Woman orders Lobster-gram, gets her dead father's leg in the mail instead... hilarity ensues.

Wed January 29, 2003 08:50 AM ET

HOUSTON (Reuters)
An Alaska woman, shocked to receive part of her dead father's leg in the mail instead of the gourmet "LobsterGram" she was hoping for has filed suit against the Houston firm that sent it, alleging mental anguish, people involved in the case said on Tuesday.
LaMara Lane wants $1 million for breach of contract and the mental anguish that beset her after opening what she thought was a food gift delivered to her home in the Alaskan town of North Pole, according to the lawsuit filed in federal court.
But Identigene Inc., which does DNA testing, said it was only following orders from a North Dakota judge when it shipped the leg to Lane late last year.
"We have a court order that says send it to this place and this woman," Identigene President Caroline Caskey told Reuters. "I feel like I'm in the Twilight Zone."
The odd saga began in early 2000 when George Semmens died in North Dakota. He left his $200,000 estate to Lane, who was his only child, but whose mother he never married.
A sister of Semmens challenged whether Lane really was his daughter, which resulted in a North Dakota judge ordering that his body be exhumed for DNA testing.
A leg bone and samples of Semmens' body tissue were sent to Identigene, where tests confirmed that Lane was his daughter.
Tony Buzbee, a lawyer for Lane, a 41-year-old teacher's aide married to a hunter and trapper, told reporters the leg was supposed to be cremated, but was sent to her by mistake.
It arrived in a container designed to keep the contents cold, which led Lane to believe she had been sent a LobsterGram, a popular gift in the frozen north, said Buzbee.
Buzbee, who did not return phone calls on Tuesday, told the Houston Chronicle that Lane was so shocked "she's had to store the bone and flesh in her neighbor's freezer."
"She can barely talk about it without crying," he said.
Caskey said Identigene had hired a lawyer to contest the lawsuit.

Fake cop trying to get free coffee busted by real cop trying to get free coffee

Arrest made for impersonating cop
BY NOAH HAGLUND, The Island Packet

Published Thursday, January 16th, 2003 BLUFFTON -- A man posing as a Bluffton police officer was arrested in the Starbucks near Target on Tuesday night after he flashed a fake badge to get free coffee, according to a police report.
Chester Lee Ginn, 30, of Bluffton was taken into custody by a Beaufort County Sheriff's Office deputy after the deputy arrived at the coffee shop on U.S. 278 just before 9 p.m. Ginn was charged with impersonating a police officer, a misdemeanor.
Ginn was accompanied to the store by his brother, Bluffton police officer Kevin Webb, who had given Ginn a Bluffton Police Department badge, the report said. Webb has since been placed on suspension.
"We've been looking into it for the last week or so, but this is still under investigation," Chief John Brown of the Bluffton Police Department said.
The incident was the first of its kind at the department, Brown said.
Webb used to work in Ridgeland and more recently in Ohio, Brown said, before coming to Bluffton in August. Brown could not comment on Webb's brother, except that Ginn recently recently applied for a job as a police officer at the Bluffton Police Department and in Jasper County.
Further action beyond Webb's suspension will take place after a full review of the Sheriff's Office report, Brown said.
Ginn had been going into the coffee shop for "roughly" a month and flashing his badge to get free coffee, the report said.
A Sheriff's Office deputy arrived at the store just before 9 p.m. Tuesday and saw Ginn accompanied by Officer Webb, who was in uniform. When confronted, Ginn initially denied having the badge, but eventually handed it over and indicated that Webb had given it to him.
Capt. Wil Latham of the Bluffton Police Department, who went with the deputy to the coffee shop, placed Webb on immediate suspension. Latham confirmed that the badge Ginn flashed belonged to the department and that neither Ginn nor Webb was authorized to carry it, the report said.
Starbucks typically gives out about three cups of free coffee each day to police officers who stop by, said Deidre Pinckney, a manager at the coffee shop. Webb and Ginn had been regulars at the coffee shop for the past few months, stopping by three to five times a week, she said.
Webb told the Sheriff's Office his brother collects police patches and badges, the police report said, and thought the Bluffton police badge was for a personal collection. He denied ever having seen his brother flash it and present himself as an officer, the report said. Ginn was released from the Beaufort County Detention Center on his own recognizance Wednesday morning after a judge waived the $2,500 bond that had been set, detention center booking personnel said.
"He was never dressed in uniform," Pinckney said. "He would always say he was undercover. He was sort of subtle about it."
But maybe not subtle enough.
"I don't understand why you would jeopardize yourself to get free coffee," she said.

Slideshow Presentation Goes Terribly Wrong

Nov 22, 2002 1:27 pm US/Eastern
(FORT WORTH, Texas) A businessman and former pastor was charged with possessing child pornography after a photo of a nude boy appeared during a computer slide presentation he gave at work, officials said.
Employees at Exel Inc. told police that James Andrew Smith had finished a PowerPoint slide show Sept. 4 when he tried to open another document on his laptop computer. The image of the young, nude boy appeared on screen, according to the co-workers.
Smith blamed the image on a computer virus.
Authorities later found child pornography on computer disks seized from him, according to a police report. The company also turned over 65 pages of printed child pornography allegedly found in Smith's desk.
He was held on $300,000 bond on two counts of possessing child pornography and one charge of promoting child pornography.
Smith was fired from Exel, a Fort Worth-based computer logistics company. He also resigned Wednesday as pastor of Landmark Baptist Church, where he had served for 31/2 years.
His wife of 13 years, Julie Smith, said the allegations stunned her.
"He's never hurt our children. As far as I know he's never hurt anyone's children," she said.

(© MMII Infinity Broadcasting Corp. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)

Mom washes kid's clothes. Forgets to remove kids first. Hilarity ensues

A 6-year-old girl was trapped in a coin-operated washing machine that was filling with water until a passer-by saw her and smashed the appliance's window with a tire iron, authorities said.
The girl and her rescuer were taken to a hospital, where the child underwent surgery to repair cuts to her face and body. She was in stable condition. Kloeum Nhem, 36, received stitches for cuts on his arm and was released.
The girl was at the laundry with her mother Tuesday when she climbed into the front-loading machine and the door closed behind her, said Fire Department spokesman Wayne Chaney. When the wash cycle began, the door locked and she couldn't get out.
As the washer begin to fill with water, Kloeum Nhem tried to smash the glass with his arm. When that failed, he got a tire iron from his car.
"It appears that some kids were playing, some siblings, and somehow she ended up in the washer," Chaney said. "We're very fortunate this young man was quick thinking."
Nhem said the mother was "crying nearby as I pulled her out."
The Fire Department closed the laundry for electrical code violations, Chaney said.

Prisoner in trouble after guards hear voices coming from his ass

A Czech prisoner could end up serving a longer sentence after guards heard voices coming from his backside.
Prison wardens in Brno say they discovered the 48-year-old had hidden a tiny walky-talky in his bottom.
He was allegedly using it to communicate with his wife to arrange bribes for investigators and lawyers involved in the case against him.
The daily Mlada fronta Dnes reports that the prisoner, who was remanded in custody on charges of car theft, talked to his wife, who would park her car a few hundred metres from the prison, every day.
"I have worked here since 1996 but I can't recollect ever finding anything stuck in such parts," said Sona Haluzova, spokeswoman for the Brno prison.
Police say the pair have been charged with perverting the course of justice and could face six months in jail.

 24-year-old South Korean man dies after playing computer games nonstop for 86 hours.
October 09 2002 at 10:53AM

Seoul, South Korea - A 24-year-old South Korean man died after playing computer games nonstop for 86 hours, said police on Wednesday.
The jobless man, identified by police only by his last name Kim, was found dead on Tuesday at an Internet cafe in Kwangju, 260km south-west of Seoul, they said.
Quoting witnesses, police detective Oh Myong-sik in Kwangju said the man had been virtually glued to the computer since late on Friday and had no decent sleep and meals.
The man collapsed in front of the counter desk but soon regained his consciousness. He then went to the toilet where he was found dead, said the police officer.
An initial investigation ruled out the possibility of murder, said police.
South Korea is among the world's most Internet-savvy nations with more than half of its 47 million people having access to the Internet. South Korea has about 22 000 Internet cafes, also known as PC rooms.
Many PC rooms are open 24 hours, but no minors are allowed after 10pm. - Sapa-AP

Foot Fetish Leads to Arrest in Forrest City

Posted - September 12, 2002 4:42pm    Posted By: Tony Tabor

Forrest City Police say a man has been arrested after apparently letting his foot fetish get the best of him.
24-year-old Kore (kor'-ee) Demetrius Walker is charged with criminal trespassing and harassment. His arrest follows two incidents at a hospital in Forrest City.

According to the report, a man entered the ER and began asking women working there to let him smell their feet. When police arrived, the man ran across a parking lot into a wooded area, he was eventually arrested at a nearby apartment complex.

Copyright 2002 KATV, LLC

Teen dies while giving 'finger' to pursuing cops

KAMEOKA, Kyoto -- A teen-age motorcycle rider died Wednesday as he turned to give the finger to police officers who had given up pursuing him and slammed into a taxi, police said.
A 20-year-old friend of the 19-year-old unnamed boy killed in the crash also sustained a broken jaw.
The driver of the taxi into which the motorcycle rider crashed was not hurt.
Police said officers in a patrol car noticed the motorcycle riders had ignored a traffic light shortly after midnight, so turned on their siren and began chasing them.
But the motorcycle was able to maneuver the narrow roads far easier than the patrol car and soon sped off some hundreds of meters ahead of the police.
Realizing the chase was futile, officers turned off their wailing sirens. The two students riding the motorcycle turned around toward the officers and gave them the finger.
However, they failed to notice that they had gone through another red light and slammed into the taxi. The boy steering the motorcycle died instantly. (Mainichi Shimbun, Aug. 14, 2002)

Man accidentally fired gun, twice

By Bill Vidonic, Times Staff 08/22/2002

BEAVER FALLS - A Beaver Falls man was spinning a loaded gun on his finger just before it accidentally went off Tuesday evening, a bullet hitting his girlfriend in the abdomen, police said. And while two police officers and two firefighters were attending to the shooting victim, Brandy Sager, her panicked boyfriend, Randy Johnston, accidentally fired the gun a second time, but didn't hit anyone.

"It just went boom!" Beaver Falls Police Capt. Jeff Becze said Wednesday.

Johnston, 20, of 43 Mount Washington Apartments, was charged with aggravated assault, reckless endangerment, simple assault and receiving stolen property. Police said the gun was reported stolen from a Butler County home.

He remained in the Beaver County Jail on Wednesday after he failed to post $100,000 cash bond set by District Justice Ed Howe.

Becze said Sager, 18, told them that just before the 9 p.m. shooting, Johnston was in the bedroom of his apartment, while Sager was standing in the bedroom doorway. Johnston was spinning the gun, then stopped and held it in his hand when it went off, Sager told police.

The bullet from the .22-caliber gun hit Sager in the left side, nicking her large intestine. While she lay on the hallway floor, Johnston called police and said the gun had gone off while he was cleaning it. Sager also told police several times later that the shooting was an accident, Becze said.

When firefighters and police arrived, Becze said, they first tended to Sager, holding a towel over her wound, while a frantic Johnston went from room to room in the apartment.

"It was chaotic at first," Becze said. "I just told him, 'Dude, just stand back here and relax.' "

Johnston grabbed the gun off the bedroom mattress, Becze said, and began to explain to police Detective Scott Chichy how the gun had gone off, despite Chichy's orders to leave the gun alone.

Johnston ejected the bullet clip from the gun and told Chichy it was safe, then pointed it at the mattress and pulled the trigger. The one round remaining in the chamber fired into the mattress. None of the people standing nearby was hurt.

Becze then handcuffed Johnston and took him outside while medics continued to treat Sager.

She was listed in serious, but stable, condition in Allegheny General Hospital in Pittsburgh on Wednesday.

Bill Vidonic can be reached online at bvidonic@timesonline.com.

Meet Carl Patrick Brown. He's the Gulfport, Mississippi degenerate who pleaded guilty Tuesday (8/13) to having intercourse with a horse. Brown, 30, was nabbed last year when the chestnut mare's owner installed video surveillance equipment in his barn after discovering various items out of place and one horse tied to a post. A Harrison County Circuit Court judge sentenced Brown to 18 months in prison and ordered him to avoid all contact with the horse he assaulted. Brown has claimed that he was high on Ecstasy during the filly defiling.
The Smoking Gun

Kids on field trip stumble on topless photo shoot

Associated Press
Aug. 15, 2002 08:00:00
GRAFTON, N.Y. - Some kids got an an eyeful during a camp field trip to the beach - a topless photo shoot. The kids were visiting Grafton Lakes State Park in upstate New York. When they got to the beach, they saw a man taking pictures of a bare-chested woman.
The kids were accompanied by their counselors and some parents.
When the parents complained, lifeguards said the pair had a permit for the photo session. But officials at the state parks department say they didn't know a topless model would be involved.

Glue Instead Of Ear Drops? Easy Mistake

Operation Needed After Glue Mistaken For Ear Drops

Posted: 8:53 a.m. EDT July 2, 2002

TAIPEI, Taiwan -- At least there's no permanent damage. A newspaper in Taiwan says a 14-year-old boy needed a 20-minute operation to remove congealed glue from his ear. It got there because his mother mistook a small bottle of instant glue for ear drops. The teen's doctor says the two bottles were kept next to each other in the refrigerator, and the mother grabbed the wrong one when she went to treat the boy's inflamed ear.

The mistake won't cause any permanent hearing loss.

There is no word on why the instant glue was being stored in the fridge.

Wang-shaped lollipop hard for parents to get a grip on

Lollipop gets parents all hot and bothered

By Arti Mulchand

A POPULAR new lollipop has created a stir among some parents, who find its shape suggestive.
Besides being phallic in shape, the sweet, called Fr-ooze Pop, has jelly oozing out of a hole at the top when the base is squeezed. This is imported from the United States and comes in four flavours - Lickety Split, Summer Squeezer, Strawberry Smacker and Berries Delight. It hit the shelves last month and costs $1.80 on average.

A spokesman for its distributor here, YLF Marketing, said that its sales are 'extremely good'. But some parents are not too happy that their children are sucking on it and that it is available so freely. Public relations consultant Isabel Sankaran, 26, who has a daughter aged two, said: 'It's very dildo-like. What's the motive behind making it like look like that when it could be done much more tastefully?' Curriculum designer May Chan, 36, who has three children aged five, seven and 10, said: 'Children being children, it's just a sweet to them. But if people see you eating a sweet like that, it's disgusting. Even if the child is ignorant, it's not very healthy.' Most of the 20 children under 13 years old that The Sunday Times polled did not see the snack as anything but a sweet, but teenagers did indicate that they view it as phallic-looking.

Unlike most other sweets, which are not as aggressively marketed, Fr-ooze Pop is being pushed through television commercials, giving it a much wider reach. The advertisements, which are aired mainly during the cartoon belts, show young children sucking voraciously at the candy, with 'squeeze and lick' as the recurrent message. While some parents say the advertisement and the sweet could be seen as 'lewd', the Singapore Broadcasting Authority disagrees. Its spokesman said: 'The advertisement features children enjoying lollipops and it does not breach the Advertising Code.'
  
 The Straits Times

Student who put a belt around his neck to keep him awake while studying, hangs himself

Bizarre study method kills youth
July 18, 2002

A BANGKOK university student had been found dead after a bizarre study method involving looping a belt around his neck and fixing it to a door handle went tragically wrong, a report said.
Eak Chongsawatwattana's mother told the Nation newspaper that the belt kept him awake while he was studying.
He had learned the trick from other university students.
If he nodded off, the jerk of the belt would wake him up.
"I warned him many times not to do this, but he just didn't listen. Now he's dead," she was quoted as saying.
Eak, 21, was reportedly found sitting upright at his desk with the belt still around his neck.
His neck was bruised, but there were no other signs of injury.
Forensics expert Dr Pornthip Rojanasunant told the daily it was likely Eak had died from a lack of oxygen to his brain.
Chavalit Muennuch, an executive at Assumption University where Eak was a student, told the Nation that the administration was looking into his death.
"I've never heard anything like this throughout my 28 years of work in school administration. This student sounds like a masochist. He tortured himself to succeed. This is not the proper way to succeed," he said.
He vowed to stop other students using the deadly method.

Agence France-Presse

Man Accused Of Breaking Into House To Cook Pizza

Complaint: Man Said Homeowners Looked 'Familiar'

POSTED: 10:37 p.m. EDT July 6, 2002WAUKESHA, Wis.--

A man accused of wandering into a home and cooking a pizza while drunk was charged with one count of disorderly conduct. Police said Mark Wolf, 19, of Mukwonago, entered a town of Vernon house on March 23 at about 6 a.m. A woman awoke to find a stranger in her home, cooking pizza and eating chips, a criminal complaint said.
The woman and her boyfriend restrained Wolf until police arrived.
Wolf told police he got lost and entered the house. He said he did not know the homeowners but "they looked familiar, " the complaint said. Wolf's blood-alcohol level at the time was 0.26 percent, nearly triple the state's legal limit to operate a motor vehicle, the complaint said.
Wolf is due back in court July 24. He faces up to three years in prison if convicted.

Copyright 2002 by The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Man decides it might be a good idea to rob an empty store by crawling in through the duct work. Gets stuck. Dies

Lincolnway Foods owner finds body in ventilation ducts
The new owner found the body while doing a final walk through.
  
Last Updated: 07/07/2002 03:01 pm

The Lincolnway West Food Market owner found a gruesome discovery today. He walked into his store this morning and found a body in a ventilation duct.

The owner just took over Lincolnway Foods yesterday. Around noon today he was making a final walk through of the building and found the body up in a ventilation duct. Two feet were dangling down from the hood of the stove through the ventilation system.

He contacted police immediately. The police pulled the duct system open and have been able to identify the body. However they have not contacted family members at this point. They did tell us that it was a white man between the ages of 25 and 30.

The owner is wondering why somebody would want to break into his store. There has not been electricity in there for at least the past two weeks and little activity or money. But the store has had a problem with shoplifters over the years, so there is a possibility that the person was looking for clothing or cigarettes.

The person is thought to have been dead for probably two days although it could be longer. But a definite time of death will not be determined until further investigation is done.

Priest calls deceased a "drunkard and a fornicator" in eulogy, gets ass beat

Associated Press
June 21, 2002 05:45:00

LOXLEY, Ala. - Authorities are investigating the alleged beating of a preacher by funeral mourners who didn't like his blunt eulogy.

Glynis Bethel tells the Associated Press that her husband, Pastor Orlando Bethel, was attacked during a June 14 funeral and dragged out of the church. That's because Bethel told mourners the deceased was in hell and that they were headed the same way.

The dead man was Mrs. Bethel's uncle.

Pastor Bethel referred to him as a "drunkard and a fornicator." Mrs. Bethel, who's also a preacher, says, "the fornicators didn't like what he said so they got up and beat him."

She says police didn't make any arrests, so she and her husband, who may have a broken nose, are taking out warrants.