News & Blues Valentine's Edition

Curses, Foiled Again

Juan Aguirre, 21, broke into Cirilla’s sex shop in Salina, Kan., and made off with six X-rated DVDs — or so he believed. Police who stopped him for questioning said his backpack contained a sledgehammer head attached to a rope that he used to shatter Cirilla’s door glass. The six DVD cases turned out to be empty. The store had removed the discs to use the cases for a display. (The Smoking Gun)

Police accused Adam Hall, 34, of vandalizing his ex-girlfriend’s car in Bennington, Vt., by scratching “sult” (sic) on the hood. Suspecting Hall was trying to spell the word “slut,” they asked him to write the sentence “You are a slut.” Hall wrote, “You are a sult.” (ABC News)

Guilty, with an Explanation

Accused of sexually assaulting an unconscious woman on a Kansas City sidewalk in broad daylight, Melvin L. Jackson, 48, told police who found him walking down the street with his pants unzipped, “I thought that lady was dead.” (The Kansas City Star)

Love on a Collision Course

Pilots Kristen Sprague, 26, and her boyfriend, Scott Veal, 24, were talking to each other while flying separate planes, when they collided in midair over Nightmute, Alaska. “They meet up in the air,” National Transportation Safety Board investigator Clint Johnson said. “The next thing she knows is his airplane strikes her right wing and nearly severs the right wing.” Veal’s Cessna 208 crashed and burned, killing him, while Sprague managed to land her Cessna 207 and escaped injury. (Anchorage Daily News)

Constant Companions

Authorities in Jefferson County, N.Y., questioned Ned Nefer, 38, after he was observed walking alongside a highway pushing a 6-foot mannequin he identified as Teagan, his wife. Finding no reason to detain him, Sheriff John P. Burns said Nefer explained he met Teagan when she was just a head and built a body for her before they were married in 1986 in California. Nefer added that the two were traveling from Syracuse to Watertown, a journey documented on a Facebook page created for them. He had 16 disposable cameras with him to take pictures along the way, pointing out, “We both really love the outdoors.” (Watertown Daily Times)

Slightest Provocations

Police said Daniel Baxter, 30, killed his girlfriend’s 2-month-old puppy after he came to the woman’s apartment in Stockton, Calif., at 5 a.m. demanding sex, and she refused. (Sacramento’s KTXL-TV)

Sheriff’s deputies arrested Lon Allen Groves, 40, in Fort Walton Beach, Fla., after he put a gun to his wife’s head while the two were arguing over which granddaughter was her favorite. (Northwest Florida Daily News)

Jason Banks, 29, choked his girlfriend and hit her in the face, according to police in Ambridge, Pa., when she complained that he had never written a song about her. (Associated Press)

An argument between a couple that ended with the boyfriend’s stabbing began, according to authorities in Martin County, Fla., “because they missed the ball drop for New Year’s.” The 26-year-old boyfriend told sheriff’s officials that at 12:05 a.m., the upset 46-year-old girlfriend splashed his face with beer. When he retaliated, the woman went inside her Palm City home, and her son, Brandon Scarpati, 19, came out and confronted him. The two fought until Scarpati stabbed him in the hand. (West Palm Beach’s WPTV-TV)

Dateless in Seattle

A Seattle police patrol reported spotting Nicholas L. Davis lying face up on a basketball court, exposing himself and “masturbating violently.” When the officer asked Davis to explain himself, Davis told him, “There just isn’t enough free love in Seattle.” (Seattle Post-Intelligencer)

Better Dead Than Red

The world’s largest sperm bank no longer welcomes donors with red hair. “There are too many redheads in relation to demand,” said Ole Schou, director of Denmark’s Cryos, which sends its semen to more than 65 countries worldwide. The only place where sperm from red-haired donors is in demand, Schou said, is Ireland, where it sells “like hot cakes.” (Britain’s The Telegraph)

Jealous Love

Driven by rage after her estranged husband started dating another woman, Laura Jean Wenke, 50, dressed in coveralls, rubber boots and bubble wrap, then drove to his office in Redwood City, Calif. There, according to San Mateo County District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe, she found him at his computer, shot a stun gun into his side and stabbed him in the neck. The husband survived the attack and called police, who found Wenke still in his office wearing her blood-streaked bubble-wrap outfit. (Salinas’s KSBW-TV)

A British court convicted Dalwara Singh of secretly feeding steroids to his wife of 17 years so she would gain weight and become unattractive to other men. “He constantly accused her of infidelity and having affairs,” prosecutor Caroline Bray told Leicester Crown Court. Victim Jaspreet Singh Gill said the tainted food tasted bitter, but he made her eat it out of guilt by telling her he made it especially for her. She grew hair on her chin, cheeks and back, developed spotty, constantly itchy skin, and some scalp hair fell out. (Britain’s Daily Mail)

Hard Sell

Police arrested door-to-door salesman Jerad Michael Arnold, 22, after a woman reported he forced his way into her home in Boone, N.C., and refused to leave unless she either “submitted to drug use and sexual activity” or bought a magazine subscription. She opted for the magazines but called 911 as soon as Arnold left. (Bristol, Va.’s WCYB-TV)

Cheap Dates

Police arrested Khadijah Baseer after they said she opened customers’ car doors at a McDonald’s drive-through in Burbank, Calif., and offered to have sex in exchange for chicken McNuggets. (The Burbank Leader)

Robert Edward De Shields received a 10-year prison sentence and must register as a sex offender after he was convicted of sexually assaulting an 8-month-old chihuahua at a home in Sacramento, Calif. (Los Angeles Times)

Antisocial Media

Police arrested Benito Apolinar, 36, after they said he punched his wife in the face. The attack occurred during an argument that began when he posted a comment on his Facebook page about the anniversary of his mother’s death, but Dolores Apolinar didn’t click on the “like” button beneath the update. “That’s amazing,” he reportedly told her. “Everyone ‘likes’ my status but you. You’re my wife. You should be the first one to ‘like’ my status.” (Carlsbad’s Current-Argus)

Breaking Up Is Hard to Do

A British court heard that when Marcin Kasprzak, 25, got “bored” with his partner, Michelina Lewandowska, 27, he changed his Facebook status to “single” and told Lewandowska she wasn’t as good-looking as the women he saw at the gym. Then he attacked her with a 300,000-volt Taser stun gun. After Kasprzak bound and gagged her, he and a friend put her in a computer box and taped it securely. Next, they “drove her to a wooded area where it was unlikely she would be found, and there dug a shallow grave and buried her alive,” prosecutor Jonathan Sharp told Leeds Crown Court. Despite having dirt piled around and on top of the box and an 88-pound tree branch placed across the box to keep it shut, Lewandowska regained consciousness, fought her way out of the box and the dirt, and flagged down a passing car. (BBC News)

Reckless Driving

Sheriff’s deputies responding to a call of a couple fighting in Broward County, Fla., couldn’t find anyone but then heard “cries for help” coming from the darkness. They noticed a woman struggling to stay above water in a lake. After rescuing her, they learned her husband had been hitting her while she was driving, causing her to lose control of the car and veer into the lake. The husband, Sandro Michel, 27, drowned. (Broward-Palm Beach New Times)

North Carolina authorities reported that a 30-year-old woman and her boyfriend were arguing while driving with the woman’s mother when they stopped on the shoulder near Pineville. The woman got out, and the man chased after her. Separate cars hit them, killing them both. (Charlotte Observer)

Blow-Up Job

Police arrested Edwin Charles Tobergta, 32, for engaging in “sexual activity” with a pink inflatable swimming pool raft in Hamilton, Ohio. When the raft’s owner shouted at the suspect to stop, Tobergta took the raft and fled. According to his grandmother, Tobergta has “always had a fascination for plastic.” (Cincinnati Enquirer)

Second-Amendment Follies

A 53-year-old man went to his ex-girlfriend’s house in Charleston, W.Va., put a .380-caliber handgun to his head and threatened to shoot himself if she didn’t take him back. He eventually lowered the weapon, according to police Sgt. Eric Hodges, but while doing so accidentally shot himself in the hand and foot. (The Charleston Gazette)

Hoping to win back his girlfriend, Jordan Cardella, 20, asked a friend in South Milwaukee, Wis., to shoot him so he could say he was attacked, then she would feel sorry for him. According to the criminal complaint, Cardella told Michael C. Wezyk, 24, to shoot him in the back three times with a rifle, but when Wezyk shot him once in the arm, Cardella slumped over. Wezyk refused to shoot him again and took the rifle home. The girlfriend did not visit Cardella in the hospital, but police did and later arrested Wezyk. “This has to be the most phenomenally stupid case that I have ever seen,” Milwaukee County Assistant District Attorney Christopher Rawsthorne said, prompting Wezyk to plead guilty and tell the judge he was “sorry to bring something so stupid into your courtroom.” (Milwaukee’s Journal Sentinel)

Passion Play

Hoping to boost attendance, a Spanish soccer team is encouraging its male fans to make donations to local sperm banks while watching an erotic movie that the team produced. La Liga’s Zombies Calientes del Getafe has struggled to fill its 17,000-seat stadium, the smallest in its division. “We are few, and we have to be more,” said the video’s creator, Angel Torres. “We have to move a mass of fans to seed the world with Getafe supporters.”

The team’s commercial on national television shows a Getafe fan eyeing an empty stadium while a narrator says the solution to low attendance “is simple. It’s within you. We talk about donating sperm. The more donors, the better.” The commercial cuts to half-naked zombies rolling around on beds saying how important it is to get Getafe back on track. The next scene shows the Getafe supporter marching to the sperm bank with fellow fans and heading into individual cubicles to complete their mission. (Britain’s Daily Mail)

Least Surprising Results

Larger women are more likely than others to have sex on the first date, according to a survey of 10,000 members of a British dating website. Freedating.co.uk’s “Dating Profile Attributes vs. First Date Outcomes” revealed that men and women who don’t drink, don’t smoke and like bicycling are the least likely to have sex on the first date. The less education women have, the more willing they are to have sex on the first date, whereas better educated men are the most willing to have sex on the first date. (United Press International)

Love Hurts

The Florida Highway Patrol reported that Joel Santos, 25, tried to stop his girlfriend from leaving after an argument in Orange County by lying on the ground in front of her car. She promptly ran over him, sending him to the hospital in critical condition, according to FHP Sgt. Kim Montes. (Orlando Sentinel)

Be Fruitful and Multiply

Despite “legitimate concerns” by federal health authorities, Trent C. Arsenault, 36, vowed to continue making free sperm donations, insisting he’s helping low-income people with infertility. Arsenault, a computer security expert who lives in Freemont, Calif., claims to have fathered 14 children, with four more on the way, and donated sperm to between 60 and 75 families since he started offering his services in 2006. Food and Drug Administration officials notified Arsenault to cease his operation for failing to follow rules governing sperm banks, but his lawyers insisted the standards don’t apply because his donations are “individual intimate partner arrangements” allowed by law. (MSNBC)

Bill Johnson, 52, a conservative Republican who ran for governor of Alabama in 2010 and has campaigned against same-sex marriage, spent most of last year in New Zealand coordinating earthquake recovery efforts and donating sperm to lesbian couples. Johnson, who is married, used an alias to meet women online that wanted to get pregnant. Three women he met are pregnant, another three have received his sperm and three more are considering his services. He explained the urge to become a biological father was “a need that I have.” (Auckland’s New Zealand Herald)

Time-Biding Follies

A Canadian couple was vacationing in Oregon when the 75-year-old wife died in their car. The 71-year-old husband then drove for 225 miles with her body beside him before calling authorities, who advised him to stop at the nearest police station. She was examined and officially declared dead. “He wasn’t sure what to do, so he kept driving,” said police Chief Robert Burks of Tonasket, Wash., about 20 miles south of the border. “He was taking her home, probably, to deal with it up there.” (Washington’s The Wenatchee World)

Dental Follies

Phyllis Manis obtained a court order to exhume her husband’s body after learning he had been buried with the wrong false teeth. “I knew he wouldn’t rest in peace with this happening,” Manis said, explaining she noticed the mix-up after the funeral when recovering her husband’s belongings from a Chattanooga, Tenn., hospital, which gave the teeth belonging to Kenneth Ray Manis, 76, to the 83-year-old patient who shared his room. “My husband is laying in his grave with this other man’s teeth, and I just couldn’t let it be that way,” Manis said. (Britain’s Daily Mail)