NEWS & BLUES

Curses, Foiled Again

Police believe Jamie Minor, 26, tried to break into the Austin, Texas, restaurant where she worked by crawling through an exhaust duct leading to the office. She apparently became trapped when the duct tapered into an opening she couldn’t fit through, and she couldn’t back up. Noting that Minor had been missing more than a month before maintenance workers found her body, police Commander Julie O’Brien explained, “That area is located in a part of the building where it’s not readily accessible to anyone, so noises inside of the duct work couldn’t be heard.” (Associated Press) Police quickly identified Lucas Jeffrey James, 23, as the man who accosted two women in downtown St. Petersburg, Fla., because his getaway landed him in a rap video. According to police official Bill Proffitt, James spit beer on the women, hit one of them over the head with a beer bottle, then fled down an alley that led to a film crew. The shirtless, wild-haired James ran straight at the camera for an extreme close-up. Police released the video and promptly received several tips where to find the suspect. (St. Petersburg Times)

First Things First

Authorities needed a 5-ton dump truck to rescue a 35-year-old woman who drove into Souris River floodwaters in Minot, N.D. Police said the woman was driving drunk in water over the wheels of her vehicle trying to get to a bar to play Bingo. (Associated Press)

Overreactions of the Week

Landlord Jonathan Steinberg, 58, was so angry with tenant Ronald Rohde, 52, for being late paying the rent on his room in Boynton, Fla., that he splashed rubbing alcohol over Rohde’s boxer shorts and lit them on fire. Police who arrested Steinberg reported that Rohde stripped down fast enough to suffer only minor burns. (South Florida Sun-Sentinel) Marilee Ann Kolynych, 63, was so angry with her 9-year-old grandson for eating too much bacon at breakfast that she chased the boy onto the front yard of her home in Clifton Heights, Pa., sat on top of him and sprayed his face with water from a hose whose “nozzle was on full force,” Patrolman James Press reported. “Appar ently, he ate more bacon than anyone else at breakfast. She was yelling at him and picking on him all day because there wasn’t enough bacon for everyone.” (Delaware County Daily Times) Brian W. Dujmovic, 39, was so angry with a neighbor for using golf clubs in his own front yard that he confronted him with a shotgun and wound up in a standoff with police officers in Menomenee Falls, Wis. According to the criminal complaint, when Dujmovic asked the neighbor to move to his back yard, the neighbor argued that it’s a free country. Dujmovic went into his house, returned with a shotgun and held it against the neighbor’s chest. The neighbor called police, who said Dujmovic told them by phone that the neighbor “needs some sense knocked into them,” adding incidentally that he could run a gas truck into the police station. That response brought a tactical squad, which eventually ended the standoff by bringing the bulletproof-vestwearing Dujmovic into custody. (Menomenee Falls Patch)

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.