Mother’s Day Edition

Curses, Foiled Again

Tita Nyambi, 25, tried to withdraw $700 from his mother’s bank account by dressing in the woman’s clothes and speaking in a high-pitched voice, according to authorities in Somerset County, N.J., who added that he also presented her driver’s license and forged her signature on a bank form at the bank’s drive-through teller. Newark’s Star-Ledger said bank personnel immediately saw through the deception and called police, who responded while Nyambi was waiting for the money.

Curses, Foiled Again

Massachusetts State Police who stopped Francis Viliar, 36, for speeding said he showed troopers a driver’s license that had the name Luis Gomez but a different signature. When they asked him his birth date, he failed six times to match the one on the license, prompting his arrest. At the Brockton police station, officers noticed the pads of Viliar’s fingers were covered with scar tissue. They took fingerprints anyway, and federal officials were able to determine his identity and that he was wanted on 13 warrants. Viliar said he paid someone $400 to cut his fingers vertically, from the fingertip to the knuckle joint, so his prints would be unreadable. “Fortunately,” police official David Procopio told The Boston Globe, “our efforts to identify {suspects} are keeping pace with their efforts to mutilate themselves.”

Curses, Foiled Again

Los Angeles police broke up a sophisticated marijuana growing operation they found 25 feet from the back door of the police station. Officers noticed the strong smell of pot coming from the building and notified the narcotics squad, which investigated. Officer Karen Raynor told KTTV News the three suspects had “gone to great lengths to filter the air coming out of every hole that might leak to the outside” and plugged all places where the smell might have been detected with liquid caulking. “But it was not enough,” Raynor noted. “Their luck ran out.”

Police responding to a bank robbery in St. Petersburg, Fla., said suspect Thomas John Castro, 54, was making his getaway on a city bus when a dye pack hidden with the stolen money exploded on him. Witnesses said he hastily hopped off the bus and fled on foot. The St. Petersburg Times reported that a tip led police to a motel room, where Castro answered the door holding a bag of crack cocaine.

Curses, Foiled Again

Brier Cutlip, 22, and Paul Bragg, 25, were arrested for firearms possession, a felony parole violation, after sheriff’s deputies in Randolph County, W.Va., found two rifles in Cutlip’s truck. The deputies thought to look for incriminating evidence because the two men showed up at their parole meetings together dressed in blaze orange. WBOY-TV News said the men admitted hunting earlier that day.

Curses, Foiled Again

Two men lacking masks when they broke into an apartment in Carroll, Iowa, used a Sharpie marker to draw on masks. The Daily Times Herald reported that police, responding to a caller who saw two men with “painted faces” drive off, stopped a car after noticing Matthew McNelly, 23, and Joey Miller, 20, sporting the irremovable disguises.

Curses, Foiled Again

A man approached a clerk at a restaurant in Haverhill, Mass., declared he had a gun and demanded money from the register. When the clerk insisted on seeing the gun, the man fled. North Andover’s Eagle Tribune reported police found suspect Adam Alsarabi, 22, hiding in the woods, gunless.

Police investigating a drive-by shooting at a home in Buchanan, Wis., found auto glass in the street and deduced the shooter had forgotten to lower his car window before firing five shots. Appleton’s Post-Crescent reported that a check of area auto glass repair shops led to Andrew J. Burwitz, 20, who admitted shooting at the house, where his ex-girlfriend lived.

Curses, Foiled Again

An armed robber entered a Pizza Hut restaurant in Statesville, N.C., and ordered worker Therman Martin to empty the safe. Martin told WSOC-TV that when he explained he couldn’t open the safe because “I’m just the oven man,” the robber forced him into the bathroom and tried to shoot him, but the gun misfired. Martin then bit the robber’s hand until he dropped the gun and took off running. He paused, Martin said, and asked, “Please give me the gun back. It’s not my gun, and I’ll leave.” Martin refused, and the robber fled.

Curses, Foiled Again

Belgian authorities said two robbers misguessed how much dynamite it took to blow open a cash machine in Dinant. The blast caused the building behind the ATM to collapse and killed both robbers. Bank officials said they wouldn’t have gotten any money anyway, since the ATMs are designed to implode when forced open and destroy all the cash inside.

Curses, Foiled Again

A man told police he was eating hot dogs in a park in Worcester, Mass., when another man approached, lifted up his shirt to show what appeared to be a handgun, grabbed one of the hot dogs and began eating it. “In doing so,” police Officer Joseph Francese noted in his report, “mustard spilled onto the suspect’s shirt.” According to the Worcester Telegram & Gazette, police identified Antonio J. Judd, 35, as their suspect after spotting him wearing the shirt with the telltale mustard stain. Judd pleaded guilty to larceny.

Curses, Foiled Again

When police went to a home in Regina, Saskatchewan, looking for David William McKay, 28, a man matching McKay’s description answered the door but said his name was “Matthew,” which, when asked, he misspelled. The Regina Leader-Post reported police also noticed he had the name “David McKay” tattooed on his back.