News & Blues

Curses, Foiled Again

A man wanted on rape charges was arrested after stopping to flirt with a uniformed female police officer on patrol in San Francisco. The 26-year-old man was “obviously enamored,” police Capt. Paul Chignell said, and approached the parked police cruiser to strike up a conversation. When he asked the officer if she was married, she replied that she wasn’t available but asked the man’s name. As he walked away, she ran a records check and discovered the no-bail warrant for rape. (San Francisco Chronicle)

A little more than an hour after stealing beer from a liquor store in Santa Clarita, Calif., three suspects returned and demanded the surveillance video of the crime. They brandished a knife and cut the clerk during a scuffle, then fled. Sheriff’s deputies had surrounded the scene, however, and arrested Oscar Jimenez, 19, Eduardi Salgado, 18, and a juvenile. (Associated Press)

When the Uinta County, Wyo., Sheriff’s Office received a call from a man asking for roadside assistance after he ran out of gas, the dispatcher sent state troopers to help him. They ran a routine check on the stranded motorist, Richard Vincent, 59, and learned he was wanted in Georgia for violating parole on a murder and escape conviction. (Associated Press)

Homeland Insecurity

As part of a stunt for the television show MythBusters, a cannonball was supposed to go through some water-filled barrels and a concrete wall at the Alameda County Sheriff’s Department bomb range in Dublin, Calif. Instead, it overshot the barrels and then, according to sheriff’s Sgt. J.D. Nelson, took a “very unfortunate bounce. . .  skyward.” It landed about 700 feet away, bounced through the front door of a home and out through a back wall, then bounced across the road and smashed the window and dashboard of a minivan. “We had some tremendous bad luck,” Nelson said, “and some tremendous good luck” in that no one was hurt. (Contra Costa Times)

More than three years after a steel 155 mm artillery round from the Army’s Picatinny Arsenal misfired and crashed through the roof of a home more than a mile away in Jefferson, N.J., the Army offered homeowner Frederick Angle, 56, $7,386.57 to cover the cost of repairing the roof, replacing bedroom furniture and euthanizing the family cat. Citing the emotional distress caused to his family, Angle said he was “disgusted, disillusioned” by the Army’s offer. When his lawyer urged him to accept it because of the difficulty of getting more money from the federal government, Angle began looking for a new lawyer to pursue his case, pointing out, “It would be un-American to give up the fight.” (Newark’s The Star-Ledger)

Lawmakers to the Rescue

Louisiana Sen. Dan Claitor introduced a bill making it illegal for drive-through daiquiri shops to use lids with a hole for straws. “The bill simply says it can’t be pre-perforated,” the lawmaker said, declaring that removing the straw hole would make it harder for drive-through daiquiri customers to drink and drive. (New Orleans’ WWL Radio)

Way to Go

While visiting a friend in Havelock, N.C., Gary Allen Banning, 43, took a gulp from a jar by the kitchen sink that he thought contained a beverage but was really gasoline. He spit it out, according to police investigators, but some got on his clothes. Then he lit a cigarette. He burst into flames. He died at the hospital. (Associated Press)

An explosion killed a 20-year-old man and injured two friends keeping warm in a garage in Taylor, Mich., after one of them poured gasoline on a wood-burning stove with a fire going. (Detroit Free Press)

Second-Amendment Follies

After Andrew Seals, 24, started to sit down in a bathroom stall at a Wal-Mart in Mesa, Ariz., his Ruger .357-caliber revolver fell out of its holster. It fired a round, police Sgt. Ed Wessing reported, that went through the stall door, ricocheted off a wall into a ceiling light, then struck the floor, missing a man standing at a urinal by just 5 feet. (Phoenix’s The Arizona Republic)

They Seldom Serve Who Stand and Watch

English firefighters summoned to rescue Simon Burgess, 41, found the victim floating face down in a 3-foot-deep model boating lake in Gosport, Hampshire. They refused to enter the water because it was above their ankles. “The officers were trained to go into ankle-deep water, which is level one, so we waited for level-two officers, who can go into chest high,” Tony Nicholls, a watch manager at Gosport fire station said. “One of the police officers told me he would like to go in the water, and I advised him in the strongest terms not to.” Nicholls added that because the body had already been in the water for five or 10 minutes when he arrived, “I made an assessment it was a body retrieval and not a rescue.” (Britain’s The Telegraph)

Superlative Land

Nepal announced it’s seeking money and expertise from foreign donors so it can measure the exact height of Mount Everest to settle a dispute with neighboring China. Nepal says the world’s tallest mountain is 29,028 feet, whereas China insists it’s 29,017 feet. Lacking money and technical skill for a new measurement, Krishna Raj B.C., director general of Nepal’s Department of Survey, called for “the support and involvement of internationally known scientists” to take new readings that are “acceptable to the global community.” (Reuters)

A Guinness World Records team declared Nepal’s Chandra Bahadur Dangi, 72, to be “the world’s shortest living man.” Dangi stands 21.5 inches. The previous shortest man in the world was Junrey Balawing, 18, of the Philippines, who measured 23.5 inches. (Reuters)

Oops and Oopser

When Rick Bonnell, a sports reporter for The Charlotte Observer, wrote that a player was recovering from a “herniated disc,” a copy editor noted the paper’s style spelled the injury “disk” and changed the “c” to a “k.” The copy editor also made a typo, however, changing the “s” to a “c.” (Editor & Publisher)

Authorities in Hall County, Fla., locked down West Hall middle and high schools after a member of the community reported receiving a text message saying, “gunman be at west hall today.” Police investigators who tracked the phone number learned the sender was arranging a meeting, but an auto-correct feature of the sender’s phone had changed “gunna” to “gunman.” (Gainesville Times)

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.