NEWS & BLUES

Curses, Foiled Again!

Georgia authorities accused former DeKalb County Deputy Marshal Washington Varnum Jr. of unprofessional or deceptive conduct and bad moral character. According to Ryan Powell of the Georgia Peace Officer Standards and Training Council, Varnum tried to serve his own eviction notice and then “provided a sworn statement to the courts that he himself could not be found.” (Atlanta’s WSB-TV)

After leaving several phone messages threatening to burn down the gas station where he used to work in High Springs, Fla., Kalpeshkumar Patel, 40, drove to the station, pulled up to a gas pump and poured gasoline all over the car and himself. The threat ended when Patel realized he had no lighter and no customers would lend him one. The station owner called police, who arrested Patel. (Florida’s The Gainesville Sun)

Rodents Revenge

Dale Whitmell, 40, told Ontario Provincial Police he was using the butt of a rifle to kill a mouse at a camp at Anjaigami Lake when the weapon accidentally fired. Noting the bullet grazed his forehead, Constable Amanda Huff said Whitmell insisted he didn’t know the weapon was loaded. (Sault Ste. Marie’s The Sault Star)

Every Vote Counts

After the two top candidates in a Democratic primary for Connecticut’s 5th General Assembly District tied, a recount gave a one-vote edge to Leo Canty. A second recount gave runner-up Brandon McGee another vote, re-tying the results. After McGee filed an elections complaint, the apparent outcome hinged on a previously uncounted absentee ballot marked “deceased” that was found to have been cast by a 91-year-old woman still living. Superior Court Judge A. Susan Peck ordered the ballot opened, even though doing so identified the voter and her vote. The vote was for Donald Trinks, who finished a distant third. Peck ordered a new primary election, which McGee, 28, won, 1,095 to 942. (The Hartford Courant)

Paging Pepe LePew

Thomas Grant, 24, accidentally shot his 8-year-old cousin after mistaking her for a skunk at a Halloween party, according to police in New Sewickley Township, Pa. The girl was wearing a black body costume and a black hat with a white tassel. Skunks are black with a white stripe. (Beaver County Times)

Litigation Nation

After Atlantic City’s Golden Nugget Hotel and Casino lost $1.5 million in a Mini Baccarat game, it filed a lawsuit against the 14 players and Gemaco, which makes pre-shuffled cards. The casino claims Gemaco certified the cards dealt in the game as pre-shuffled, but they were later determined not to have been and repeated a pattern. As a result, the casino insisted, “The gamblers unlawfully took advantage of the Golden Nugget when they caught onto the pattern and increased their bets from table minimums to table maximums and by placing bets for others.” (Philadelphia’s KYW-TV)

Happy Ending of the Week

Mark Simmons, 40, was piloting a single-engine aircraft towing a banner for a customer that read “Michelle, will you marry me? Mike,” when he experienced engine trouble and had to ditch off Rhode Island’s Block Island. Rescuers said the pilot’s 8-year-old son, Ethan, heard his dad’s emergency call and alerted authorities, who rescued Simmons from Block Island Sound. He “did not appear to have any serious injuries,” Coast Guard Lt. Bryan Swintek said. The next day, Simmons climbed back in the cockpit of another plane and completed the marriage proposal flight that had been cut short. Mike, who hired Simmons to tow the banner, reported that Michelle said yes. (The Westerly Sun)

Fired Up

Police responding to reports of a man setting fire to a toilet seat at a convenience store in Louisville, Ky., said suspect James Crittenden, 36, told store workers who confronted him that he lit the fire for religious reasons. Several news outlets accompanied their report with a photo showing what a burning toilet might look like.

Police noted they had arrested Crittenden two weeks earlier for huffing 10 cans of Reddi-wip at another convenience store without paying. He

asserted that the U.S. Constitution gave him the right to huff Reddi-wip. (Louisville’s WAVE-TV)

Second-Amendment Follies

Police investigating the shooting death of Xavier L. Cooper, 20, in Racine, Wis., concluded that Arsenio R. Akins, 23, was using a .357-caliber revolver to pistol-whip another man during a fight when it inadvertently fired, killing Cooper. A witness told Investigator Don Nuttall that Cooper looked like he “was trying to break up the fight.” (Racine’s The Journal Times)

The weekend after the Aurora, Colo., movie shootings, police in Cookeville, Tenn., received a call from an employee of a movie theater showing the Batman film The Dark Knight Rises. He said a man with a holstered pistol walked into the theater, despite a posted sign prohibiting weapons. Police responded but couldn’t identify the man, so they stopped the movie and asked whoever the man was with a gun to stand up. Three separate people stood up. Officers asked them to return their guns to their vehicles and advised the theater that the sign prohibiting weapons needed to be bigger. (Nashville’s WSMV-TV)

Who’s Left?

When the rock band The Who announced it would end its “Quadrophenia and More” tour in Providence, R.I., next Feb. 26, Lawrence Lepore, general manager of the Dunkin Donuts Center, said the venue will honor tickets for a 1979 show canceled by then-Mayor Buddy Cianci, who cited safety concerns after 11 fans were trampled to death and several dozen others injured before a Who concert in Cincinnati. The top ticket price at the 1979 show was $14, Lepore said, adding that refunds were given but people sometimes save tickets as souvenirs. (Associated Press)

Latter-Day Captain Hook 

Airboat captain Wallace Weatherholt, 63, faces charges of unlawfully feeding an alligator while leading an Indiana family on a tour of the Everglades. The passengers told Florida Fish and Wildlife officers that Weatherholt held a fish over the side of the boat to attract the gator, which bit off his hand at the wrist. Following the attack, FFW officials tracked and killed the gator. They retrieved Weatherholt’s hand from its stomach, but doctors weren’t able to reattach it. (Fort Myers’ The News-Press)

Tables Turned

A Chicago gun buy-back program paid out $6,240 in gift cards to the Champaign-based pro-gun group Guns Save Lives, which turned in “rusty, non-firing junk,” according to the group’s president, John Boch. He indicated most of the money would be used to buy ammunition and four bolt-action rifles for a National Rifle Association-sponsored youth summer camp, boasting, “We are directing funds from people who would work against the private ownership of firearms to help introduce the next generation to shooting safely and responsibly.” (Chicago Sun-Times)

When the Ceasefire Oregon Education Foundation offered a $75 gift card for each gun surrendered at a Portland parking lot, gun buyers staked out the periphery and offered to buy guns from people arriving to turn theirs in. Prices started at $80, but many sold for much more, and some buyers immediately sold their guns to other buyers at a profit. “They have a right to buy guns,” police Sgt. Tim Sessions said. “That’s in the Constitution.” (Portland’s The Oregonian)

If It’s by Boeing, I Ain’t Going

South Carolina’s Charleston International Airport shut down for more than an hour after debris fell from the engine of a new Boeing 787 Dreamliner onto the only operational runway and caused a small grass fire. The incident occurred during preflight runway testing, according to Boeing official Candy Eslinger, and caused two scheduled flights to divert to Savannah. (Charleston’s The Post and Courier)

A Boeing C-17 Globemaster intending to land at Florida’s MacDill Air Force Base instead landed four miles north at a small waterfront airport whose longest runway is 3,400 feet. The main runway at MacDill is 14,000 feet. “He touched down probably about a third of the way down the runway, and as soon as they did, they slammed on those brakes,” witness Ryan Gucwa, a corporate pilot, said. “I thought for sure they were going to go off the end.” The C-17, which weighs roughly 400,000 pounds, not only stopped in time on the runway designed to hold only 20,000 pounds, but later, needing almost 8,000 feet to take off when fully loaded, also successfully took off and made the short flight to MacDill. (Tampa’s WTVT-TV)

Device of the Week

Specialty retailer Family Christian released the world’s first Christian tablet. Dubbed the Edifi, the Android-based tablet offers “the ability to use our Holy Bible application, which has 27 different English translations of the Bible,” technology supervisor Brian Honorable said. “It goes along with our mission: trying to get people closer to God.” More than just an e-reader, the Edifi, priced at $149.99, comes with movie-watching capabilities, Christian radio stations and even a web browser with built-in “safe search,” so children won’t “have access to things they shouldn’t have access to,” Honorable explained. “We definitely had to tailor it to our customers.” (Fox News)

You Snooze, You Lose

Scientists studying the world’s slowest swimming shark to determine how it preys on seals, which swim twice as fast, concluded that it sneaks up on them while they are sleeping. It’s thought that Arctic seals sleep in water, instead of on sea ice, to avoid polar bears. The study’s leader, marine biologist Yuuki Watanabe of Tokyo’s National Institute of Polar Research, stated that seals might sleep soundly enough that Greenland sharks, which move “at the speed of a crawling baby,” could catch them napping. Acknowledging that no one knows definitively how Greenland sharks are hunting seals, Watanabe said the next step is to mount cameras on some. (National Geographic 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.