Having a good day, dear?
Pam DeVincent took boyfriend Michael Sgalla seriously when he handed her
a .38 revolver and told her to shoot him if she really did hate him that
much. (Yes, I know that this reads a little like a story from The Onion.
Sgalla was taken from his Virginia trailer to hospital after being
shot in the shin (hate or mild dislike?). She is being charged with
endangerment with a firearm.
It may be old news, but it is now becoming much bigger business. And the
names are wonderful...
Working mothers can now devote even more of their waking hours to their
children. Kimberly Sedlacek, of Tacoma, Washington, said the daycare
webcam doesn't distract her from her work for Boeing. Rather, 'if I
didn't have it, that would be more distracting'.
Six companies are now selling daycare webcams, led by New York-based
ParentWatch, whose systems are used in more than 150 daycare centres.
Darius Vasefi, a vice president of KinderView, said, 'It's a way of
portraying trust, saying "Hey, we've got nothing to hide"' to parents
who are willing to pay $24.95 a month for this reassurance.
'You get to check in on your children and know they're safe', said
Sedlacek, whose four-year-old daughter's dance performances are available
online each Friday. A sales executive for the Georgia-based Kids'R'Kids
daycare chain said privacy is not a problem because 'our centers always
had an open-door policy. Parents could come in anytime, and this just
expands on that'.
The Associated Press reports on a man's attempt to steal a trailer from
an Albuquerque, New Mexico, Home Depot store. Edward Hall hooked the
trailer to his pickup, but it came unhitched a few miles down the road.
He decided to try again. The second trailer suffered the same fate,
ending up along the side of the road about 75 yards from the first one.
On the third attempt, the trailer clipped the patrol car which the
sheriff's deputy had parked while investigating wreckage by the side of
the road...
Now you get to imagine the ensuing chase. Edward Hall decided not to
break 25 miles per hour, in a detective's words 'probably because he
knows the trailers, at high speeds, don't stay on very well'.
In case my sister felt left out, here is an Iowa item. Des Moines's
David Parks wanted his mother, Michaeleen, to give him money for his
rent. She said she couldn't give him money until she got paid at the end
of the week, so he locked her in her closet for three days. Well, he did
unlock the closet when he beat her with the belt. And I guess he opened
the door when he fed her (only the best stale popcorn). He was
considerate, letting her defecate in a garbage bag and not following
through on his threat to cut off her toes.
After three days, Parks decided his mother needed medical attention.
To keep a low profile, he took her to a beauty salon, from which one of
his friends took her to a drugstore whence she was able to ring police.
Captialist pigs! Russian state television has done us proud. They
broadcast 'before and after' interviews of a woman whose husband died in
Kosovo. Before the RTR correspondent told the womman her husband had
been shot, the camera crew captured the dressing-gown-clad woman
preparing dinner for herself and her daughter.
The report said, 'She is very puzzled by the interest television is
paying to her, an ordinary textile worker'. An RTR editor said, 'It was
a chance occurrence of circumstances'.
Don't try this at home if your books don't balance. In the course of an
audit, the Denver police department discovered $100000 missing from their
evidence room. Eric Russell came forward to explain where at least some
of the money got to. The retired employee of Waste Management of Colorado
said that he found money in the locked basement's rubbish bins 'routinely'
from 1994-98. He also claimed to have found 'all kinds of things ...
knives, evidence bags ... awful crime scene photographs, and objects
tagged as evidence in cases'. Although he re-sold some items, this did
not include seized drugs, he said.
The department have asked Russell to return any evidence he still has.
Now that they have reviewed their waste disposal procedures, it may be a
while before they lose the items again.
An 11-year-old boy was suspended from school for five days. The boy's parents offered to make him apologise to the girls he offended. After the boy served 3/5 of his sentence, the Mamaroneck, New York, school relented when the youth's parents called in a lawyer. The lawyer, Ronald Kuby, said the school's concern was misplaced, for the boy 'had never heard the term sexual harassment and may not even know what sex is'. His antics consisted of approaching two girls in the schoolyard and chanting 'Roses are red / Violets are black / Your chest is as flat / as your back'.
In Derry, New Hampshire, Mahlon Donovan woke up in the middle of the
night. At 3:00am, a car crashed through the bedroom ceiling. The
65-year-old man said, 'I could feel the heat from the exhaust system
coming through the sheets'.
Also to feel the heat (sorry) is the woman who police later arrested
for driving while intoxicated.
Although Donovan said 'The thing was right in front of my face', the
accident didn't rouse his wife.
What a way to go! A Misourri man pushed steak down his girlfriend's
throat, eventually killing her. James Krebs was found guilty of
involuntary manslaughter after plea-bargaining.
Krebs dsecribed telling his girlfriend that her steak had too much fat
on it. She said she would eat what she wanted. Krebs said it was at
this point that he shoved a bunch of meat down her throat. She
reportedly died of asphyxiation.
According to UPI reports, a Lawrenceville, Georgia, couple sued the
Towne Park Homeowners Association in an attempt to recover their fine
for displaying tacky lawn ornaments. The association placed a lien on
their home and set the fine at $3400 ($25 per day) as a penalty for the
evils of pink flamingoes.
Sympathetic homeowners in other locales put up their own lawn
flamingoes in solidarity.
Kentuckian Gemini Wink went to see the alligators near a friend's house
in Tampa, Florida. Being a clever chappie, he marked his path with duct
tape so he could find his way back after taking pictures of the swampful
of gators. Just before nightfall, he lost track of his trail of tape,
and he began to worry about being eaten by the alligators.
His solution was to climb a tree and tape himself to it so as not to
fall 40 feet to the ground while sleeping.
Meanwhile, Wink's friend rang emergency services. Deputies had to
help him untape himself before he could walk the 400 yards back to his
friend's house.
Still here?
You gonna high-tail it outta here now?
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© 2000 Anna Shefl