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October 2010


20 October 2010

Eric Swensson, the chief of police in Sebeka, Minnesota, contacted law enforcement officials to report that ammunition, stun grenades, a police radio, a pair of night-vision goggles, and other police equipment had been stolen from his home. Three days later, he rang the sheriff's office again, this time to report that he had found the items: one or more of his children had taken the items to their backyard fort.

In Gallatin, Tennessee, 20-year-old Dustin Matthew Marshall walked out of a Walmart store in a pair of stolen jeans. The reason we know it was Marshall, and the reason he and his 19-year-old female accomplice have been booked into the county jail, is that he had left his old jeans behind. In one of the pockets was his wallet.
A search of the duo's home revealed evidence of other crimes, and the charge sheet has been scaled up accordingly.

Daniel Collins wanted to make sure his construction crew's project wasn't affecting the Raymore, Missouri, sewer system, so he climbed into a manhole to check. The 30-year-old man was carried away on a current of raw sewage and swept away through the pipe. Just before the sewer line passed under the lake of the local golf course, he caught hold of grates under the 15th green. Emergency crews found the bruised Collins curled into the foetal position and lifted him to safety. Collins, who told paramedics that he hoped his wife wouldn't be angry at him, was listed as in critical condition.

Kyle Kenneth Desmarais, 25, stole three bags of empty beer cans from a Manitoba woman's garage. She rang the police. Desmarais was caught after taking the cans to a nearby off-licence, where he attempted to collect the deposits. It turned out that the cans were from a US brand that didn't qualify for a refund in Canada. Desmarais has been ordered not to enter establishments where alcohol is sold.

If you want to date a teenaged girl these days. you have to dress well. Mindful of this advice, Ohio's 31-year-old Patricia Dye dressed up as a 14-year-old boy in order to go out with a 16-year-old girl. Under the alias 'Matt Abrams', a short-haired Dye met the girl's parents, wooed her, and perpetrated 'sexual imposition' upon her.
Prosecutors deny claims that they had tried to strike a plea deal with Dye. Of the ongoing trial, the girl's mother said: 'They need to throw the book at her and throw away the key.'

Officers stopped 25-year-old Raymond Stanley Roberts of Bradenton, Florida, for speeding on the roads. They said they searched him in order to ascertain the source of the marijuana-like aroma in the vicinity. When two bags were found between his buttocks, officers reported, Roberts said: 'The white stuff is not mine, but the weed is.' He did not elaborate on the supposed source of the less odiferous bag, with its 27 pieces of rock cocaine.

Brian Mattert of Cheyenne, Wyoming, worried that police arriving at his home in response to a domestic violence report would use a stun gun on him. Therefore, he covered himself in white latex paint and told officers that he would die if they were to use a Taser on him. Officers told him that he needn't worry about that. He scuffled with the cops, and the Taser proved the officers correct, twice. The only thing affected by the paint was the officers' uniforms.

A developmentally disabled three-year-old boy attending pre-school in Lake City, Florida, was too young for 'show and tell' but performed a do-it-yourself version. He took marijuana to school and showed it to a classmate, who told the teacher, who told the authorities. Child welfare officials are now trying to determine the origin of the two baggies in question. While the boy said that the drug came from his father, his mother claims that he may have 'gotten the weed' from a house where he plays. A Sheriff's Office spokesman said: 'We just don't know where it came from at this point.'

In Ohio, about 150 people attended a birthday party for a three-year-old girl. All were invited guests, but that didn't stop the eruption of a brawl that involved half of the guests - of those not involved, half were children. Elmwood Place Police Chief William Pesking said that officers 'actually had to wait until they got backup there in order to make entry because there were so many people throwing bottles and chairs'. At least five of the 15 people injured were hospitalised. The girl's princess-themed birthday cake was one of the few things to survive unharmed.
The fight apparently started because of a long-standing disagreement between the birthday girl's father and her mother's boyfriend.

If you don't know what to do with the bodies of your dead babies, be aware that you might end up getting caught if you leave their frozen corpses in a shopping trolley outside a supermarket. Atsuko Fujiwara, a 49-year-old resident of Japan's Aichi Prefecture, along with her son and eldest daughter, are accused of making just such a drop-off. In a search of Fujiwara's home, a third dead baby of hers was found, this one in a rubbish bin on the balcony.

Also in Japan, a 48-year-old primary-school teacher divided his 30-student class into groups on 27 September and instructed each group to create a ransom note using letters cut from newspapers. The example he gave was: 'We are an evil crime group and have taken [the name of the teacher] hostage. Bring us 8,000 yen in cash to the kids' square. If you are one second late, he will be killed.' Mainichi Shimbun reports that the ransom notes weren't completed within the class period, so the teacher simply collected the materials and disposed of them.
When a parent later complained, the teacher explained that he'd come up with the idea of creating a threatening letter as an exercise in co-operation among the students. The principal has now given a verbal warning to the teacher.

Someone left a 22-kilo tank of compressed natural gas in a Bridgewater, Massachusetts, salvage yard. It sat there happily for a while but eventually exploded and shot into the air, coming down via the solar panels and roof of a nearby home. Two people were in the home whose bedroom served as the landing site, but no-one was injured.

Michigan's Macomb Daily reports that a 35-year-old woman was too intoxicated to answer police questions when officers responded to a domestic incident involving her and her husband. Police Lieutenant Scott Sarvello said: 'I then called her on Monday morning and she told me she was still too drunk to be interviewed and would come to the station within a couple of days when she was sober'; however, she showed up a few minutes later, after getting a ride from a neighbour. Once there, she reported that she was too drunk and would return later. She left again with the neighbour, 40-year-old David Chamberlain.
An officer stopped Chamberlain's car a short distance from the station because it had a cracked windscreen. It then became clear that Chamberlain too was intoxicated. He is being charged accordingly. The woman accepted an offer of time at a local hospital for detoxification.

According to Belmont, Massachusetts, police lieutenant Rick Santangelo, a local woman decided to throw a bag of dog faeces at a driver she believed was speeding. She then contacted the police to report that she had been walking her dog when she saw a motorist nearly hit a man on a bicycle. The next day, the police received a call from a man reporting having been struck in the face with canine faecal matter. The officers connected the two incidents, and the woman faces charges that include battery with a dangerous weapon.

Kathleen Edward is a seven-year-old girl in the end stages of the degenerative neurological disorder Huntington's chorea. Her neighbours, Jennifer and Scott Petkov, found this to be good ammunition for revenge at Kathleen's family, who had not responded promptly enough a couple of years ago to a birthday-party-related text message. Images began to appear on social networking Web site Facebook showing Kathleen's face superimposed on a skull and crossbones, and a coffin appeared hitched to a pickup truck outside the Petkovs' house.
In the wake of news coverage, Kathleen's neighbours have now apologised.

Sweden's Vasterbottens-Kuriren reports that a professor at Umeå University left his bag, containing his diary of the last decade or so, his laptop computer, and credit cards, in the stairwell while visiting the laundry room for his block of flats. The bag was gone when he returned. He headed to the police station and returned to find that the bag was back, containing everything but the laptop and his library card. A week later, he received USB sticks by post, containing his personal files and all of the material he'd produced in summer and autumn. The professor, who wished to remain anonymous, said: 'You can see when the files were copied, and the thief spent several hours to transfer the material.'

In 2008, Michael Ireland was the unlucky recipient of a lap dance at a Palm Beach, Florida, strip club. One of the stripper's high heels poked him in the eye, puncturing his eye socket and breaking bones around his eye and nose. A negotiated settlement has now been reached. His solicitor, Lake Lytal, said: 'When this case was first filed, many people criticized it simply because it occurred at a strip club. But we feel the $650,000 settlement goes to show that this was a serious case with serious injuries.'

Having just passed his driving test, a teenager pulled into the car park of the Bridgeville, Pennsylvania, driver's licence centre to drop off the examiner. According to township police sergeant Brian Halbleib, the young man thought the car was in Park. It wasn't. At least three people were injured when the car came crashing through the building.

Kevin Gienger of Kensal, North Dakota, found a dog running wild in his neighbourhood and creating a nuisance, so he decided to castrate it. The purebred poodle, who did have an owner, spent the night after the procedure at Gienger's home, so officers found the 55-year-old man in possession of stolen property. He is being charged also with cruelty to animals.

Finally, thanks to Dave for this one:
While staying at a Hyatt hotel in Illinois, Dayanara Fernandez returned to her room to find that a cleaner was still in her room and some of her belongings were in disarray. She then saw the cleaner, near the bathroom, wearing her skirt and a pair of her high heels. He ran into the bathroom to change his clothes but didn't close the door fully, so, Fernandez said, she got to see that he was wearing her knickers also.
She said that he shouted at her 'Don't tell! Don't tell!' but she told anyway. She insisted that the hotel contact the police, who arrested the man. He has pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct.


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