Taylor Kahle and her date went for a stroll through San Diego. This is news because her path coincided with the trajectory of a man who had been hanging from the ninth-level balcony of a multistorey car park. Kahle, 29, died at the scene, without thwarting the unidentified male's apparent suicide attempt. Or, as her erstwhile boss Lauren MacFarlane put it, 'God just needed her sooner'.
When Texas newlywed Caron McBride attempted to change the name on her
driving licence, she was told of 'an issue' back in Oklahoma. Ringing
the phone number given, she learned that she was wanted on federal
charges of felonious embezzlement. The warrant was prompted by
failure to return a Sabrina The Teenage Witch videotape to the Movie
Plaza outlet in Norman, where she lived in 2000.
McBride surmised that her then-boyfriend picked up the VHS tape
for his children to watch 'and didn't take it back or something - I
have never watched that show in my entire life'. She also mused that
her early release from several jobs now makes sense: in the
post-hiring background check, 'all they're seeing is those two words -
felony embezzlement'.
The Cleveland County District Attorney's Office have now dismissed
the case and those words, partly because Movie Place closed in 2008.
Motorists who hit the wrong pedal and wedge themselves into a shopfront are nearly a dime a dozen. A driving lesson in the Netherlands puts a new twist on the technique: when a driving student in Utrecht slammed on the not-the-brakes, the instructor's car mounted a bicycle rack, hopped the kerb, and ended up with its front left tyre rolling over the boot and rear window of an unoccupied convertible. Both cars had to be towed away, but no humans were injured in this Sunday drive, according to RTV Utrecht.
None of the three men who had been drinking together on Friday night
in Valga County, Estonia, wanted to 'chicken out' in a mutual dare and
thereby lose the associated 2,000-euro bet. This explains why all
three men, ages 18, 18, and 32, presented with the same type of
injury: each had shot himself in the hand with an air rifle.
A post online from the relevant Police and Border Guard Board
prefecture noted: 'A cautionary message from the police should
appear here. However, it turns out that we have not yet developed a
communications plan for Darwin Awards candidates.'
Neighbours witnessed Maryland's Gail J. Metwally throw a bin she'd set ablaze into her lounge and then settle into a lawn chair to admire her handiwork and read as the house went up in flames. An incredulous neighbour who captured the building's conflagration from start to finish came perilously close to the blaze in an attempt to capture better video footage as a woman squeezed herself through the basement window to safety - she'd had the misfortune of having argued with Metwally.
South Carolina's Jessica Gale Patterson, 28, was collecting cannisters of petrol to add to her stash when sheriff's officers tried to pull her over for driving a vehicle that had been reported stolen. Staff with the Pickens County Sheriff's Office reported that the deputy had scarcely managed to engage the siren and start reporting to the dispatcher before Patterson lost control of the vehicle, leaving the roadway and flipping the car. Several small explosion-like sounds were heard, and then black smoke and a flame-covered Patterson poured from within. She was taken to hospital in unknown condition.
Our next story brings us another safety-conscious driver, this one from California. Param Sharma, 25, was arrested in response to multiple reports of a driverless Tesla Model 3 heading from San Francisco to Oakland. Officers pulled him from the back seat and threw him in jail for reckless driving. Upon his release the next day, he was spotted way behind the wheel again, near his mother's flat. He explained: 'I feel safer back here than I do up there' and confirmed that this was a different Tesla - being 'rich as fuck', he had simply bought a new vehicle to replace the impounded one.
When children can't behave, Teacher takes their toys away.
This is a lesson that customers of the Target chain have been
served in the wake of 'chaos' prompted by Pokémon cards' rising value. A
35-year-old man leaving a Brookfield, Wisconsin, Target outlet with
his Pokémon card purchase was set upon by four other men and drew a
pistol in response. Target bosses have suspended sales of the cards,
citing the safety of staff and customers alike.
Meanwhile in Japan, it was more ninjas than cowboys. According to
Mainichi reports, a man liberated 80 Pokémon and Yugioh! cards from
a trading-card shop and then climbed down the rope he'd tied to the
six-storey building's roof. After his arrest, he explained: 'I was in
my high school's rock-climbing club, so I wasn't afraid of heights.'
In more gun fun, three men in West Lakeland, Florida, were watching a
televised basketball game when they 'heard a pop' and saw the
three-year-old boy in their care dash for his bedroom after having
shot his sister, age 2, in the chest. Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd
reported that, while the men then were speeding to hospital with the
siblings, they T-boned a vehicle that turned into their path, 'and
there were significant injuries from that as well'. Another motorist
completed the hospital run, and the girl has undergone likely the
first of several surgeries.
In response to 23-year-old gun-owner Kevonte' Wilson's comment that
he'd hidden the firearm to keep it away from the children, Judd said:
'I don't know how you think you safely keep a gun away from children
when you stick it between the couch' and that the adults will be held
appropriately criminally liable in relation to the handgun issue and
the drugs found in the home.
A father and son noticed a peculiar odour emanating from a papier-mâché dinosaur statue in Santa Coloma de Gramenet, Spain. Peering through the cracks in the stegosaurus's leg, the father detected the reason: the putrefying corpse of a man who had been reported missing by his family. Three fire-brigade teams cut open the leg to retrieve the 39-year-old man's body. They also retrieved the mobile phone that he had dropped inside the statue.
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