Curses, Foiled Again
When police encountered shoplifting suspect Levar Fulgham, 34, with $4,500 in designer handbags outside a TJ Maxx store in Farmington, Conn., he ran off and hopped into an idling car. He couldn’t get the car moving, however, because it was equipped with an ignition interlock system, which the driver has to blow into to put the car in gear. The car’s owner had been required to install the device after a drunk-driving charge, and Fulgham didn’t know how it worked. “Otherwise,” police Lt. Colin Ryan said, “he would have been long gone.” (The Hartford Courant)
Last Wish
After Scott E. Entsminger, 55, died in Columbus, Ohio, the death notice included his request that six Cleveland football players serve as pallbearers to lower him into his grave “so the Browns can let him down one last time.” (The Columbus Dispatch)
What Were We Thinking?
After the New York Mets asked the American Indian Community House to help organize a Native American Heritage Day at the ballpark, the nonprofit group bought a block of 500 tickets and was invited to stage pregame festivities, including traditional singing and dancing, outside Citi Field. The Mets also agreed to print 500 T-shirts for the occasion and broadcast two public-service announcements for the group on the stadium’s video boards. Then Mets officials noticed the game was scheduled for July 25 against the Atlanta Braves. Concerned that the Braves, known for their fans’ tomahawk-chop cheer, might interpret the event as a protest over the team name, the Mets notified the AICH that there would be no public-service announcements and no pregame festivities. “This whole thing wasn’t even our idea,” AICH deputy director Kevin Tarrant said after the group canceled its participation and requested a refund for the 500 tickets. “But it just feels like we’re being marginalized again within our own community.” (The New York Times)
Little Things Mean a Lot
Geronimo Narciso, 37, fired two shots in the air in Pangasinan, in the Philippines, and was tucking his gun into his waistband when it fired again, according to ABS-CBN News, and accidentally shot off his penis. Earlier this year, the Trinidad and Tobago Guardian reported that a security guard accidentally shot off his penis. He survived, only to be charged with illegally possessing the weapon. (The Huffington Post)
Revenge of the Mobile Devices
- Texting contributed to the crash of a medical helicopter near Mosby, Mo., according to National Transportation Safety Board investigators. Despite the helicopter operator’s rule forbidding pilots to use electronic devices during flight, pilot James Freudenbert, 34, had exchanged 20 personal text messages in the two hours before the crash, including one 19 minutes before. Officials said the texting apparently prevented Fruedenbert from noticing the helicopter was running out of fuel. (Los Angeles Times)
- Smartphone accidents are on the rise. The Chinese website Xianguo.com reported that a Hong Kong man named Du blamed his Samsung Galaxy S4 phone for burning down his house. Du said he was playing the game “Love Machine” on the phone when its battery popped. Startled, he threw the phone on a sofa, which burst into flames that quickly spread. Later that month, an 18-year-old Swiss woman received third-degree burns on her leg after her Samsung Galaxy S3 exploded in her pocket. In the same month, a Chinese woman reportedly died from an electric shock when she answered a call on her iPhone while it was charging; a similar occurrence sent a Chinese man into a coma. (The Huffington Post)
- Believing that he may have accidentally dropped his cellphone down a garbage chute in his Palatine, Ill., apartment building, Roger Mirro, 56, went looking for it in a trash compactor, which crushed him to death. (Chicago Tribune)
- Detectives investigating the death of an inmate at Florida’s Pinellas County jail concluded that the victim’s cellmate, Scott Alexander Greenberg, 28, had murdered the 48-year-old man by shoving wet toilet paper down his throat. (South Florida’s Sun-Sentinel)
- Pizza was the weapon of choice in two incidents. Cody Sebastian Parsons, 25, denied assaulting his 19-year-old girlfriend with pizza at their home in Wilkesboro, N.C., but police found “pizza sauce on the back of {the victim’s} right rib cage,” and “there were pieces of pizza all over the living room floor, as well as on the wall behind the front entrance door to the apartment.” In Fort Mill, S.C., police arrested Jimmy Ray Poage, 47, for assaulting his 40-year-old girlfriend with a pizza slice. Poage claimed the woman threw pizza at him first, but, according to a York County Sheriff’s report, her clothing was splattered with sauce, whereas his were “clear of pizza or pizza sauce.” (The Smoking Gun)
