a lorry carrying
plastic barrels of white and yellow road paint. It overturned, and
the barrels broke open, freeing 25,000 litres of paint. It took
several days for crews to clean this up.
At ![[IMG: The suspicious item]](images/suspicious.jpg)
Ohio's Hamilton County Courthouse, a suspicious-looking item showed
up in a routine security screening. Something 'didn't look right' in
the scan of a woman's suitcase, and a bomb-sniffing dog's reaction
prompted an evacuation. The courthouse was closed for the remainder
of the day. The suspicious item was a perfume bottle shaped like a
pineapple grenade. According to Sheriff's Officer Jim Knapp, no
charges are expected.