What's a guy to do if he's looking for a date and has run out of mobile phone minutes? Joshua Basso's answer was to ring the emergency services and ask the dispatcher whether he could visit her house. When she hung up, he tried again - four more times. It should come as no surprise that the authorities were able to find him quickly. When arrested 15 minutes later at his Florida home, he reportedly said that he didn't think he would get in trouble for ringing 911.
A woman rang the police in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, to report that a man was inside her unlocked car at her block of flats. She and a friend shooed the man away, and she later noticed that her digital camera had left with him. An hour later, she rang the police again to report that he was back. Officers arrested Evan Kelly Kirchen, who was still carrying the camera. He explained that he had returned in search of his mobile phone.
After almost eight months of married life, Trista Joy Lathern was desperate to save her relationship. When a benign lump was discovered in one of her breasts, she decided to tell her husband that it was cancerous, so that he wouldn't leave her. She decided it would further help her marriage to have her breasts enlarged. The obvious way to finance this was shave her head and get people to donate $10,000 for her life-saving surgery at a benefit event. She got caught.
Police in Salem, Oregon, report that Calvin Hoover rang emergency services dispatchers to report that someone had broken into his truck and stolen money, a jacket, and a small amount of marijuana. He rang again a while later to complain that no-one had arrived in response to the first call. At least that is the gist of it; the dispatcher found it difficult to catch the details because of the sounds as Hoover drove along and made several stops to vomit. The 21-year-old Hoover has been arrested for driving while intoxicated.
As cited in UPI reports, Tidningarnas Telegrambyrå has reported on five men who were waiting in the arrivals area of Sweden's Arlanda airport. As they continued waiting, it became clear that the passenger they were awaiting would not show up, and that they were all waiting for the same person. Each had the same story to tell: he had sent the equivalent of more than 1,000 euros to what he believed to be a woman in Thailand so that she could fly to meet him. Two of the men have filed police reports.
Samuel Botchvaroff, 24, was arraigned on auto theft charges in Valleja, California. After his court appearance, he got back in his car and was promptly arrested because it wasn't his car. Botchvaroff, 24, explained that his own vehicle had been impounded and that he had no other way to get to court but to steal a car that morning. Further auto theft charges are pending.
Perth police spokesman Samuel Dinnison reports on a man who tried to break into a shopping centre in the wee hours, after having already freed a large haul of prescription medicines from a pharmacy. Dinnison explained that the 35-year-old man was found after 'he fell asleep on the ground with the wire still in his hands and also in the door'.
Lau Siu-wah didn't want to see his wife's gym membership at a Hong Kong Sheraton hotel go to waste after she died. Therefore, he showed up with her identification card and dressed in drag, to use the female-only section of the gym. The police were summoned, and Lau was arrested. He is now standing trial, dressed in women's clothes.
A Falkville, Alabama, driver pulled out in front of a sheriff's deputy and began weaving across the road. The deputy thought this might indicate drunken driving so signalled to the man, 48-year-old Dewaine Elton Ott, to stop. Disappointed at being caught, Ott stumbled out of the driver's seat and yelled: 'I just stole this truck!' Along with driving under intoxicating influence, he was arrested for theft of a motor vehicle and various traffic offences.
The New York Post reports that auditor Damian Salo was attending the Manhattan ticker-tape parade held for the baseball World Series championships and soon became aware that some office workers in high-rise buildings along the parade route had become overly excited. Apparently without confetti to throw, they had launched pay stubs, court files, legal memos, and banking data from their windows.
Newspapers in the US state of Georgia report that someone dialled a wrong number, which led to a series of abusive phone calls and text messages between strangers Scott Allen Elder, 22, and Brian Matison, 24. In the end, the two agreed to meet in a pharmacy car park to settle the matter. As a result of the encounter, Matison was taken to hospital with a gunshot wound, Elder was arrested for aggravated assault, and a police officer's car was damaged.
Aaron Siebers really didn't want to go to work, it seems. Police in Edgewater, Colorado, explain that Siebers called in sick at the video store where he works, reporting that he had been attacked by three men dressed in black - either Hispanics or skinheads. Five police agencies rolled in and found that Siebers had been knifed in the leg and suffered various superficial cuts. Under questioning, Siebers admitted that he had made up the story and stabbed himself.
According to the AFP, South Korean police have arrested a 42-year-old former golf club employee, identified as only Lee, for stealing lost balls. Late at night, he visited dozens of the country's golf courses, wearing a diving suit and oxygen tank. He freed some 26,000 balls from water hazards, sometimes with the help of his niece or a friend, both of whom have been arrested. Lee made the equivalent of a little under 10,000 euros by selling the balls to training facilities.
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© 2009 Anna Shefl