News & Blues

Happy Mother’s Day

Toronto police said they were looking for a woman who boarded a streetcar with a child in a stroller and began arguing with another passenger. Witnesses said the woman picked up the child and used it as a weapon to beat the passenger. Mother and child got off the streetcar before police arrived. (Toronto Star)

Authorities charged three men in connection with the murder of their mother in Alberta, Minn. “She wanted to play Yahtzee, and they didn’t,” Stevens County Sheriff Randy Willis said after criminal charges were filed against Dylan C. Clemens, 25, and his half-brothers, Andrew Q. Cobb, 18, and Jacob S. Cobb, 17. “That seemed to be, in their minds, what expedited her sudden demise.” (Minneapolis’ The Star Tribune)

Authorities charged Althea Ricketts, 62, with aggravated child abuse after she beat her son with a computer cable because he had a Facebook page but wasn’t supposed to. The arresting officer said Ricketts “stated to me that hitting a child with a cable is a common way of disciplining kids where she comes from.” (Orlando Sentinel)

After renting a small, twin-engine airplane, Konrad Schmidt, 47, phoned his estranged mother from the cockpit to ask if she’d be home because “I am just going to drop by.” Swiss authorities said Schmidt then crashed into her home at high speed, causing a huge explosion and fireball that killed him but not Rosemary Schmidt, 68, who was in the basement when her son attacked. “They had a lot of heavy issues over a lot of things,” a neighbor said. “They did not have a good relationship.” (Britain’s Daily Mail)

A suit filed by the family of Agnes Zimmick charges that after her death, Zimmick’s granddaughter and great-granddaughter were at the cemetery and watched as graveyard workers “jumped up and down on the casket, apparently to force the casket into a gravesite which was not large enough for the casket … repeatedly walked along the top of the casket … {and} also repeatedly struck said casket with poles.” The suit against the Catholic Cemeteries Association of the Diocese of Pittsburgh and the Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh seeks a jury trial and at least $25,000 from each defendant. (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)

Diane Bozzi reported that someone targeting unlocked cars stole her mother’s ashes from her van, which was parked in Rochester, N.H. Bozzi explained she had the ashes in an urn in a bag to bring to her weekly bingo game for good luck. (Associated Press)

Authorities in Fayetteville, Ill., charged Lindell K. Ferguson, 18, and Brittany M. Ferguson, 20, with beating up their 42-year-old mother after she threw out several cans of beer belonging to her daughter because the girl was not of legal drinking age. The mother told police that when Brittany attacked her, Lindell joined in. The kids also beat up a 47-year-old man who lives in the home but isn’t their father. (Belleview News-Democrat)

Scott Bennett, 45, published a newspaper obituary for his mother, even though she was still alive. Brookville, Pa., police Chief Ken Dworek said Bennett submitted the bogus notice to The Jeffersonian Democrat so he could get paid bereavement leave from his job. After the mother appeared at the newspaper to dispute the obituary, Bennett was charged with disorderly conduct. (Oil City’s The Derrick)

Joan Barnett, 58, told her employer that her daughter died in Costa Rica so she could spend two and a half weeks vacationing there. Barnett, who lost her job as a parent coordinator at Manhattan High School, aroused suspicion by faxing a death certificate to the school to qualify for bereavement leave that had “slightly different fonts which were not aligned properly,” according to special investigator Richard Condon. Investigators also confirmed that Barnett booked the tickets for her vacation more than three weeks before she said her daughter died. (New York’s Daily News)

Paramedics responding to a 911 call from a man reporting that his 78-year-old mother was experiencing chest pains said that when they arrived at the Philadelphia home, the man asked if they could also take his 84-year-old father, who a police source said had been “dead for a couple days.” (Philadelphia’s Daily News)

Wrong Place, Wrong Time

When police officers stopped a 1991 Honda Accord in Hermiston, Ore., after recognizing wanted felony suspect Ramel Rodriguez, 31, as a passenger, the driver jumped out and fled. Rodriguez slid into the driver’s seat and sped off. He went three blocks before crashing into a 1999 Volkswagen Jetta. Officers arrested Rodriguez, who faces multiple charges. While attending to the driver of the Jetta, they learned he was Steven Broyles, 31, who had outstanding felony warrants for probation violation and was driving with a suspended license. (The Hermiston Herald)

Brits Got Rhythm?

Facing a shortage of male applicants to perform at the opening and closing ceremonies at the 2012 London Olympics, the organizing committee announced it’s urgently seeking “more men—particularly if you have rhythm. This means those of you who can dance but also drum, or do any sport, job or hobby that involves keeping to time.” (Britain’s The Telegraph)

Slightest Provocation

Police in Palm Bay, Fla., said Earl Persell, 56, attacked his live-in girlfriend during a heated argument over musical performers Ike and Tina Turner. (Melbourne’s Florida Today)

Authorities charged Marvin Potter, 60, with murdering a couple in Mountain City, Tenn., because they deleted his adult daughter as a friend on Facebook. (Associated Press)

Toujours Egalitéé

The Montreal school board will require all students to speak only French, not just in classrooms, but also in hallways, in cafeterias and on playgrounds. The rule, which takes effect in September, is aimed at the influx of immigrants, whose children are required to attend French-language schools. Fifty-three percent of the city’s 110,000 students have a mother tongue other than French. “There will be no language police,” Diane De Courcy, who chairs the city’s school board, declared, explaining that monitors who overhear children speaking another language will gently tap them on the shoulder—not on the head—to tell them, ‘Remember, we speak French. It’s good for you.’’” (Ottawa Citizen)

Budget-Cut Follies

After the Scottish Borders Council announced that budget cuts would require closing four registry offices where marriage notices, known as banns, are posted, councilor Kenneth Gunn warned of an outbreak of incest. “In these days of broken marriages and extended families,” children may grow up “ignorant of their own relations” and marry, Gunn said. “It isn’t going to be too long before we have a union which could produce offspring if we do not play by the well-founded rules.” (Glasgow’s The Daily Record)

Reasonable Explanation

Police who arrested Evelyn Marie Fuller, 49, for robbing a bank in Waynesburg, Pa., reported she confessed to the crime and “stated she wanted to use the money to pay for dentures she was unable to get through welfare until next year.” (Associated Press)

Support the Troops

When the family history website Ancestry.com filed a Freedom of Information Act request for information about deceased veterans, the Department of Veterans Affairs responded. After Ancestry.com posted the information, the VA learned it had included data about 2,200 not-yet-dead vets. “Fortunately,” Jerry L. Davis, the VA’s chief information security officer, said, “no personal health information was included in this data release.” Social Security numbers were provided, however. As a result, the VA offered every affected veteran free credit monitoring for one year at no charge. (Department of Veterans Affairs)

When Barney Fife Turns to Crime

Authorities charged Verlin Alsept, 59, with trying to rob a Family Dollar Store in Dayton, Ohio, by threatening the store clerk with a single .38 caliber bullet that he pulled from his jacket pocket. The clerk told him she couldn’t open the cash register without the manager, so the thwarted robber left — only to be tackled by a private security guard. (Dayton Daily News)

News and Blues is compiled from the nation’s press. To contribute, submit original clippings, citing date and source, to Roland Sweet in care of The New Times.