Curses, Foiled Again
Jamie L. Gordon, 30, told police she was “struck in the head with a bowling ball” by a robber, who took $2,100 from the safe at the bowling alley where she worked in Decatur, Ill. When the manager arrived and gave permission to view the surveillance video, Officer James Weddle observed Gordon pick up a bowling ball and “strike herself twice in the back, left side of her head,” then drop to the floor, where she remained for 13 minutes until another employee found her. Confronted with the evidence, Gordon admitted taking the money and gambling away most of it on the bowling alley’s slot machines before conking herself on the head “to make it look like she had been robbed.” (Decatur’s Herald-Review)
Homeland Insecurity
White supremacists and anti-government radicals have killed more people in the United States since Sept. 11, 2001, than Muslim jihadists have, according to Washington research center New America. The score: 48 to 26. New America program associate David Sterman warned that white supremacy and anti-government idealism constitute an “ignored threat” because the government has focused its surveillance and data collection efforts instead on domestic Islamic extremists. (The Washington Times)
Birdland
Haden Smith, 18, demanded that his mother intervene to mend his relationship with his girlfriend and threatened to kill her chickens if she didn’t. Deputies in Limestone County, Ala., said Smith vowed he’d kill a chicken every 15 minutes and gave her a deadline of noon. When the deadline passed, he started sending her picture messages of each dead chicken. He got to six before deputies arrived and arrested him. (Tribune Media Wire)
Numbers Racket
As mobile devices hog telephone numbers, new area codes created to meet mathematical demand are causing old ones to become status symbols, for which some people are willing to pay. And others are selling. Ed Mance, who operates PhoneNumberGuy.com, buys numbers in bulk from companies that no longer need them. He sells them for between $299 and $799, although his biggest sale was a “nine-of-a-kind” number for $95,000. Mance notes that the area code most in demand is Los Angeles’ 310, whose numbers are the hardest to secure. Many of Mance’s customers are less interested in the area code than the numbers around them, including ones that spell out words. “HURT and PAIN are the two most in-demand numbers,” Mance said, because they’re coveted by personal-injury lawyers. (The Washington Post)
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