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Stink ‘em up!
Police in a Detroit suburb called Ferndale are looking for a bank robber who tellers say has crooked yellow teeth and extremely bad breath. The Detroit Free Press reports that Ferndale police say the man hit the same Charter One branch in October and again just recently. Ferndale Police Lt. William Wilson says tellers remember the man as tall, thin and “having very offensive breath and real yellow teeth.” Witnesses also say he looks dirty and smells horrible. Authorities say he showed bank employees a note that demanded money. He implied he had a gun but tellers didn’t see any weapon. The suspect escaped with about $1,000 in the latest robbery.
Bad elf
In Georgia, a man dressed as an elf was jailed after he told a mall Santa that he was carrying dynamite, according to local authorities. The Southlake Mall in suburban Atlanta was evacuated but no explosives were found. Police in Morrow, Georgia arrested 45-year-old William Caldwell, who was being held without bond in the Clayton County jail at the time this was written. Despite the elf outfit, Caldwell was not part of the mall’s Christmas staff. Apparently Caldwell got in line to have his picture taken with Santa Claus. Police say when Caldwell reached the front of the line, he told Santa he had dynamite in his bag. So Santa called mall security and Caldwell was arrested. Caldwell faces several charges, including having hoax devices and making terroristic threats.
Pot in a pot
Police said whoever donated a water jug to a charity in southeast Ohio probably didn’t mean to leave all that weed inside the vessel, but you never know. Marietta Police said the jug contained about $1,500 worth of marijuana. Workers at a local Goodwill Industries site recently found four bags of marijuana when they looked inside a water jug left outside by an anonymous donor. The charity workers turned the two-gallon metal jug and the pound or so of marijuana over to police shortly after finding the drugs. Marietta police Capt. Jeff Waite said the jug is probably an antique. He said authorities would be more than happy for the jug’s donor to come forward and claim it.
Grave robbers
A coffin containing the body of an Austrian billionaire has been returned to his family, more than a year after it was stolen from a graveyard by thieves who blackmailed the relatives for $150,000, police told the Reuters news service. Investigators have determined that criminals from Hungary and Romania were involved in the crime and that private investigators and security companies had been involved in the search for the coffin without telling police. “This is a large case of blackmail that was carried out very professionally, although it involved a rather unusual instrument — a coffin,” said Ernst Geiger, the organized crime chief at Austria’s equivalent of FBI.
Moosed
Cops are obviously going to be skeptical when a man claims the individual responsible for killing his wife was, in fact, a moose. But after a thorough investigation, Swedish police say they’ve cleared a man who was arrested for allegedly murdering his wife after deciding the culprit was most likely a moose after all. Police spokesman Ulf Karlsson says “the improbable has become probable” in the puzzling death last year of 63-year old Agneta Westlund. She was found dead after an evening stroll in the forest. According to news reports, the victim’s husband, Ingemar Westlund, was jailed for 10 days. The case against him was dropped in January after the possibility of death by moose became more likely.
Camel hunt is on down under
In Florida, authorities were recently paying people to kill poisonous snakes because the reptiles were everywhere and posed a serious public safety threat. Now Australian authorities plan to corral about 6,000 wild camels with helicopters and gun them down. Why would they do such a thing? As it turns out, the camels completely overran a small Outback town in search of water, trampling fences, smashing tanks and contaminating supplies. The Northern Territory government announced its plans for Docker River, a town of 350 residents where thirsty camels have been arriving daily for weeks because of drought conditions in the region. “The community of Docker River is under siege by 6,000 marauding wild camels,” local government minister Rob Knight said in Alice Springs, 310 miles northeast of Docker. “This is a very critical situation out there, it’s very unusual and it needs urgent action.”
Calm down
Police in American Fork, Utah, about 30 miles south of Salt Lake City, cited some teenagers for disorderly conduct last month after they tried to rap their order at a drive-through burger joint. The teens have said they were imitating a rap from a popular YouTube video. Spenser Dauwalder, 18, has said employees at the fast-food restaurant told him and his friends they were holding up the line and needed to order or leave. But Dauwalder said no one else was in line. So Spenser and his three 17-year-old friends left without buying anything. Spenser Dauwalder’s attorney, Ann Boyle, said the whole incident has been overblown. “I just believe that the kids had a right to sing their order,” Boyle told reporters. “They asked them to leave, and they left.” But this case is huge for attorney Kasey Wright, who represented American Fork in court. “This is not a First Amendment case,” he thundered. “This is disturbing the peace. It’s interrupting a business.” Really? You might want to throw a few more charges in there while you’re at it. How about, “Failure to respect authority of fast food manager in paper hat?” Or maybe you could convict them of “Reckless endangerment of the mechanical precision of the drive-through.” |
