One of the three mannequins in a storefront display at a shopping
centre in Warsaw's Śródmieście district was special. This 22-year-old
model, clad in a mustard-coloured sweatshirt and with a shopping
bag in its outreached hand, burst into motion after opening hours.
The technique enabled stealing jewellery and cash from multiple
departments once shoppers had vacated the premises.
Later, this individual, whose identity has not yet been released,
nabbed a free meal at a bar, where he donned some pilfered branded
clothing before ducking back below the steel curtain. Security
officers apprehended him when he returned to the bar for a second
meal. He faces 10 years in prison for burglary and theft.
While we don't know what a Florida child wished for at the Harborside Place shopping centre's wishing pool, perhaps it should have been for enough wisdom to heed the fountain's 'No climbing' sign. Upon entering the water, the child suffered an electric shock, which prompted several would-be rescuers to jump in. At least eight people ended up needing medical assistance, and one adult was later declared dead in what the police and utility company term an 'electrocution incident'.
In the hours before he was due to pilot a plane from South Africa back to the UK, British Airways flight officer Mike Beaton bragged in text messages to an air stewardess that he had snorted cocaine from a woman's bare chest and had 'polished off a bottle of vodka [...], then shitted for ages'. He ended up relieved from duty, and a BA press release states that 'this individual no longer works for us'.
In contrast, Alaska Airlines pilot Joseph D. Emerson did make it
aboard his scheduled flight after a close encounter with drugs. He
later explained that his introduction to 'magic mushrooms' about 48
hours earlier had led him to believe he was dreaming while aboard a
domestic flight as an off-duty cockpit occupant - and that pulling the
levers to an engine-fire-extinguishing system would rouse him. What
it did do was cut off the fuel supply. Once the flight crew reversed
his actions, the 44-year-old Emerson explained that he was amid a
depression-induced nervous breakdown and told them to 'cuff me right
now or it's going to be bad'.
Though they obliged, he still nearly activated an emergency exit
during descent, adding to the list of his crimes. While Emerson told
authorities 'I'm not fighting any charges you want to bring against
me, guys', he has declared himself innocent on all counts.
The seas might not be much safer from such fiascos. Reporting on
factors behind the cargo ship Wakashio spilling its fuel oil at a
snorkeling spot off the coast of Mauritius, Japan's Transport Safety
Board stated that the captain, 58-year-old Sunil Kumar Nandeshwar, had
ordered an unauthorised diversion (into an area for which he lacked
marine charts) purely because his personal smartphone had no signal.
The ship smashed into a coral reef after ignoring several contact
attempts by the Mauritius coast guard.
Perhaps Nandeshwar's judgement was affected by the whiskeys he had
downed at a shipboard birthday party. His own summary, captured by
recordings aboard the vessel, was 'Now my career is gone!'
Back on land but perhaps not well-grounded, we have Payton Shires, a newly minted social worker who decided to go above and beyond the call of duty when counselling a 13-year-old Ohio boy as part of the foster-care system. Shires, 24, allegedly had sex at least twice with the boy, whose mother subsequently discovered associated inappropriate text messages on his mobile phone. With Columbus Police detectives listening in, the mother rang Shires and obtained a confession, according to local media. Shires no longer is part of the National Youth Advocate Program.
Other sexual news brings us a wrinkle in the tale of Marcus Silva, who is suing each of his ex-wife Brittni's friends for $1 million for aiding and abetting her procurement of an abortion in Texas. She recorded a conversation in which she confronts him for reneging on his promise to drop the lawsuit in exchange for sex. The conversation also features Marcus threatening to send intimate videos of her to her employer, family members, and others unless she performs other acts for him - namely, doing his laundry.
While walking the streets of Rome, 27-year-old tourist Ludovica Caprino gained an unforgettable memory of her holiday. an eight-month old puppy fell from a balcony window, striking her and then the ground. Ten metres above, the resulting 'gunshot-like' sound startled Emilia Mikela Pawlak, who sprang from the loo to see what was the matter. She found both her Rottweiler, dead, and Caprino, severely injured but expected to recover.
Italy brings us another story, of a woman who has won a lawsuit aimed
at removing her adult sons from her house. The 75-year-old Pavia
woman's filing explains that neither of the men, ages 40 and 42, had
been contributing to household fees from their salary or helping with
household chores.
Contradicting claims by the men's attorneys, Judge Simona Caterbi
wrote that no legislation truly gives an adult child an 'unconditional
right to remain in the home exclusively owned by the parents, against
their will and by virtue of the family bond alone'. If they do not
appeal her ruling, the two 'bamboccioni' (big babies) must vacate the
premises at least a week prior to Christmas.
Meanwhile in Brentwood, California, Sascha Jovanovic is a retired
periodontist who wanted to earn some easy money by renting out his
guest house via Airbnb's long-term stay arrangements at $105 per night.
His tenant was Elizabeth Hirschhorn, described by a previous host as
having had 'a lot of particular needs that I eventually could not
accommodate'. Jovanovic now has a sense of what these include: After
he noticed that mould had taken root on the premises, Hirschhorn
rebuffed his offer of a hotel stay or living with him for the duration
of repairs, stating: 'I don't feel safe being forced to vacate with a
housing disability and the high risks of Covid-19 complications.' For
the 1.5 years since, she has also declined to pay rent or even let him
onto the property.
Since the city never approved the home for rental, Hirschhorn
contends, 'the maximum allowable rent for the unit was $0.00'. A
judge has agreed, ruling that Jovanovic has no legal reason to
evict Hirschhorn. She has, however, offered to leave the property
in exchange for a relocation fee of $100,000.
Roughly 10 days after a woman kicked several family members out of her
home in Topeka, Kansas, her five-year-old daughter Zoey Felix showed
up at a petrol station with ultimately fatal rape-linked injuries
apparently inflicted by a fellow resident of an informal homeless camp
in the woods: 25-year-old Mickel W. Cherry, her step-father.
Among the neighbours who had helped feed, clothe, bathe, and
educate Felix before the eviction, Sharon Williams said that residents
'reported the neglect [on multiple occasions], but they didn't
obviously take it serious'. Sheryl Tyree, in turn, offered this
summary: 'Everybody loved Zoey, except her parents.'
We find lighter incompetence-related fare in Savannah, Georgia, where Connor Cato received a speeding ticket. Though he had been driving at nearly twice the speed limit, the $1.4 million fine seemed a bit extreme. Court officials told him that he had the option of contesting the fee in court, where a judge will impose 'the actual fine'. City of Savannah spokesman Joshua Peacock explained further: court software automatically generates a 'placeholder' number that is in no way intended to 'scare anybody into court'. He did concede that officials plan on 'adjusting the placeholder language to avoid any confusion'.
Alford Lewis is a 19-year-old Texan who wanted to boost his TikTok and
YouTube viewer numbers. His numbers grew also on a
neighbourhood-watch platform where visitors to a Houston park were
trying to identify the culprit behind arbitrary punches in the face.
Confronted outside his home by Harris County sheriff's officers, Lewis
explained: 'You know, I just made a mistake, and everybody makes
mistakes.' He also claimed that after the 'bad part' of one of the
sucker-punch incidents, 'I shook his hand after and gave the man a
hug'.
Still, he offered this cogent advice for others: 'Before you go out
and do anything you feel is bad, or that could look bad, make sure,
like, people know. Or just don't do it at all.'
Next, I have an update on the case of the bog burglary - see
http://theanna.org/clip/september2019.html#flushedaway -
the 2019 theft of an 18-karat gold commode plumbed in as a fully
functional art piece at Blenheim Palace. James Sheen, 39, and Michael
Jones, 38, are being charged with burglary, with Sheen involved also
in fencing the piece, titled 'America'. Two other 30-somethings -
Ascot's Fred Doe and West London's Bora Guccuk, allegedly were part of
the conspiracy to transfer it.
Details remain thin on the ground, in the interest of an unbiased
court case.
No good deed goes unpunished, or at least that might be what Oklahoma's Desiree Castaneda thinks, now that the baby shower she threw for her daughter and 24-year-old Juan Miranda-Jara has landed her 15 years in prison. The main issue is that the daughter was 12 years old when impregnated. While Castaneda, 33, does time for child neglect and enabling child sexual abuse, Miranda-Jara is serving a 20-year jail term. Meanwhile, the pre-teen girl's father is supporting the pattern with a 12-year sentence for first-degree rape in an apparently unrelated case.
The managers of a mortuary-services company in Nebraska denied a 41-year-old body-transporter's request to conduct a biopsy of the sex doll found beside someone who had died at home of natural causes. Nonetheless, the worker is accused of returning to the apartment in question, ostensibly to collect the doll. He was found there with his trousers in disarray and with a rather stickier sex doll. The Omaha man in question faces a count of felonious attempted burglary, and he has been fired.
Our final item is another dead-body story. This one is set in China Grove, North Carolina, where a groundskeeper mowed around the corpse of 34-year-old Robert Paul Owens near a vacant log cabin used for law-enforcement training. Construction workers noticed the badly weather-affected body on the freshly mown lawn the next day and reported it. An autopsy is under way. The groundskeeper later explained that he'd assumed the face-down body to be 'a fake dummy used for training'.
Let's begin with a feel-good story:
When local police officer Scott Pracht rang the doorbell of her
Hillsborough County, Florida, home in response to a dead-air phone
call to the emergency-services number, the woman who opened the door
was clearly confused. Her young son cleared things up, however.
Mobile phone in hand, he sprinted toward Pracht to collect a hug.
Called to account by his mother, he explained his choice of target: 'I
know what your phone number is: it's 911.'
The two adults provided a description of said number's intended use,
thus eliciting a 'sorry' from him before Pracht provided the
dispatcher with the summary '10-4 - kid just wanted a hug'.
After her car ploughed into the headquarters of Indianapolis's Israelite School of Universal and Practical Knowledge, 34-year-old Ruba Almaghtheh reportedly told cops on the scene that news stories rendering her unable to 'breathe anymore' had led her to target a Jewish facility with ties to Israel. She was arrested for criminal recklessness and informed that she had, in fact, chosen a black-supremacist anti-Semitic organisation not representative of Jews or Israelis. None of the religious extremists in the building at the time were injured in the attack.
It doesn't take an expert in financial crimes to detect something
fishy about a solo business traveller filing an expense claim for two
coffees, two sandwiches, and two pasta dishes he supposedly ate all on
his own. Though the food's total cost fell well within the company's
per diem limits, UK judge Caroline Illing has ruled that Citibank
was justified in firing the worker, financial-crimes expert Szabolcs
Fekete.
Fekete's later arguments that he'd been under personal stress and
on medication when e-mailing notes such as 'I don't think I have to
justify my eating habits to this extent' were too little to clear him
of the gross misconduct alleged. Lying at the heart of the matter
was lying that he'd not shared the food with his partner, who had
travelled with him to Amsterdam.
A Lithuanian man identified as Aidas J. has been sentenced to jail
time for thumbing his nose at other food-related rules - namely, that
people who consume 30-70 euros' worth of lobster and whisky while
acting like a wealthy Russian tourist at restaurants in Alicante,
Spain, must pay for their meal. The custodial sentence came after a
call to the police by restaurant-owner Moses Doménech earned
Aidas J., 50, his twentieth eat-and-run arrest since late last year.
Previously, he had received - and not paid - only minor fines
consistent with a minor crime.
In this case and several others, he feigned medical distress in an
effort to escape without paying. He takes his eating habits seriously
enough that, according to a police representative, on at least one
occasion he 'threw himself to the ground, made as if his chest hurt,
and trembled' until being admitted to hospital.
Sometimes it isn't the cough that kills you. The blame in more than
200 cases can be laid at the feet of Afi Farma, thanks to
its atypical cough syrups. Two batches of key ingredient propylene
glycol used by this Indonesia-based firm actually consisted of 96-99%
ethylene glycol, familiar from such applications as antifreeze.
Afi Farma attorneys Samsul Hidayat and Reza Wendra Prayogo both
stressed that Indonesia's drugs regulator does not require
pharmaceutical companies to test ingredients rigorously.
The company's reliance merely on certificates from the supplier left
hundreds of children with fatal acute kidney injury and has now left
Afi chief executive Arief Prasetya Harahap and three other executives
with two-year prison terms and a 55,000-euro-equivalent fine to pay.
A UK man's mid-pandemic complaints about noise from children running
and jumping on the wooden flooring above his flat fell on the deaf
ears of Clarion, the UK's largest housing-management company. The
same fate befell nearly 20 follow-up complaints, including one in
which the tenant stated that the noise had driven him to attempt
suicide, plus a letter from the resident's GP. Once the man began
recording the noises, the landlord confirmed 'considerable
transmission of both noise and movement' from the flat above; however,
Clarion declined to install sound-monitoring equipment, citing
lockdown-related issues.
Ten days after Clarion closed the case, the tenant killed himself.
Now, UK Housing Ombudsman Richard Blakeway has issued recommendations
for taking noise issues seriously and has demanded an apology to the
man's family for 'severe maladministration'.
Less protracted suffering greeted attendees of a Bored Ape NFT collectors' event in Hong Kong. After exposure to the ApeFest party's ultraviolet lights, several guests sought emergency medical treatment for eye pain and vision problems linked with photokeratitis, also known as welder's flash, alongside sunburn-like symptoms. The organisers, who reportedly had saved money by buying lights intended for disinfection rather than for music events, later tweeted that 'less than 1% of those attending and working the event had these symptoms', though still recommending that anyone concerned consult medics 'just in case'.
Authorities responding to complaints about foul odours found that 190 people's remains were rotting away at Colorado's Return to Nature funeral home. This discovery led to the arrest of the facility's owners, Jan and Carie Hallford, on charges of giving fake cremated remains to some families while the deceased mouldered at the funeral home for years. Thus far, investigators have been able to identify roughly 60% of the corpses, and FBI officers have asked families to provide samples of the ashes they received. The pair await trial on charges of money-laundering, corpse abuse, theft, and forgery.
Not gruesome enough? In that case, let me tell you about a South
Korean maintenance worker who died on the job while working late into
the night. During on-site inspection of a food-handling robot's
sensor operations, this 40-something employee of the robotics company
proved indistinguishable from a box of peppers. The robot took hold
of him and pressed him against the conveyor belt, causing injuries
that led to his death in hospital.
According to news agency Yonhap, an official with the plant's owners,
the Donggoseong Export Agricultural Complex, called for a 'precise and
safe' system for preventing problems such as death by crushing.
A New Jersey man purchasing a second-hand pickup truck was in for a surprise. Upon arrival at owner Jay Vaughan's Mays Landing home, he witnessed a deer hurtle over another vehicle and land in the bed of his planned purchase. Video footage captured by the for-sale 2007 Chevy Silverado shows the buck leave the scene after his flight. While the deer seemed undented, the same could not be said of the side of the pickup, so Vaughn reduced the price from $9,500 to $8,500.
For more airborne-animal mayhem, our final Clippings items takes us
further up, to a Boeing 747 cargo plane on its way from New York to
Belgium. The pilot summarised the problem to air-traffic controllers
as 'we cannot get the horse back secure'.
Granted permission to return to John F. Kennedy International
Airport, the Air Atlanta Icelandic crew dumped enough fuel into the
Atlantic to put the aeroplane within safe weight limits for landing.
After a veterinary appointment, the horse was on the way to Liege
again later in the day.
Want more?
Follow the link for an earlier
bundle of Anna's News Clippings.
Want later clippings? Well, just have a browse through the
December-to-January pile.
Go to the Clippings index page
Pages and content © 2000-2023 Anna Shefl