Police report that Minnesota's Michael Schaeffer skipped out on an estimated $100,000 of medical bills at St Cloud Hospital after explaining that he would pay the full amount later, and that he was Pink Floyd's Dave Gilmour. His story fell apart after he checked out of the facility. Four days later, he returned to the hospital for further treatment, again claiming to be the singer-guitarist, whereupon he was arrested.
A man broke the window of a Burlington, Wisconsin, office building, then entered and liberated three computers. He placed them just outside the front door and went back inside for more booty. The perpetrator, an intoxicated man named Christopher White, entered the basement, where, recognising how tired he was, he pulled a bear skin from the wall and curled up on it to sleep. Workers found him there the next morning after reporting the break-in. One of the workers in the building, Justin Mueller, said afterward: 'You can't fix stupid. You can just arrest it.'
The New York Post reports on a fight between a brother and sister
who share a home. Howard Meltzer, 67, said that there had been a full
roll of toilet paper in the morning but by later in the day Bernice
Meltzer, 72, had 'unloaded a whole roll and left just a little, and
when I looked up to the reserve, it wasn't there'.
Determining that she had taken the roll into her room, he began
banging on the door. In the five hours that followed, he begged a
grocery store to deliver two packs of Charmin and he warned his
sister that he would call the police if the roll weren't back by
1:00am. She returned it at about midnight but rang the police
herself, to complain about her brother haranguing her.
Both have been charged with violation of a protection order.
After her driving licence was suspended, Florida's Norma Joan Brennan,
age 78, asked her pastor to accompany her to the driver's licence
centre so that she could have her licence restored. The Rev. Kevin
Holsapple indeed accompanied her, but he let her drive, and it was his
car that ended up ploughing through the front doors of a department
store when she got the pedals confused.
Both of them are in trouble for her driving without a licence.
According to the Detroit Free Press, a six-year-old local boy enjoyed
the Chinese take-away meal he'd had the previous night, so he decided
to visit the restaurant again, on his own. He successfully drove the
family car there, only to discover that it was closed. He hit a
traffic sign while driving away, so he set off for the repair shop.
Other drivers reported the car swerving down the motorway, rang
emergency services, and boxed in the vehicle.
Lapeer County sheriff's deputy Karl Sapp admitted being surprised by
the case: 'I don't know how he was able to operate everything and see
at the same time.' Also surprised was the boy's father, when awakened
by the police and informed of his son's adventure.
Meanwhile, in Kerala, India, Muhammad Nizam gave his nine-year-old son a birthday present: letting the boy drive a Ferrari around the block. The proud family posted videos of this online and are now in trouble, exacerbated by the fact that the boy's six-year-old brother was in the car at the time.
In the US state of Georgia, young motorist Alexa Crisa saw something fly through the air from the top of another vehicle. She hit the brakes and hoped she'd avoided running over something. When she returned home, her father, Nick, noticed that an iPad was lodged in the car's bumper. After he freed the device with a hammer, the family were able to power it up and identify the owner, who then offered to pay for a replacement bumper.
Prosecutor Mats Eriksson has spoken of a case in which two men were found growing a small number of marijuana plants. Eriksson said: '[I]t's not exactly like they had an amphetamine lab. The serious thing is that this occurred at Swedish Customs and that it was during working hours.' The two men, who work in Helsingborg, said that they grew the plants purely for research, 'to find out how fast they grow'. The investigation continues.
After a 12-hour shift, 30-year-old Canadian nurse Mary Brown went
straight to bed upon reaching her flat in Brockville, Ontario. She
was unaware that her entry phone had become stuck in the 'on' position
or that her parrot's screaming was alarming passersby. Soon, hearing
what sounded like a woman's screams, police officers had broken
through the door.
An actual screaming female emerged from the bedroom. She recalls
that 'the first thing they said was: "Oh, it's the bird' and sighed in
relief. And I said: "Oh, it's the police."' Brown says that she
doesn't blame the officers, since her parrot is quite a polyglot.
A 42-year-old Pennsylvania woman rang emergency services to ask that she be granted a divorce and that officers be sent to her Girard Township home to throw her husband out for her. The woman was told that they couldn't remove the man without evidence of a crime and that divorce is a civil matter. The Erie Times-News reports that the woman ended up being charged with disorderly conduct and misusing the Erie County 911 system.
A judge in Ionia, Michigan, has posted a policy in his courtroom that
anyone whose electronic device disrupts proceedings will be cited with
contempt of court. When Judge Raymond Voet's own phone interrupted a
prosecutor's closing arguments in a jury trial - loudly saying, he
recalls, 'I can't understand you. Say something like 'Mom' - Voet held
himself in contempt and, during a break, issued himself a $25 fine.
Voet said that the unfamiliarity of the Windows-based
touchscreen phone, which he assumes he must have jostled, wasn't an
acceptable excuse: 'I don't take those excuses from anyone else.'
![[IMG: The alley in question]](images/yellow_lines.jpg)
Referring to the double yellow lines painted in an alleyway in
Swindon, a spokesman for the local council said: 'It seems that our
contractors forgot just how big cars actually are when they painted
this one. We will be taking it up with them.' The width of the alley
leaves 33 cm between the two sets of lines.
Sailendra Nath Roy, holder of the Guinness world record for the longest
trip by a zip wire attached to one's hair, tried for another record
recently. The task he set himself was to cross India's Teesta River
on a 180-metre-long zip wire attached to his ponytail.
Roy's progress halted at about the halfway point. As photographer
Balai Sutradhar tells it: 'He was desperately trying to move forward.
He was trying to scream out some instruction. But no-one could follow
what he was saying.' After about 45 minutes of hanging at 20 metres
above the river while hundreds of witnesses looked on, Roy stopped
moving; a heart attack had claimed his life.
There were no physicians on hand for the record attempt, which was
performed without permission.
Colin Darch, 75, is on the lecture circuit, talking about his 2008 kidnapping by Somali pirates. One of his recent talks was for a chapter of the Women's Institute in south-west England, whose members dressed up for the occasion: the retired sailor arrived to find the audience composed largely of women wearing eye patches and holding plastic swords. Of the misunderstanding about the topic of his talk, Darch said: 'I think they were worried I might be a bit upset that they were trivialising it, but I thought it was funny.'