CCTV footage from a Beaver, West Virginia, pharmacy shows an attempted robbery in which a man wearing camouflage and a paintball mask tried to take down the employees with pepper spray. He then headed for the counter. This involved walking into the cloud of pepper spray. The man staggered from the building and entered a waiting vehicle, whose driver later identified him for the police as Michael Kevin Meadows, 43.
A 45-year-old Ohio man entered a Chick-fil-A restaurant with a concealed Glock pistol. According to Fairfield Township police, he had a permit to carry the weapon and didn't threaten anyone with it, but there was still a problem. The weapon had no safety, and the man managed to shoot himself in the leg while pulling up his trousers after using the restaurant's toilet. He was treated in hospital, and no charges have been filed.
![[IMG: The note]](images/request.jpg)
Dominyk Antonio Alfonseca handed a Virginia bank teller a note that
read: 'I Need 150,000 Bonds Right NOW!! please / Police take 3 to 4
minutes to get here, I would appriecate if you Ring the alarm a minute
after I am gone [...] make sure the money dosen't BLOW UP on my way out.
:-)'. The teller obliged. The 23-year-old Alfonseca was arrested,
with a gym bag full of money, not long after he posted his
mobile-phone video of the incident online. He later explained that
asking for money isn't a crime.
When Dennis Norman stopped at an Oakland Park, Florida, petrol station in the wee hours, he noticed that the clerk sitting on the other side of the window was asleep. After watching the snoring man for a minute or so, looking at the CCTV camera, and making a certain rude gesture, the 25-year-old Norman proceeded to pull the shop's chest freezer full of ice-cream products slowly away from the wall. In a 15-minute process, he pushed it past the sleeping clerk and out the door. Norman was arrested about four hours later. The fate of the ice cream is unknown.
In 2007, Dorotea Garcia of Texas asked the authorities to find her
daughter, whose father had taken the girl to Mexico. Garcia declared her
eight-year search for the girl, who has a distinctive scar between her
eyebrows, complete this year after visiting the Mexican state
of Guanajuato, and US officials soon were in touch with their Mexican
counterparts. In response to orders by local officials and a judge,
police officers dragged 14-year-old Alondra Luna Nunez from her school
for extradition to the US.
Once in Texas with Garcia, the teenager was given a DNA test, which
proved no family relationship. She was sent back to Mexico after
Garcia 'told me to forgive her for everything she had done to us'. Her
parents are considering legal action against the local officials
involved in the fiasco.
According to charging documents filed in Maryland, Anne Arundel County police officer Michael Flaig was drunkenly enjoying the Cinco de Mayo celebrations in Baltimore when he began groping a woman outside a pub. Her male room-mate intervened, so Flaig decided to follow him home and punch him. The man ducked and ended up straddling the 31-year-old Flaig to prevent him from escaping. So Flaig bit him in the testicles and fled the scene. According to witness Thomas Bourne, 'he was bleeding in his area after what happened'. Flaig was soon found - he had simply entered a bar on the same block to continue his evening.
Ethan Earl Nickerson, 26, decided to hold his girlfriend and her three children hostage at knife-point at her Highlands County, Florida, home over an undisclosed disagreement. They did agree on one thing: they were hungry. So the girlfriend, Cheryl Treadway, convinced him to let her use a Pizza Hut ordering application on her mobile phone. Her order for a hand-tossed classic pizza with pepperoni included further instructions, in the comments field - '911 hostage help'. The Pizza Hut outlet contacted the police, and Nickerson was arrested.
Chad and Joey Mudd are parents who wanted to motivate their children, ages 13 and 14, to do their chores and not skip school. According to detectives with the Pinellas County, Florida, Sheriff's Office, the 'bargaining tool' they used was supplying marijuana and cocaine to the two on various occasions as a reward. Both the father, 36, and the mother, 34, have been arrested.
Cynthia Rodriguez and her husband were eating Nature Valley granola bars when she received a surprise. She explains: 'I was shaking the little bag out to get the crumbs when all of the sudden this little baggie popped out.' Not sure exactly what kind of prize she may have received, she rang the manufacturer, who referred her to the police. She recalls a San Antonio police detective and officer telling her: 'Congratulations, it's high-quality cocaine.' Sergeant Javier Salazar said: 'We're not sure if this was something added on purpose or if it was something that may have fallen out of someone's pocket on the assembly line.'
Josh Lewis is a university student in Louisville, Kentucky, who has a pizza-delivery job. He was recently carjacked at a delivery point, stabbed in the back, and relieved of his vehicle. He decided to make haste, on foot, to deliver the next batch of pizzas, which had been ordered for the Norton Hospital emergency room. Hospital director Willow Rouben recalls: 'He just walked in there, said: "Hi, I'm from Spinelli's. I have a pizza delivery", and then just collapsed.' Lewis is recovering after suffering a collapsed lung.
In response to a video shot by a driver in Canada looking into a car in another lane, British Columbia Minister of Transportation and Infrastructure Todd Stone said that 'to actually be driving what would appear to be with your knees, while you're curling your hair, is beyond anything I've ever seen on our roads'. Saanich police said that the woman, whose identity was not clear from the video, would be ticketed for driving without due care and attention if she gets caught in the act. They explained that her actions don't fall afoul of other laws, since a curling iron is not considered to be an electronic device.
A month after 56-year-old John Timiriasieff's leg was amputated at Doctors Hospital in Coral Gables, Florida, he received a visit from homicide detectives. They had found the limb at a waste processing facility, with the tag bearing his name still attached, and they wanted to know whether he'd been a victim of foul play. Timiriasieff is suing the hospital for throwing his leg in a bin rather than incinerating it per policy. He claims to have suffered emotional distress, an invasion of privacy, and humiliation.
Comedian Tamale Sepp discovered a two-way mirror in the women's loo at Chicago's Cigars and Stripes bar. On the other side is a hallway where maintenance supplies are stored. She said: 'You will see the back of the door cut out, and a clear view of the toilet that women use to relieve themselves at this establishment.' The bar's owner, Ronnie Lottz, explains that the mirror was installed in 2001 for a Halloween effect in which a monster head lights up behind the glass, to scare the child sitting on the toilet. He is quoted as saying: 'I will burn this [expletive] place to the ground before I get rid of that mirror. Do you know how much joy that mirror has brought to us?'
According to Nebraska's Kearney Hub, someone found a riding lawnmower that he liked at a Wal-Mart in the city of Lexington. That was Gursham Gillett, 49. He filled it with fuel, cut a chain-link fence, and drove the mower from the lot without paying for it. He was 15 kilometres into his getaway when spotted on the lawnmower by a sheriff's deputy. He has been arrested and charged with criminal mischief and theft by shoplifting.
According to Daijiworld Middle East, a Saudi woman asked her brother to take her for a drive while her husband was celebrating his taking of a second wife. The chosen vehicle was her husband's pickup truck, and the goal was to drive through red lights at camera-monitored junctions as many times as possible in the course of the evening. The husband found himself receiving automatic fines worth, in total, 58,000 euros on his wedding night. Video captured from another vehicle was available at press time here.
Sarah Schrock, Jessica Whitney Hurry, and a three-year-old girl were living together in Mechanicsville, Maryland, when Schrock served milk to the other two to accompany dinner. Both gagged, prompting a witness to pour the remaining milk through a strainer. The non-milk-like substance left behind is described as resembling skin shavings. A probable-cause statement filed by Sheriff's Corporal Jaime Davis states that Hurry explained to officers that Schrock, a diabetic, 'has trays in her room with the same kind of dead skin shavings that had come off of her feet'. She was later arrested at a motel and charged with food contamination and violating an order not to have any contact with Hurry.
Levi Charles Reardon is a 24-year-old Montana man who was arrested
after using Facebook's 'Like' button.
When an acquaintance mentioned that Reardon's photo was on the Great Falls / Cascade County
Crimestoppers Facebook page, Reardon read the relevant post listing
him as one of the area's most wanted criminals and decided to 'Like'
his mug shot. He has since pleaded not guilty of felonious forgery.
Also in Montana, Monte Hanson became annoyed that Hamilton bartender Joe Lewis made him a non-kosher red beer, using Clamato rather than pure tomato juice. The 59-year-old Hanson decided to wait at Lewis's house and shoot him as soon as he emerged. When Lewis stepped from the house, Hanson's first shot hit Lewis's pit bull in the head, killing it (he was carrying the dog because its leg was in a cast after a toe removal). A second shot hit Lewis's rib area and exited through his back, missing major organs. His family are trying to raise enough money to buy him a new dog and pay his living expenses until he can return to work. Meanwhile, Hanson has been charged with attempted deliberate homicide and animal cruelty.
Arkansas's Larry Brassfield has a four-year-old dog that has eaten socks, magnets, and marbles. Brassfield left a bag of rifle rounds on the floor next to his bed, not considering that the dog, Benno, might take an interest in these. When the Belgian Malinois vomited up four rounds, Brassfield and his wife decided that a visit to a veterinarian might be in order. The vet removed 17 rounds from Benno's stomach, leaving the animal to regurgitate two more.