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When
police stopped Zachary P. Ramirez, 21, for speeding, he's got a rather
unique reason:
File this under "Excuses Traffic Cops Don't Hear Every Day."
A Chicago-area man who allegedly was clocked driving 111 mph through a 45 mph forest preserve told a patrol officer he was in a hurry to “try to go have sex with a girl he liked.”
111 mph (that's 178 km per hour for those of you on metric)! It's not an excuse for speeding, but us guys understand. After all, she might change her mind if he took his time ... Link
Someone's been watching a bit too much Hunger Games: Two Utah men were arrested for planting deadly booby traps along a popular hiking trail in Provo Canyon. Luckily, the medieval-looking traps didn't have the chance to hurt anyone before they were discovered:
The devices were designed to trip when a person entered The Fort. One of the traps would have released a spiked ball and another would have caused a person to fall onto sharpened sticks pointing up from the ground.
“That would kill people, easily, easily kill people,” said hiker Emily Hammerstad. “It’s just awful and sickening that people would do that kind of thing.”
Through Facebook contacts, deputies were able to identify two suspects. They arrested 21-year-old Kai Matthew Christensen, of Provo, and 19-year-old Benjamin Steven Rutkowski. Police said they confessed to placing the traps.
Deputies said there was not any indication that these two were trying to protect anything or hide anything. It appears to have been for fun.
Admit
it: you've probably asked for a free cup of water from a restaurant and
then fill that cup with soda (clear ones like Sprite or Seven-Up, of course,
you sneaky devil) when nobody's looking.
Well, here's the cautionary tale of what could happen to you for thievin' soda:
After filling a courtesy cup with soda Thursday at the McDonald's soda fountain and then leaving the restaurant, Mark Abaire, 52, of the 500 block of 14th Street North, was arrested by Collier deputies and now faces a felony theft charge, a sheriff's report shows.
A manager told sheriff's deputies that Abaire entered the store and asked for a glass of water around 10 p.m. Although the employee told him the cup was for water, Abaire filled it with soda at a fountain machine and sat outside the restaurant, according to an arrest report.
That $1 soda now landed the man in jail: Link (Image: Shutterstock)
Kalvin and Leah Greuel of Hawley, Minnesota, adopted Tommy soon after he was born to a woman that Leah met at Walmart. That in itself is a story, but then Tommy suffered from a mysterious condition that caused his head to grow too fast.
At 6 months old, it was off the charts for his age group. At 9 months, it was nearly the size of a 5-year-old’s. No one they consulted had seen anything like it. The Greuels started looking for specialists and for answers.
On June 26, 2010, before they found the latter, Tommy had a seizure that lasted more than six minutes. Leah took him to the emergency room, where tests showed bleeding in the brain, hemorrhages in both eyes and a fluid build-up in his skull.
They were symptoms of Tommy’s condition, exacerbated by everyday bumps and stumbles. His connective tissue was weak, particularly around his eyes, and his brain was bruised from bumping into the inside of his own skull.
The Greuels didn’t know that yet. Neither did the hospital staff, who instead saw his symptoms as telltale signs of something else: shaken baby syndrome.
The hospital called Clay County Social Services, which said the injuries were evidence of child abuse – and that Kaylee was in danger as well.
And one day in early July, the agency took both children away.
The story continues with the Greuel’s struggle to get their children back, and an even bigger struggle to get medical help for Tommy while the state had custody. See, the social service agency didn’t think Tommy needed to keep his appointments with specialists because they already knew that the problem was shaken baby syndrome. Read the entire story so far at InForum. Link to part one. Link to part two (with video). -via Minnesota Public Radio
Bad:
Stealing gas
Worse: Stealing gas from a police car
Neatorama-worthy: Stealing gas from a police car, and
posting a photo of the crime in progress on Facebook!
Michael Baker, 20, was swiping the gas last month from a Jenkins Police Department squad car, he made sure to flip the bird as his girlfriend snapped a picture.
While the siphoning photo has been removed from his Facebook page, Baker yesterday updated his 380 friends on his legal problems. “just got out of jail,” he wrote in one post, adding later that “yea lol i went too jail over facebook.” Responding to a friend who had not seen the image before it was yanked, Baker assured, “yea lol u would just have to seen it it was funny as hell tho.”
See the photo in its full uncropped glory over at The Smoking Gun: Link
Three robots are being tested at a prison in Pohang, South Korea, on the feasibility of using the machines as guards.
The robot, called Robo-Guard by many in the press, is equipped with several cameras, one of which is 3D, microphone, speaker and circuitry and software that allow it to roam autonomously in predefined areas within the prison. It also has software that allows it to analyze behavioral characteristics of inmates to help in deciding whether to alert the human guards. Its main purpose, according to the AFC, is to reduce manpower costs in prisons and to make a safer environment for both inmates and those that guard them.
So far, the project appears to be doing the same job of a combination computerized video surveillance and public address system, so the push to use robots in prison may be part of South Korea’s effort to become the world leader in the robotics industry. Read more about it (and see a video) at PhysOrg. Link -via Ars Technica
No, I’m not talking about Peewee’s Big Adventure being remade with a penguin in the lead role, although that would be pretty darn awesome. Unfortunately, this is a true tale involving a tiny fairy penguin being stolen from the zoo and chased by both sharks and dogs before being rescued and returned to his home.
On Saturday, three young men reportedly broke into the park and caused all sorts of mishchief, like swimming in the dolphin tank. On their way out, they nabbed the diminutive Dirk, for good measure. Their time with the small bird was apparently short lived, as the group are said to have released Dirk into the nearby Broadwater waterway.
The next day, a couple passing by the area saw Dirk being chased by a shark, which are known to swim around the Broadwater area. To make matters worse, a dog on the shore kept harassing the little bird when he tried to come ashore. The couple alerted SeaWorld officials who quickly responded, bringing the exhausted bird back to his home.
That’s a serious adventure for such a small little critter, especially one raised in a zoo and not accustomed to the harsh realities of being a wild creature.
Link Via Geekosystem
Image Via rumpleteaser [Flickr]
Taliban commander Mohammad Ashan saw his face on a wanted poster and noted the reward was $100. So he grabbed one and went to a police checkpoint in the district of Sar Howza, Afghanistan, where he demanded the reward. Officials arrested him instead. He was wanted for plotting attacks on Afghan security forces.
When U.S. troops went to confirm that Ashan had in fact come forward to claim the finder’s fee, they were initially incredulous.
“We asked him, ‘Is this you?’ Mohammad Ashan answered with an incredible amount of enthusiasm, ‘Yes, yes, that’s me! Can I get my award now?’” recalled SPC Matthew Baker.
A biometric scan confirmed that the man in Afghan custody was the insurgent they had been looking for.
“This guy is the Taliban equivalent of the ‘Home Alone” burglars,” one U.S. official said.
A vague bill now working its way through the Tennessee legislature could lead to unintended consequences. It may soon be illegal for teachers to mention kissing, hand-holding, and other “gateway sexual activities”. From the bill summary:
Instruction of the family life education curriculum may not:
(1) Promote any gateway sexual activity or health message that encourages students to experiment with non-coital sexual activity;
But the bill does not define exactly what gateway activity is. Holding hands? Kissing? Possibly. Teachers will have to be careful because they don’t yet know how the law will be interpreted.
Discouraging heavy petting and more intense shenanigans is one thing. But critics of the bill say it’s so vague that activities as innocent as “holding hands and kissing could be considered gateways to sex,” says Jerica Phillips at WMC-TV. The bill also says parents can file a complaint, triggering an official investigation, if they believe a teacher has mentioned or demonstrated a “gateway sexual activity.” So watch out, teachers, says Jeanne Sager at The Stir. Hand-holding isn’t just verboten for teenagers … for you, it’s “a fire-able offense.”
The consequences of the bill would depend on definition of “gateway sexual activities” and who does the defining. Link
(Image credit: Flickr user Entrer dans le rêve)
Unlike
in the United States with our no-fault divorces, in England, divorces
are granted only under a few categories, including adultery, abandonment,
and unreasonable behavior.
So what's a married couple seeking divorce to do?
In England, few divorce cases go to trial, so the parties have to work out — either amicably or unamicably — who is at fault and why. The reasons, which appear in the papers filed by the person seeking the divorce, have no bearing on eventual financial or custody arrangements, except in extreme cases, lawyers say. But they still have to be approved by a judge, which is where some chicanery may come in, lawyers here say.
Here are some of the divorce petitions that have been filed:
The woman who sued for divorce because her husband insisted she dress in a Klingon costume and speak to him in Klingon. The man who declared that his wife had maliciously and repeatedly served him his least favorite dish, tuna casserole.
In one recent case, the husband accused his wife of spitefully tampering with the TV antenna and throwing away his cold cuts. She said he usurped her control of the washing machine and failed to appreciate her revulsion for “intensely farmed meat.”
... there was a woman who said her husband had not spoken to her for 15 years, communicating only by Post-it note. And there was the man whose wife “would without justification flirt with any builder or tradesman, inappropriately touching them and declaring that she could not stop herself.”
One petition read: “The respondent insisted that his pet tarantula, Timmy, slept in a glass case next to the matrimonial bed,” even though his wife requested “that Timmy sleep elsewhere.”
Ah, there's a thin line between love and hate, indeed: Link
Who
you gonna call to find out if "paranormal activity" a valid
excuse for breaking your lease? Lawyers, naturally! A couple has filed
a lawsuit to recover their security deposit on a rental of - what they
claim to be - a haunted hause:
Just one week after Josue Chinchilla and Michele Callan moved into their new home in Toms River, the couple and her two children plodded into the lobby of a local hotel about 1:15 a.m. and asked for a room.
As soon as the family had settled into the three-bedroom ranch at the corner of Terrace and Lowell avenues on March 1, they began to suspect they were not its only tenants.
The family would come home and find their clothes and towels ejected from the closets and strewn over the floors. Doors would creak open and slam closed in unoccupied areas of the house. Lights switched on and off without human intervention. At night, footsteps could be heard from the kitchen after everyone was tucked in and unintelligible whispering seemed to fade in and out of thin air, according to the couple.
The most disturbing and consistent phenomenon, they claim, is the sound that comes through the vents to the basement — the muffled din of something lumbering seven feet below their feet.
Erik Larsen of The Asbury Park Press has the story: Link - via The Week
I’m sure I don’t need to tell all of our American readers that your income taxes are due on April 17 (it’s usually April 15, but since that was a Sunday this year, we got a short little extension). While you might have made some seemingly strange deductions on your income taxes in the past, chances are that you’ve got nothing on these ballsy write offs, although, surprisingly, many of them have been accepted by the IRS.
Image Via kenteegardin [Flickr]/Senior Living
Fancy Dresses. The catch here is that the dresses that TV star Dinah Shore was able to write off could only be used on her show as they were so tight that she couldn’t even sit down on them. Being as how they could only be used for her work, the IRS let her keep the deduction.
Boob Jobs. Not just anyone can write off a breast enhancement, but if you’re a stripper who gets the surgery so you can make more tips, you might just qualify. After all, Chesty Love already won a battle with the IRS over whether or not her 56 FF enhancement should count, the court agreed that if she didn’t get them she could lose money to other dancers. This same principal applies to lingerie, make up, and other accessories that dancers in this trade might need for work, as long as they can prove the items aren’t being used for personal purposes outside of the club.
Image Via Caza_No_7 [Flickr]
Body Oil. It’s not just women who get to claim deductions related to their appearance. Professional body builders are allowed to claim (legal) products they use to keep their muscles looking great. While steroids don’t qualify, body oil and tanning sessions do.
Clarinet Lessons. Don’t get too ready to sign up for music lessons. This deduction was only allowed in one specific circumstance where a doctor recommended a patient take up the instrument because it has been known to help lessen the pain associated with an overbite. Since it was considered a legitimate medical expense at that point, the patient’s parents were allowed to write it off.
Swimming Pools. more …
Well,
it works for Daleks, so Lawrence Deptola, 49, of Utica, New York, took
the plunge and decided to rob not one, not two, but three banks with ...
a toilet plunger!
Needless to say, his plan crapped out:
He should've used the toilet brush. Those things are truly scary! Link - via FarkBank employees say he came in started yelling obscenities, asking them to put money in a bag. Police say he threatened the tellers with the plunger.
Officers in an unmarked car responded to the scene and saw the suspect walking away. When the suspect saw the officers, he ran. Police caught up with him and took him into custody. [...] The plunger was recovered inside Citizen's Bank.
Saggy
pants may be a fashion crime, but can they land you in real jail? The
answer is yes:
Meet Lamarcus Ramsey.
The 19-year-old Alabama man was sentenced yesterday to three days in jail after he appeared in court with jeans that were hanging so low that an irate judge cited him for contempt.
The crime? "showing your butt in court":
The jurist added, “You can spend three days in jail. When you get out you can buy pants that fit, or at least get a belt to hold up your pants so your underwear doesn’t show.”
China
has got fake handbags, fake watches and even a fake Apple store, but this
"fake" takes the cake: Fake Police Academy.
Link - via Oddity Central (Photo: Hung Chung Chih/Shutterstock)The Jiamusi People's Police Academy, Shandong province branch, offered impressionable school leavers a three year law enforcement studies course taught by veteran officers on a new campus.
The rookie officers prepared to stump up the £2,000 fees were promised their hard won diplomas would land them jobs keeping the streets safe from criminals – including, one imagines, apprehending the innovative counterfeiters who have produced a long list of fraudulent products, including fake walnuts, vintage wine and the ubiquitous plastic Rolex.
The sham police school was closed after its "honorary president", Wei Zhenhai, inadvertently exposed the scheme. He boasted about his friends in high places to two female undercover officers who visited the admission office posing as potential students. Mr Wei claimed his unique constabulary connections would help them secure posts.
Genuine constables then pounced and arrested the academy's 23 staff, including the president, Zhao Qingxin.
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Remember the scammers who reversed their car into another? A similar thief is at work here. He walks into a stopped car, then acts like the car hit him. Watch until the end, when you see him nurse a leg, feigning injury — and it’s the wrong leg!
-via reddit
It might sound a little extreme to have a national registry for animal abusers -after all, they’re hardly as dangerous as sex offenders, but when you actually think about it, it does make a lot of sense. After all, no one wants animal abusers to be able to adopt poor little puppies and kittens do they?
New York’s Suffolk County legislature on Wednesday signed off on a measure that would publicly name anyone convicted of animal abuse by having them report to a registry for five years after their conviction.
“Most serial killers began as animal abusers,” Suffolk County Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Chief Roy Gross told the North Shore Sun. “It’s a known fact: people who hurt animals hurt people too.”
The Sun story says the convicted abusers would pay a $50 annual fee for upkeep of the registry, and those who fail to register would be charged $1,000 or face jail time. The legislature is also considering another bill that would require pet stores and animal shelters to check the registry before allowing anyone to adopt or buy an animal.
So what do you guys think? Would you support an animal abuse registry or do you think it goes too far?
Lynn Peters of Johannesburg, South Africa, sent out a Tweet that her boyfriend had been kidnapped Sunday night. He was put in the trunk of his own car by armed carjackers! However, the unnamed man was able to contact Peters via phone. Her alert sent the Twittersphere into action.
RT they did, including Peters’ friend, Tanisha Reddy. From her it was picked up by well-known SA Twitterer, @pigspotter, who retweeted it to his 100,000-plus followers. @pigspotter specializes in identifying and sharing the location of police roadblocks. The police forces in South Africa have frequently been accused of graft and violence, so it does not seem to be criminals alone who make a point of avoiding roadblocks.
Because @pigspotter’s followers include a large number of private security forces, whose vehicles are spread around the country, the Golf was located. Units were notified and in many cases sent out, each team and company retweeted the specifics of their search and kept each other apprised and informed on Twitter.
@afritrack asked if the car was equipped with electronic tracking (it was not.) A volunteer security group called Riga Rescue offered to track the victim’s cell signal. The security company K9 Security eventually visually identified the car. The kidnappers were ultimately stopped at a police road block in Ventersberg, 150 miles from where he was taken.
The victim was rescued unharmed. The perpetrators fled on foot, and have not yet been apprehended. Link -via Gizmodo
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Perhaps
dancing your signature moves isn't the smartest thing to do while committing
a burglary. Here's how police in Galveston, Texas, identified a possible
burglary suspect:
Galveston Police Captain Jeff Heyse released the 38-second video on Wednesday which shows a young man briefly chatting with others before performing a short dance routine, which allowed them to identify a possible suspect.
"The 16-year-old juvenile suspect is known for his 'swag,' or signature dance move, and (he) does it in the hallways at school," Heyse stated in a press release obtained by the Galveston Daily News.
The footage was captured between 8 and 9 p.m. on March 27, when three men reportedly broke into an amphibious automobile that the touring company "Duck Tours" uses to drive sightseers along the streets of Galveston and ferry them across Galveston Bay, the paper reports.
"Three suspects somehow scaled the side of the vehicle and made entry into the emergency exit on the roof," Heyse said in the press release. "They sprayed the fire extinguisher inside the vehicle and subsequently stole the extinguisher."
Surprisingly, alcohol was involved:
After the three intoxicated twenty year olds went to a car wash with a shopping buggy about midnight last night, Abbotsford police posted a tweet warning that pressure washing yourself will not increase “intelligence or sobriety.”
The trio had stripped down – loaded themselves into the cart – and selected either “typhoon” or “super typhoon” and tried to wash themselves and the buggy.
The Abbotsford police were alerted when neighbours heard screaming.
The men made it through okay, although police had a few choice words for them.
Link -via Dave Barry | Photo (unrelated) via Flickr user Fortyseven
As I watched this video, I was particularly impressed by the bus driver’s skill. He observed an incident from the rear and promptly, but safely, maneuvered his massive vehicle in a completely effective way.
The two drivers, Richard Gubish, Jr. and Judson Smull, have been given the official thanks of the city for preventing this criminal from escaping justice.
Most groups purchasing lottery tickets know that you must share and record all the numbers for a group purchase and store the ticket(s) in a mutually accepted place. But the $640 million Mega Millions drawing last weekend enticed a lot of new players to participate. And Mirlande Wilson of Baltimore, Maryland, has a fight on her hands over who owns the winning ticket.
Wilson, a single mother of seven children, admits that she did contribute to the McDonald’s “office” pool, but swears that she purchased the winning ticket separately with her own cash. “We had a group plan, but I went and played by myself. [The ‘winning’ ticket] wasn’t on the group plan,” Wilson told the New York Post, insisting she alone bought one of the three tickets that will split the record $656 million payout.
Her co-workers disagree. Suleiman Osman Husein, a shift manager and one of 15 members in the pool told the Post, “We each paid $5. She took everybody’s money!” Further corroborating Husein’s version was a man identified by the Post only as Allen, who was also part of the pool. He said Wilson bought tickets for the group at the 7-Eleven in Milford Mill, which is where the winning ticket was sold.
Further complicating the case is a security recording at the convenience store where the ticket was purchased, which may show that the winning ticket was purchased by a man. Link
Police
officers in a town in Essex, England, has a unique way of making sure
the town's residents stay safe: the cops will break into their homes in
the middle of the night.
Sleeping householders are going to be woken up in the middle of the night to discover someone breaking into their house - only to discover it is the police.
Police in Shoebury, Essex, have been going round testing doors and windows of houses to check if they have been left unlocked - and if they find an easy way in they will wake up the household to warn them their house is insecure.
The new police campaign is aimed at warning people of the dangers of late-night break ins - but predictably, those who have been woken have not been happy so far.
Well, I suppose it's better the cops than the burglars: Link
But…it works in the movies! Why not in real life? On the run from a police helicopter, a man in Wiltshire, UK hid inside a manure pile:
The 34-year-old Lithuanian man, from Ilford, Essex, was found “face-down in the dung” by officers after abandoning his van in Manton near Marlborough. [...]
According to a police spokesperson, the suspect had been hot from running and was easily detected on thermal imaging cameras hiding in a manure heap at Red Barn Farm at Manton.
Link -via Dave Barry | Photo (unrelated) via Flickr user Leo-setä
Defendants
have been wearing suits and ties to appear like upright citizens to juries
for a long time, but that may not be enough for some. These people need
... hipster glasses!
Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Brittin noticed that 5 men he was prosecuting for a series of killings were wearing large-framed, non-prescription glasses, and decided to blow the Hipster Glasses conspiracy wide open:
Non-prescription “hipster” or “personality” glasses are on one hand simply a fashion fad. But they’ve also become something of a sensation in the District’s courthouse scene: Attorneys say inmates trade them before hearings, while friends and family sometimes deliver them during jailhouse visits. Some lawyers even supply them themselves. [...]
“They’re masks. They’re designed to confuse the witness and influence the jury,” said one prosecutor who is following the trial. Another said the defendants were “putting on a schoolboy act.”
Other defense attorneys chimed in on the effectiveness of the Hipster Glasses:
New York defense lawyer Harvey Slovis makes all his clients wear glasses: He calls them part of a “nerd defense.” The glasses, Slovis said in an interview, make people appear less intimidating. “Yes, it works,” he said.
Link - via The Look (Image: The Hipster Ariel Meme)
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A man in East London, South Africa, knocked on the door of a home and asked if the resident had any work he could do. The couple who lived there were astonished to see what the man was wearing -their clothes!
He was decked out in the resident’s shoes, socks, belt, a pair of trousers and one of his fiance’s blouses.
“When I opened the door I was surprised because he was wearing our clothing,” said the resident, who asked not to be named.
The man said he immediately went to the back garden and noticed their storeroom had been looted.
“My fiance and I were busy packing to move into a new house and most of our clothing and new linen were being kept there,” he said.
The couple held the man for police for 45 minutes, but he escaped before they arrived. The thief was later caught by security guards. Link -via Arbroath
(Image credit: Wikipedia user NordNordWest)
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A real life Hamburglar is running around stealing burgers in Augusta, Maine and no Big Mac is safe. Here’s the scoop:
According to Lt. Christopher Massey of the Augusta Police, a young man wearing red jeans reportedly grabbed the goods as they were being handed to a customer by an employee.
Massey tracked the alleged thief down to a nearby Arby’s parking lot, but he managed to escape into the woods with the loot.
The restaurant prepared a new meal for the victims and told Massey that this sort of thing “does happen occasionally.”
Now that’s what I call hard up for a hamburger!
Are you a professional? Then look the part, no matter what your career choice. Take, for example, this man, who has been charged with burglary in Marion County, Illinois. His shirt helpfully says “What’s mine is mine what’s yours is mine.”
Link -via Lowering the Bar | Photo: WJBD
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A man sued Google in a Japanese court and won! That doesn’t mean that Google will comply with the order, but here’s what happened:
A Japanese court has ordered Google to shut down its autocomplete feature in Japan after a man took a complaint to court that said autocomplete feature was casting him in a negative light. The mans’ name was not revealed, though the complaint said autocomplete coupled his named with over 10,000 negative words, and it is negatively affecting his career.
Since it never occurred to me to do it before, I immediately Googled my name to see what autocomplete would come up with. Luckily, the results are pretty benign (though I’m disappointed that Neatorama didn’t appear). Take a moment to do the same, if you haven’t already, and then read the rest of the story at Geekosystem. Link
Nobody
likes jury duty, but Susan Cole, 57-year old beautician from Colorado,
really, really, really didn't want to do her civic duty.
So she hatched a scheme so crazy it actually worked:
[She] devised a plan “to appear to be mentally unstable” by wearing “mismatched shoes, reindeer socks…and a shirt that bore the caption ‘Ask me about my best seller.’” She also claimed to have lived on the street and that she suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder resulting from domestic abuse she experienced in the military. [...]
After a brief questioning before the judge, Cole, pictured above, was dismissed from the case without objection from either the prosecution or the defense.
She would've gotten away with it, except she had the clever idea of bragging about it on the radio ... and the judge that dismissed her was actually listening to the show!
Needless to say, she was arrested: Link
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