Legal Juice

As reported in the Tacoma Washington News-Tribune:

In May, a 22-year-old Gig Harbor man spent a night drinking at a tavern with a friend before seeing how fast he could drive his car – on an airport runway. According to court documents, Jesse Andrew Floberg, who worked at the Tacoma Narrows Airport, used a code to let himself in, drove onto the runway – and floored it. He hit 105 mph before the car sheared off a runway light, went airborne and landed upside down at the bottom of an embankment, court records said. Floberg suffered minor scrapes, police said. His passenger was more seriously injured. Floberg pleaded guilty to DUI and had his pilot’s license, er driver’s license, suspended 90 days.

Motha trucka!

Florida resident Charris Bowers is no Lorena Bobbitt, but that's probably not much consolation to husband Delou Bowers, who has teeth marks on his ... What went down (sorry) depends on who you believe. As reported by The Orlando Sentinel:

According to a sheriff's office report, the Bowerses had been to a bar Friday night. Delou Bowers told authorities that when they got home, his wife began to perform oral sex on him but then began to bite his penis.

He tried to stop her, he told a deputy, but she kept at it. He then began to punch her in the head and pushed her to the floor, and she let go, according to the arrest report.

What did she say happened?

Charris Bowers gave the officer two versions of what happened. She first said she was sitting on the couch when her husband walked over and put his penis in her mouth, according to the report.

"She then bit it to get him away from her," the report said.

She later said her husband walked over with his penis exposed, and she bit it.

Who do you believe? Regardless, she was arrested for misdemeanor battery after "... the deputy saw the injury, [and] photographed it ..." Yow!

A 19-year-old New Zealand man named Eptai Taiwhanga, as reported by 3 News ...

...walked into Westport police station drinking alcohol and carrying cannabis resin.

Maybe he thought it was a pub?

Unsurprisingly, except to him perhaps, he was hit with breaching Westport's liquor ban and possessing a Class B drug.

Judge Jane McMeeken said Taiwhanga was "incredibly stupid" and fined him $400.

"You had cannabis in your pocket and drew attention to yourself by drinking in a police station."

Doh!

What was so unusual about this ATM withdrawal in Beaumont, Texas? Well, it wasn't that Mr. Leandro Sanchez made the withdrawal around 3 a.m. It was simply this - he took the entire ATM! From a bank! With a forklift! I guess he didn't think it would set off an alarm. It did. Here's the source (kfdm.com).

Let's just say you're divorced, and your ex-wife calls to tell you one of your kids is being held for ransom. I think most folks would pay up. Just suppose, though, that your ex-wife called to say that one of your children was again taken hostage, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again! For real. This woman told her ex-husband that one of their kids (sometimes their son, sometimes their daughter) had been kidnapped SEVEN TIMES over a five-year period! And you know how many times he paid? Six! For a total of £530,000 ($808,000 US!). As reported by The Telegraph:

In the summer of 2001, she told her estranged husband, named only as Pedro GM, who was living in a different town, that strangers had entered her home and taken her daughter Sara, demanding payment of 30,000 euros (£23,000) for her safe return.

A year later, she claimed that the girl had been taken again, this time to settle a drug debt, and asked her husband to cough up 48,000 euros (£38,000) for her release.

In 2003 she again approached her husband, this time claiming that their son Emilio had been snatched after she failed to pay 36,000 euros (£28,000) she owed to a clothing wholesaler. He once again paid the money and the child was “returned” unharmed.

In 2004, she faked another kidnapping, again of her teenage son Emilio, claiming that drug dealers were demanding 54,000 euros (£43,000) for a package of cocaine that the boy had lost. Once again, the father paid the ransom demand to his wife to pass on.

In December 2005 and January 2006 she again claimed that their son had got himself in trouble and was being held to ransom, but this time she said he had been taken by members of a gypsy family who wanted blood money totalling 180,000 euros (£142,000) because he had taken the virginity of a 13-year old relative.

Finally, in Sept 2006 she and her friends concocted a story claiming that Emilio had again been abducted from outside their home in the Madrid suburb of Fuenlabrada. On this occasion, the boy himself called his father, claiming his attackers were torturing him and were threatening to kill him unless a ransom of 252,000 euros (£200,000) was paid.

How were they caught?

Minutes later [after the boy called his father] he was spotted in the street having a drink with friends, said the private detective hired by Pedro G M to investigate the case.

I think it's only appropriate to end this post with some quotes about greed.

"To be perfectly honest, what I'm really thinking about are dollar signs." Tonya Harding

“Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's need, but not every man's greed” Gandhi

"I'm a marvelous housekeeper. Every time I leave a man I keep his house." Zsa Zsa Gabor

"Greed is a fat demon with a small mouth and whatever you feed it is never enough." Janwillem van de Wetering

"How did I get involved in a terrible film like Best Defense? The door opened and four men came in carrying a check." Eddie Murphy (Note that, although it might seem criminal, Intentional Infliction of Emotional Distress is a civil claim.)

And my favorite:

"Money doesn't talk, it swears." Bob Dylan

Dude had 60 pot plants growing in 2 rooms. As luck would have it [bad luck, that is], there was a fire in his apartment building, leading to the discovery of the weed. So how much time do you think he's facing? Zippy. Nada. Squadoosh. Sure he doesn't have a record, but if it happened to you or me, fuhgeddaboutit. We're doing time. But not Mr. Graham McConnell, who actually had a pretty good story, which might even be true. Per The Paisley Daily Express:

[His lawyer said] “He is a man who has been using cannabis for some time and made the foolish decision to cultivate the drug in order to avoid coming into contact with those who traffic in the drug."

“He had decided to grow a lot of the stuff, dry and freeze it and, by doing so, not become involved with those who traffic in drugs on the street.”

True or not, that's a tough sell. Mr. McConnell was sentenced to 300 hours of community service. Here's the source.

You're not going to believe what this formerly respectable couple did to try and avoid a £60 ($88 US) ticket and three points. And it's not like it would have put the wife over the top - her driving record was spotless. So Mrs. Diane Rodger, a lecturer [professor] was doing 40 mph in a 30mph zone when she was nailed by a speeding camera. Instead of just paying the fine, what did she and her husband Michael (a magistrate!) do? As reported in the Mail Online:

After consulting an internet website for tips on challenging speeding tickets, they altered the car's appearance.

They changed the style of the Skoda's number plate and removed stickers from its windscreen in a bizarre attempt to persuade police it had been 'cloned' and that she was not the driver...

Then they tried to weasel out of it.

Over the next three months Nottinghamshire Central Ticket Office, which deals with speeding fines, received five letters contesting the ticket, all signed by 'Mr Rodger JP'.

They variously claimed he had no knowledge of the offence, that the car was regularly used by others, that the car may have been 'cloned', that the car was parked in Nottingham city centre at the time of the offence and that the captured image was not clear enough to identify the driver.

The letters also claimed that the middle letter on the number plate was indistinct and that his vehicle did not have stickers in the windscreen, unlike the images of the speeding car.

So the cops went to their house to ask them about the letters. What did they say?

Mrs Rodger stated she had, while Mr Rodger claimed he had signed them without reading them. Thomas Elmer, defending Mr Rodger, said: 'It was his wife who wished to evade the penalty but it was their joint idea how to go about it."

Partners in an asinine crime. The Judge agreed.

The couple wept as Judge David Brunning told them they had been 'staggeringly stupid' and that he had 'just been persuaded' not to send them to prison. Instead, they were each given six-month jail sentences, suspended for two years.

They were also ordered to carry out 300 hours of unpaid work each and to pay £5,000 costs between them after admitting intending to pervert the course of justice.

Here's the source.

What's up with these crazy hoons? As reported by The Age:

A P-plate driver [driver with a probationary license] was caught doing burn-outs in a police station car park. The 23-year-old hoon left a 20-metre skid-mark in the Craigieburn police station car park before driving off. Police later impounded his VN Commodore for 48 hours.

That's a 65-foot skid mark! In a police parking garage! Here's another hoon story.

Such is not the case with Donald J. Jacobs, Jr. of North Platte, Nebraska. Per the North Platte Telegraph:

According to the police report, Jacobs was intoxicated and assaulted his girlfriend with the pot when he discovered she made macaroni for his dinner. The assault caused the food to be tossed throughout the residence, as he struck her with the pot, according to the report.

More importantly, the victim "...had a cut on the bridge of her nose and a bruise on her face. ... it must have been a significant hit because the handle of the pot was broken." Damn! Oh, and it was 3:30 a.m. when the police arrived, and not for the first time.

"He definitely has a history," [police investigator Dale Matuszczak] said.

So what happened to Mr. Jacobs?

[He] was arrested and booked into the Lincoln County Jail on second-degree domestic assault, a Class 3A felony. The charges carry a maximum sentence of 5 years in prison and/or a $10,000 fine. Jacobs was arraigned Monday and held in custody on a $5,000 bail.

Wonder how he likes the food in jail?

It was not a good day for Manheim Township, Pennsylvania resident Michael Hufford. At about 11:00 a.m., he was in an accident, and was busted for suspected DUI. The police released him to his girlfriend. Just 5 hours and 8 minutes later, Mr. Hufford was in another accident, and was again busted for suspected DUI. This time, per Lancaster Online, "Hufford .. was committed to Lancaster County Prison in default of $10,000 cash bail..."

Any parent would be rightfully angry upon learning that their child was bullied. Perhaps, though, stabbing the bully is not the proper response. Say what? Per the Toronto City News:

Here's what [the police] say happened: two female students at an Oshawa school - which isn't being named - were engaged in a war of words. The elder of the two was allegedly picking on the 13-year-old, forcing the young girl to kneel in front of her.

So the younger girl told her mom what had happened, pouring out her sad story. But instead of going to the principal, cops allege the mom went straight to the bully.

Uh oh.

Witnesses told them they saw a car pull up on Olive Ave. on Wednesday at about 7:30pm, come to a sudden halt and then heard a woman shouting at the girl who was standing on the street.

As the startled bystanders watched in stunned surprise, the woman allegedly got out of the vehicle, grabbed the youngster by the hair and stabbed her in the left side of her stomach with a pocketknife.

The girl was taken to hospital, where doctors said that the knife luckily hit a bone - otherwise, it would have been much worse.

Mom was busted for assault. The bully was busted for uttering threats. Here's the source.

At least in Germany it is. As reported by Reuters (a few years ago):

A Cologne court fined a man who admitted he was having sex with a hitchhiker sitting astride him when he drove his car into a road sign. But only because he fled the scene of the accident with his naked accomplice.

Said a court spokesman:

"It's hard to believe but in fact no law was broken with the intercourse on the motorway. It's a situation lawmakers never thought about."

Is this a story these folks will be telling their grandkids? Unlikely.

[The driver] did not know the name of the woman who left her clothes behind in the car.

Hey, I like crunchy foods, probably more than most folks. But I absolutely draw the line at glass. Yes, glass. Ms. Lynette Margaret Quessy thought she would get her husband to deal with his drinking problem by lacing his food with glass! As reported by news.com.au:

Her husband first noticed glass in a roll when he bit into it and chipped a filling on his tooth.

Er, uh, sorry.

A week later he noticed what looked like rock salt on some biscuits.

... he realised it was glass and again found glass in his sandwich the next day.

Wife makes lunch. Glass in lunch. What to do.

He started keeping his lunches in a freezer in his garage and eventually went to the police after discovering a container of crushed glass in the pantry.

AFT, dude. Did she own up to it? Yup.

[Ms. Quessy] admitted putting fragments of a smashed light globe in her husband's packed lunch five or six times in October and November last year.

Ouchee!

Of course, if you don't mind having your head handed to you ... As reported in The South Asian Post:

A woman chopped the head off a man who allegedly tried to attack her and then paraded the head through a market in northern India, police said. Police arrested the woman late on Thursday after receiving calls from frightened witnesses, said police officer Ram Bharose. The woman, 35, told police she had gone to a nearby forest to cut grass for fodder for her cattle when a man attacked her from behind. ''In a bid to save her dignity she beheaded him with a sickle,'' Bharose said, adding that the woman had bite marks on her neck and cheek.

Safe to say she'll never be attacked again ...

If there is a worse driver out there, I'd be shocked. As reported in The Hamilton Spectator, here are some highlights of Toronto resident Gloria O'Neill's driving history:

Her driver’s licence was suspended as far back as 1978, when she was just 21. In 1984, it was suspended again.

Still forbidden to drive, she got a new licence under a different name.

When that, too, was suspended, she got a third.

In 1995, according to parole documents, O’Neill rolled her car on Highway 401, breaking her back in two places. She was charged in March of that year with driving while under suspension and got 15 days in jail.

Five years ago, after she [ran a red light, and] dragged a pedestrian to his death in a crosswalk, a court banned her from driving for 10 years. [At the time of this hit-and-run, she was driving with TWO suspended licenses, under different names.](She was also convicted of perjury for lying at her bail hearing about her criminal record and multiple licence suspensions.) She only served 9 months for killing this man!

Before you get to angry (#!@*&%!), consider this:

Recently she declined repeated interview requests, saying she has consulted psychiatrists to cope with the trauma of the fatal crash.

“I’m trying to get over it,” O’Neill said when reached by phone. “I have a life and I’m trying to get on with it. I just want to live my life. “

Really? Trying to get over it? By ....

Not longer after that conversation, with five years left on her driving ban, O’Neill got behind the wheel of a Lincoln Town Car registered to her husband, another suspended driver.

On Aug. 28, two Record journalists watched as she drove the shiny red car out of her Toronto parking garage and disappeared down the street.

All told,

[Ms. O'Neill] has been involved in at least 15 collisions, often in rented or borrowed cars.

LOCK HER UP! Oh, and don't forget about her criminal history, unrelated to driving.

In 1979, under the last name Cloutier, she was sentenced to five years in prison for the beating and robbery of a 62-year-old man while she ran a Toronto brothel. According to media accounts of the trial, while the victim was being entertained by a 16-year-old prostitute, O’Neill and another man robbed him of jewelry, a camera and cash, before beating him so badly he was blinded in one eye.

To read A LOT MORE, click here.

A strange crime as reported in The Hartford Advocate:

It's always surprising to see what lengths people will go to get away with petty crimes, even if it's for something as silly as ganking baby food. According to the Courant, 22-year-old Bristol resident Paul Bergeron allegedly tried lifting some of the instant baby formula Enfamil from a Shaw's supermarket on Sept. 26 in West Hartford. Police caught on in the parking lot when Bergeron was seen holding the formula in plain sight and yelling "Go, go, go!" to his getaway driver. They reportedly slammed into an unmarked cop car and Bergeron allegedly tried to get away on foot. He ended up in a fourth-floor laundry room, where he was allegedly punished by a police dog and hit with a stun gun. He faces robbery and assault charges.

Ouchee!

No, not texting, reading or polishing fingernails. (We actually had a case involving a woman who was eating crabs while driving - I swear.) But this dude, he was injecting himself with heroin while he was driving! Per the Hartford Advocate:

According to police reports, on Oct. 3, 25-year-old Larry Shallow of Windsor was allegedly seen banging heroin while driving on I-291, giving a whole new meaning to driving under the influence. An onlooker allegedly saw Shallow injecting a hypodermic needle into himself who then passed it to his friend. Police followed the car to a McDonald's, where they reportedly greeted Shallow. He (allegedly) admitted to throwing the needle out the window on the highway and mixing 12 bags of heroin in a bottle cap. Shallow was charged with possession of heroin, drug paraphernalia and, on top of that, driving with a suspended license.

Wow.

Ullricht Walter, a German citizen living in South Africa, had good reason to doubt that his wife loved him. Per The Times:

... Ullricht had discovered e-mail correspondence ["steamy love letters"] between [his wife] Linda and her high-school sweetheart, who even flew out from Germany for a clandestine meeting.

So he wanted her to prove that she loved him. As luck (bad!) would have it, a love test presented itself! In an affidavit, Mr. Walter wrote:

I thought ... that if I gave her a task so outrageous and contrary to her nature it would prove to me and her that we would overcome our problems.

I told her to drive off in the Clio to prove to me that she loved me and the children and that she had made a commitment to our marriage.

Just one thing - the parking lot she stole the car from has closed-circuit television cameras. Doh! The car was found at the Walter's house, wrapped in plastic so their dogs wouldn't scratch it! What happened to the Walter's marriage? As they await sentencing, they moved out of their house, and have separated. Ms. Walter said "that she might never be able to forgive her husband for what he asked her to do." Oh really? Did she forget about the "e-mail correspondence ... [with] her high-school sweetheart, who even flew out from Germany for a clandestine meeting?" Wacky. To read more (a fair amount), click here.

Now, either this lady had a really big bag, or the Victoria's Secret "PINK" bras are really, really small. Why? Because she stuffed 160 of them into her bag! Here's the story from The Miami Herald:

There's a bra bandit on the loose in Southwest Florida. The Lee County Sheriff's Office is searching for an individual they say stole 160 bras valued at nearly $6,000 on Thursday from a Victoria's Secret store, the latest in a string of bra burglaries in the area.

Since February, authorities say 452 bras valued at nearly $19,000 have been stolen from two of the chain's Southwest Florida locations. Six different bra thefts at the stores have been reported during that time.

Investigators say a female customer walked into the store Thursday and immediately went to a four-drawer cabinet with new bras of the PINK brand name. The store manager told deputies the woman waited until employees were busy helping customers and then thrust the bras into a bag and exited the store.

An incredibly threatening ... squeegee. Really. Maybe the drugs killed him - maybe not. Here's the story, from the Orlando Sentinel:

A sheriff's office spokesman said the man who deputies Tasered in south Orange County died this morning.

Capt. Angelo Nieves of the Orange County Sheriff's Office confirmed the man was "under the influence" when deputies used a Taser to control him. The agency has not released the man's name.

Witnesses told deputies the man was charging at cars with a hammer on Landstreet Road and Orange Blossom Trail overnight.

Orange County deputies arrived at the scene and determined the man was holding a squeegee. Cmdr. Spike Hopkins said deputies found a wrench in the man's vehicle and determined the suspect was dangerous. "The bizarre behavior was indicative of someone who was overdosing," Hopkins said. Reports show the deputies tried to calm the man, but it didn't work. Deputies stunned him with a Taser twice.

Here's the source.

About a month ago, Oscar Reynolds Jr. was acquitted of robbing the Liberty Bank in Jonesboro, Arkansas. Guess what Mr. Reynolds was doing this past Tuesday? He was robbing that same bank! Unlike the first time, where he was acquitted because he could not be positively ID'd, smart money says Mr. Reynolds will see the inside of a cell this time. Why? Per The Jonesboro Sun:

In a police interview Reynolds “admitted to entering the bank with a gun and committing the robbery.”

Doh! And ...

“There also was money found under the mattress in the bedroom where Reynolds was [hiding]. One of the bills found had a serial number that was logged by the bank as being stolen."

“A firearm was found in the adjacent apartment that matched the description of the gun that the suspect used.”

To read more (just a bit) click here.