moonbuggy

‘A man has been charged with a cheesy snack attack on his dad, police said. The weapon? A bag of Cheetos. Patrick Hamman, 22, of Des Moines, was arrested on a charge of domestic assault after he threw a bag of Cheetos at his father, Michael Hamman, hitting him in the face Sunday night.

The bag hit his father’s glasses, causing a cut to the bridge of his nose, police said.

The police report said “Michael’s T-shirt was also covered in Cheeto dust.”

Police said Patrick, who lives with his father, admitted that he was on methamphetamine at the time of the argument.’

‘Authorities don’t know who crushed a police cruiser, but they say whoever did it was pretty good with a backhoe.

Miami Township Police Detective Nick Colliver says the person had to have experience operating heavy equipment to drive the backhoe about 200 yards to where the cruiser was parked, then drop the bucket squarely on the roof.

Officials in the township east of Cincinnati had planned to sell the 1998 Ford Crown Victoria that was worth $3,000. It was parked near the Miami Township Civic Center when it got crushed one night last week.’

A short comedy routine from someone who appears to have worked in a prison at some point.

‘A “bungling” voyeur who spied on a 22-year-old woman in a tanning booth has been given a suspended jail term.

Stephen Strange, 43, of Chippenham, who admitted voyeurism, watched the woman undress and lie on a bed in July 2005.

But two minutes into the session, there was a crash and she saw Strange’s face appear in a gap in the ceiling. [..]

“She was naked, face up on this tanning machine, when you appeared through a gap in the ceiling.

“You can imagine how terrified she must have been, not knowing after you had acted in that bizarre way, what else you might do.”‘

‘A disabled former Parks Department enforcement officer has filed a complaint against cops who he says snatched him off his toilet and dragged him out of his apartment.

Dominick Walters, 38, said he and his elderly mother feared for their lives when six city cops busted into their home on July 28 and arrested him.

“I was on the toilet, and they busted through the door,” said Walters.

“My mother was screaming and trying to tell them that I am disabled, but they didn’t listen,” he continued. “One of the police officers karate-chopped me with his hand between my shoulder and neck. Then they beat my a– from the top of the steps to the bottom.”

Walters’ attorney, Jayne Pickup, said her client was taken to St. Barnabas hospital on July 28 after he passed out in police custody.

She said one of his legs was swollen to twice its usual size, his arm was numb and he was in severe pain.’

‘Almost 3,000 crimes were reported last year where the suspect was too young to be prosecuted, the BBC has learned.

Figures show about 1,300 incidents of criminal damage and arson, and more than 60 sex offences where suspects were under-10s in England and Wales.

If a child is nine or under, he or she cannot be charged with an offence but there are calls for the age of criminal responsibility to be lowered. [..]

Lawrence Lee, who was solicitor for Jon Venables, one of two 10-year-olds who murdered two-year-old James Bulger in 1993, said lowering the age of criminal responsibility would send an important message to child offenders.

He added: “As a defence lawyer I would say no, it wouldn’t be a good thing.

“But if I wear my citizen’s hat, I would say if you go along to any estate and see the age of kids marauding around like a pack of wolves, you’d see that reducing the age of criminal responsibility to eight or nine would be vital.”‘

‘ A mother wept in court yesterday as she told a judge how she wakes each day to the horrific reality that her mentally handicapped daughter was tortured to death with a blowtorch.

“You have left horrible images in my mind,” Deborah Laramey said in a hushed courtroom as she looked at the man convicted of killing her daughter, Katlin Cousineau, on Nov. 12, 2005.

Sitting in the prisoner’s box, Matthew Sitte, 25, of Midland, darted his eyes away from the mother as he pleaded guilty to second-degree murder. [..]

Throughout the torture, Sitte would throw rubbing alcohol onto her body.

“The torching was persistent and prolonged,” said Williams. “It is horrific.”‘

‘A Winnipeg man caught with his hands full while surfing for porn on a university computer wasn’t going to be discouraged before getting the job done, a court heard yesterday.

The 26-year-old pleaded guilty to one count of committing an indecent act and three breaches of probation after security staff at the University of Manitoba’s McDermot Avenue campus library caught him downloading porn from a public computer and masturbating on Aug. 4.

Court was told the man made no move to buckle up when approached by security staff and said “I’m almost done, can I finish?”

The man — who was living on the street at the time of the offence and suffers from mental health problems — later told police he took matters into his own hands “all the time” at the library.’

‘A Belgian prosecutor on Tuesday recommended that the U.S.-based Church of Scientology stand trial for fraud and extortion, following a 10-year investigation that concluded the group should be labeled a criminal organization.

Scientology said it would fight the criminal charges recommended by investigating prosecutor Jean-Claude Van Espen, who said that up to 12 unidentified people should face charges.

Van Espen’s probe also concluded that Scientology’s Brussels-based Europe office and its Belgian missions conducted unlawful practices in medicine, violated privacy laws and used illegal business contracts, said Lieve Pellens, a spokeswoman at the Federal Prosecutors Office.

“They also face charges of being … a criminal organization,” Pellens said in a telephone interview.’

‘A man stole a bulldozer from a construction site and slammed into the Troy police station early Friday morning, police said.

Police said Stanley Burt, 34, stole a bulldozer, drove it up a road in Troy, maneuvered behind Town Hall and crashed it into the police department.

“Mr. Burt drove the bulldozer into the police station, backed up, drove it in again, backed up and hit it a final time,” Sgt. David Griffin said.

The entranceway and front wall of the building were destroyed, the power was out and some computers were damaged, police said. No one was in the building, and an officer patrolling the area saw him in the act, police said.

“Mr. Burt had a number of contacts with the Troy Police Department,” Griffin said. “We believe he’s venting his anger.”‘

‘A Washington County woman is accused of paying two prostitutes to have sex with her 12-year-old nephew, WTAE Channel 4’s Sheldon Ingram reported Thursday.

“My anger is out of control,” said the boy’s mother, whose name is not being released in order to protect the child’s identity.

Donora police said Linda Van Pool, 36, is charged with endangering the welfare of a child, soliciting prostitution and corruption of a minor. [..]

Police said Van Pool brought her nephew to separate locations — one on Fifth Street and one on Linden Way — for the sexual activity.

“I didn’t know that she would take him to those type of women. I didn’t think they existed in this area. I thought you had to go to Pittsburgh for that,” she said.’

‘A naked man driving along the Indiana Toll Road was arrested and charged because his lewd conduct distracted other motorists, police said.

The 37-year-old Chicago man was traveling east to Ohio to visit his mother, police said. He was nude and had petroleum jelly on his hands when a state trooper pulled him over about 10 miles from the Ohio line Wednesday, police said.

The man, who told police he was comfortable driving in the nude, was charged with misdemeanor indecent exposure, punishable by up to a year in jail.’

‘Authorities in North Korea are intensifying a crackdown on imports of South Korean popular culture, especially television dramas, but the South’s “Korean Wave” may already have taken a strong hold in the isolated Stalinist state.

South Korean music, soap operas, and movies have already taken the rest of East Asia by storm, and, according to North Koreans now living in the South, the South’s arch-rival North Korea is no exception. [..]

“There have been two or three reports of public executions of North Korean young people in major cities including Chungjin, as punishment for having illegally copied and distributed South Korean visual material,” said Kang Chul Hwan, vice-chairman of the Seoul-based Committee for the Democratization of North Korea.

“It is not an overstatement to say that the Kim Jong Il regime is waging war on the South Korean TV drama,” he said, adding that the North Korean authorities have intensified surveillance and searches to prevent South Korean videos from entering North Korea.’

‘Like a novel written in the first-person voice of an unreliable narrator, If I Did It is not meant—by the publisher, anyway—to be taken at face value. It’s the self-portrait of a wife-abuser who somehow worked himself up into thinking he was a victim. To take O.J. Simpson at his word when he writes that “Nicole was on the fast track to hell, and she was determined to take me and the kids with her,” is like taking Humbert Humbert at his word when he describes as a romantic idyll his molestation of 12-year-old Dolores Haze. As Simpson relates the tale of how his wife gradually lost control and evolved into a menace, clues drop here and there that it is really Simpson himself who was losing control.’

‘An Indian man, who swallowed a knife to avoid extradition from Germany, has appeared before a Calcutta court.

Amarendra Nath Ghosh was arrested in Germany four years ago over a series of bank scams, all of which he denies.

When his return to India was ordered in 2003 he swallowed a 10cm (four inch) blade and refused surgery to remove it.

German officials were unable to remove it by force or send him home with the knife threatening his life. He was returned this week in an air ambulance.

A spokesman for India’s Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) told the AFP news agency that Germany finally agreed to extradite him after a four-year battle, on condition that he was flown back in a fully equipped air ambulance.’

‘A Long Beach, California, man was arrested last night in a spectacular commando raid. A police SWAT team stormed the home of Erwin Schrodinger at about 9:30 PM after receiving tips from his neighbors about sinister activities on the property. A local judge issued a warrant when police presented geiger counter measurements taken from the sidewalk showing the presence of radioactive materials somewhere on the premises.

Police have released very little information, but so far it appears the elderly Mr. Schrodinger faces felony charges of cruelty to animals, possession of fissionable materials, and possession of lethal toxins. [..]

Mr. Schrodinger is being held without bail pending charges. A distraught Mrs. Schrodinger, who says Mr. Schrodinger is harmless, states she has petitioned several times to see or at least talk with her husband, to no avail. “As it stands,” she said, “I don’t know whether he’s dead or alive!”’

Followup to Warning – Erwin Schrödinger.

‘A Japanese prison is scrambling to eradicate marijuana plants that keep sprouting up on its exercise ground, officials said Tuesday.

The marijuana plants started sprouting at Abashiri Prison on Japan’s northernmost island of Hokkaido about a year ago, said prison official Takeshi Okamura. He said officials plucked out as many as 300 marijuana plants and treated the ground last year, but several more sprouted again this year.

Prisoners reported them to the guards.

Officials believe the plants are wild.

“Apparently, somebody knew how to tell marijuana from other plants,” Okamura said.’

‘Three teenagers in hooded black outfits scampered over rooftops, climbed trees “just like a squirrel,” and broke into houses and cars, police said.

But these ninjas in the small southern Oregon town of Rogue River weren’t quite so slick as their Japanese ninja heroes.

Earlier this summer, an officer chased one of the wannabes across a school rooftop, but the youth leaped into a nearby tree, said Rogue River Police Chief Ken Lewis.

Breaking branches on the way down, “he gave a yelp of pain,” and then he scrambled away, Lewis said.’

‘Three boarding school students are accused of strangling two small boys in the hope that classes would be suspended after the deaths, police said Saturday.

The three students, ages 12 and 13, confessed to strangling an 8-year-old boy and his 5-year-old brother so that their school would close down, said S. Sethi, a police officer in the Jalna district, about 200 miles east of Mumbai.

“When questioned, the boys said they knew this school gave a holiday when a child had died last year and thought they could get another holiday this year,” Sethi said.’

‘A man who authorities say used his computer to make fake $100 bills to buy lap dances at a strip club has pleaded guilty to counterfeiting charges, federal prosecutors said.

Strippers at Deja Vu in Nashville were suspicious of the bills and called police after Damon Armagost spent $600 of the fake money April 16, authorities said.

When officers arrived, Armagost first told them he got the money when he sold gold coins for $1,400 to an unidentified person.

U.S. Secret Service agents later determined that counterfeit bills with the same serial number had been passed in other parts of the country. When they went to Armagost’s Smyrna home, about 20 miles southeast of Nashville, a family member told agents that an image of a $100 bill had been on a computer there.’

‘Chalk up another new-found power to the Motion Picture Association of America: the ability to force someone to change operating systems. Scott McCausland, who pleaded guilty last September in 2006 to the crime of uploading Star Wars: Episode III to the site Elitetorrents.com, was charged with “conspiracy to commit copyright infringement” and “criminal copyright infringement” by the FBI. This charge carried a maximum sentence of five years in prison, a fine of $250,000, and three years of supervised release. He wound up serving five months in prison and is now on probation. The probation, however, has now taken a strange turn into forced platform advocacy.

“I had a meeting with my probation officer today and he told me that he has to install monitoring software onto my PC. No big deal to me; that is part of my sentence,” he wrote on his Lost and Alone blog. “However, their software doesn’t support GNU/Linux (Which is what I use). So, he told me that if I want to use a computer, I would have to use an OS that the software can be installed on.” The monitoring software in question is only available for Microsoft Windows. Neither Linux nor a Macintosh running OS X would be an acceptable platform.’

‘The China Daily is reporting that a bull elephant from Xishuangbanna in southern Yunnan has recovered from a serious heroin addiction it picked up as a victim of illegal elephant trading. The elephant, nicknamed “Big Brother”, was fed heroin-laced bananas in order to make it easier to control him and his herd, which they led westward to Dehong, near China’s border with Myanmar.

According to the article, Big Brother developed a strong need for heroin after a few weeks of being drugged and would drool and twitch if not given regular doses. When the elephant smugglers arrived in Dehong they were arrested by the Dehong Forest Police. The China Daily explains what happened when the police tried to get Big Brother home:

“While driving the herd back to Xishuangbanna, Big Brother started drooling and bellowing and even tried to run away. The police were surprised to learn from one of the traders that it was suffering from withdrawal symptoms and could pose a danger to people, if not fed drugs immediately…’

‘US Representative Benjamin Sinclair (R-Ohio) has a plan to reduce skull fucking levels in America by 5 to 7%’

(6.5meg Flash video)

see it here »

‘A Minneapolis man was attacked with 2-by-4s and grapefruit-size rocks early Sunday after he told a group of eight to 10 people to turn down their music, police said.

The 28-year-old man returned to a duplex in south Minneapolis about 1:35 a.m. and found the group in the backyard drinking and listening to music, according to a police report. A 45-year-old woman and 13-year-old girl were with the man.

The man asked the group to turn down its music. The suspects then knocked him to the ground, kicked him, beat him with 2-by-4s and struck him about five times with landscape rocks, the report said.

When the woman tried to protect the man, one suspect threw a can of beer in her face. The 13-year-old was thrown to the ground by another suspect as she tried to flee.’

‘Vermont’s clothing-optional capital is stripping off its temporary ban on public nudity.

A month after passing the temporary ban, the Brattleboro Selectboard voted 3-2 on Tuesday to reject a proposed ordinance that would have made it permanent. When the emergency temporary ordinance expires next month, public nudity will no longer be illegal.

It’s all about tolerance, one board member said.

”We in this country are going down a slippery slope these days,” said Dora Bouboulis, noting a national newspaper recently published an article about the emergency ordinance under the headline ”Tolerant town gets intolerant.”’

‘An Arizona woman has been charged with attempted murder after allegedly stabbing her estranged husband in the chest during sex, MyFOXPhoenix.com reports.

Falon Gonzales, 23, was released on $100,000 bond after being booked Tuesday night, according to the report. Her husband, Juan Carlos Gonzales, 26, was listed in serious condition at a local hospital.

He fled to neighbor Tony Ballard’s home on West Stanford Avenue in Gilbert, Ariz., after the attack, MyFOXPhoenix.com reports.

“I’ve never had a naked man run to my house bleeding, you know what I mean?” Ballard told MyFOXPhoenix.com.

Ballard told MyFOXPhoenix.com that the couple was in the middle of sex when the alleged attack occurred.

“She was on top and she reached out of a bag and pulled a knife out of a bag and drove it into his chest,” Ballard said of the incident.’

‘Aggravated assault charges have been filed against a church deacon and University of Oklahoma Sooners fan after officials say he grabbed a University of Texas fan between the legs during a scuffle in an Oklahoma bar.

A couple of months before the annual Red River Shootout between the Sooners and Longhorns, words were exchanged at Henry Hudson’s Pub between Allen Beckett, 53, and Brian Thomas. Witnesses said it was because Thomas was wearing a UT T-shirt.

Neither Thomas or Beckett chose to comment, but the police report described what happened to the victim, including graphic details about his injuries that included a torn scrotal sack with partially exposed testicles.

Beckett’s attorney, Billy Bock, said his client’s actions were in self-defense.’

‘The last thing Andrea Fernandez recalls before being drugged is holding her newborn baby on a Bogota city bus.

Police found her three days later, muttering to herself and wandering topless along the median strip of a busy highway. Her face was badly beaten and her son was gone.

Fernandez is just one of hundreds of victims every month who, according to Colombian hospitals, are temporarily turned into zombies by a home-grown drug called scopolamine which has been embraced by thieves and rapists. [..]

The use of scopolamine by criminals appears to be confined to Colombia, at least for now, and it’s not clear why the drug is such a rampant problem in Colombia. [..]’

‘A submarine-like vessel filled with hundreds of millions of dollars worth of cocaine was seized off the Guatemalan coast, U.S. officials said.

Four suspected smugglers were operating the self-propelled, semisubmersible vessel when it was located and seized on Sunday evening by officials from the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol, U.S. Navy and the U.S. Coast Guard, the Border Patrol said in a news release Wednesday.

When the suspects realized they had been spotted by drug-surveillance aircraft patrolling the eastern Pacific, they scuttled the vessel but were unable to escape.’

‘Tied to a lamppost, he stands with his head and upper body covered in tar and feathers. A makeshift placard hung around his neck with a piece of string announces the reason for his treatment.

It is a very public humiliation, and a medieval one. Almost ten years since Northern Ireland’s Troubles officially ended, this remains the crude face of justice on the streets of south Belfast. [..]

Locals had accused the victim, who is in his thirties, of being a drug dealer. And when police allegedly did not act, they took the law into their own hands.

Two masked men tied up the accused victim, poured tar over his head and then covered him in white feathers, apparently from a pillow case.’

see it here »