Archive for the ‘WTF’ Category
10-year-old gets 5½-year sentence for rape and murder plot
A 10-year-old Washington state boy was sentenced on Wednesday to up to 5 1/2 years in a juvenile detention facility for his role in a foiled plot to rape and kill a girl at his school and harm other children.
The boy was charged with conspiracy to commit first-degree murder, juvenile firearm possession and witness tampering in connection with a plot in February at an elementary school in Colville, in the state’s northeast.
Prosecutors said he pleaded guilty last month to all charges.
Stevens County Superior Court Judge Allen Nielson sentenced the fifth-grader to a minimum of just over three years in juvenile detention and a maximum of nearly 5 1/2 years, Stevens County prosecutor Tim Rasmussen said…
The 10-year-old boy will serve his sentence at the Echo Glen children’s juvenile center in Snoqualmie, Wash., 45 miles east of Seattle. As of Thursday he had already spent nearly 100 days in a local juvenile detention facility, Rasmussen said.
The boy told investigators he and his friend had planned to kill a former fifth-grade girlfriend because she was “rude” and “always made fun” of him and friends, according to court documents…
The 10-year-old had taken a Remington Model 1911 pistol that originally belonged to his grandfather from his older brother’s room, according to court records.
The boys had also packed ammunition and a knife, but they were stopped on Feb. 7 shortly after they boarded a school bus, Rasmussen said.
A fourth-grade student spotted the knife and reported it to a teacher’s aide, Rasmussen said. The names of six other targeted classmates were on a list the boys had…
Cripes! No doubt we can come up with any number of sources that influenced the young mind of this kid. How to commit such crimes; perhaps, including plans to escape punishment.
Who was supposed to be playing the role of educator and mentor to this child? Who had the responsibility for instilling a sense of right and wrong, good and evil?
What kind of culture teaches a child the best way to solve questions of love and sex – is with a gun?
Grandparents put child in car trunk to have enough room in the back seat for their shopping – WTF?
I survived my zombie grandparents
A Fulton, Missouri, couple was arrested this weekend in Jefferson City for putting their grandchild in the trunk of their car.
Police reports show at about 12:15 p.m. Saturday, officers were dispatched to Menards, 805 Stone Creek Drive, for a child endangerment call.
According to the caller, she heard a voice from within the trunk of a car that had pulled into the lot and what sounded like a child’s voice frantically yelling “let me out!”
The caller observed a couple exit the vehicle then open the trunk, at which point a 5 year-old girl climbed out.
Officers responded and made contact with the suspects, Marc and Mary Vaucher of Fulton who admitted purchasing two tables at another location and not having enough room to place the tables in the trunk so they opted to place their granddaughter in the trunk to allow for transport.
The Vauchers were arrested for endangering the welfare of a child and the child, who was unharmed, was released to another family member’s custody.
One of those times I not only wonder which species I belong to – but, what planet I live on?
Recall – DiGiorno and California Pizza Kitchen frozen pizzas
Nestle USA’s Pizza Division is voluntarily recalling select production codes of four different frozen pizzas sold nationwide due to plastic…
Officials said they took the action after a small number of consumers reported they had found small fragments of clear plastic on the California Pizza Kitchen Crispy Thin Crust White pizza…
Recalled are:
– California Pizza Kitchen Crispy Thin Crust White, UPC 71921 98745; production codes: 3062525951, 3062525952 and 3063525951.
– California Pizza Kitchen Limited Edition Grilled Chicken with Cabernet Sauce, UPC 71921 00781; production code 3059525952.
– DiGiorno Crispy Flatbread Pizza Tuscan Style Chicken, UPC 71921 02663; production codes 3057525922 and 3058525921.
– DiGiorno pizzeria! Bianca/White Pizza, UPC 71921 91484; production code 3068525951.
Consumers who might have purchased the recalled pizzas with the identified production codes should not consume the pizza, but instead contact the Nestle USA Consumer Services at 1-800-456-4394 or nestlepizza@casupport.com for further instructions Monday through Friday, from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., E.T. and this Saturday, May 4th from 12 noon to 8 p.m.
Poisonally, I advocate buying good bread and pizza from local bakers. Or baking your own.
Use the Search box for focaccia and try my recipe. I’ll try to get off my butt and include my basic bread recipe, soon – and I have a couple of experiments to try based on the techniques used in an article on Neopolitan Pizza in the current issue of SAVEUR.
Ain’t any of it especially difficult, folks. You’ll appreciate the freshness, the results of your own efforts.
California woman busted after planting poisoned juice at Starbucks
A 50-year-old pharmacist arrested Monday after police say she filled two bottles of orange juice with what appeared to be rubbing alcohol at a San Jose Starbucks will be released, most likely Thursday evening, until lab tests return confirming what was actually inside the bottles, prosecutors said.
Ramineh Behbehanian of San Jose was booked on an attempted murder charge because the orange juice contained what police said were lethal quantities of isopropyl alcohol.
But her scheduled court date of Thursday was postponed, because prosecutors did not yet have enough information to charge her.
The Santa Clara County District Attorney could still charge her, but prosecutors won’t know with what until the lab results of the orange juice come back…
San Jose police are still not sure why she would have allegedly mixed rubbing alcohol with some orange juice Monday afternoon, left the bottles in the refrigerated section alongside some yogurt and milk, and left the Snell Avenue Starbucks store about 3:30 p.m.
An alert customer standing behind her in line spotted her taking out her own bottles of juice from a green Starbucks bag, and put them in the refrigerator section. He also noticed a toxic smell. He told management. The woman might have felt under suspicion, police said, but a Starbucks employee got her license plate.
The San Jose Fire Department responded to the scene, retrieved the bottles and tested the contents with hazardous materials equipment. It turned out, the bottles were filled with orange juice and rubbing alcohol.
A Starbucks spokesperson told NBC Bay Area that the company destroyed all the other juices in the Snell Avenue store out of an abundance of caution and had all other stores in Bay Area check their juice seals…All checked out OK.
Yes – the world has too many loonies.
Fortunately, there is a modicum of bright, nosy people who notice potentially dangerous crap like this. Sometimes. There will be some privacy freaks who don’t want someone noticing what anyone else is about. That’s understandable to a certain extent. But, protecting yourself and other folks from someone who may think they have a terrific reason for killing innocent folks – I think is admirable.
Too bad there wasn’t someone like the Starbucks barista or the customer in that line who noticed Behbehanian adding tainted juice bottles to the cooler – someone paying attention to a couple of murderers in Massachusetts before they completed their bomb run.
And, yes – it brings up the inevitable question of surveillance in public areas. One I revisit from time to time though my response remains the same. Good tech makes thorough surveillance more possible every year, more affordable, more capable. The same questions about Big Brother have to be confronted. And someone must watch the watchers. Not just the troops on duty, the bureaucrats in charge. Because abuse of surveillance systems are always a legitimate political concern.
One of those falsely accused in Boston attacks confirmed dead – probably for weeks!
Sunil Tripathi
The body of a man found in a Rhode Island river is a student mistakenly identified as one of the Boston bombers, medical officials confirm. Sunil Tripathi, 22, was identified by a forensic dental exam, but his cause of death has not been determined.
Members of a university rowing team found the body on Tuesday evening, a month after Tripathi went missing. He has been described as the other victim of the bombings after he was wrongly identified a suspect.
On Thursday, the Tripathi family said in a statement they felt “indescribable grief”, but were grateful for the outpouring of support.
Mr Tripathi, a Brown University student on leave, was last seen in his apartment in Providence on 16 March. His family had been searching for him with help from the FBI and Brown students…
On Monday social media website Reddit issued a public apology for its coverage of the Boston bombings after it wrongly named Tripathi and other people as suspects.
His sister, Sangeeta, told the BBC of her family’s anxiety at how fast “completely unsubstantiated claims were spreading”.
…media surrounded their family home after her brother was wrongly named.
Anyone expect the officially sleazy crowd of pretend-journalism from Fox News to the NY Post to do something as honorable as apologize to the folks they wrongly identified as suspects?
Shot with stun gun by coppers – man turns into human fireball
Andrew Pimlott
A man has died after being shot with a police Taser while dowsed in flammable liquid…Andrew Pimlott, 32, turned into a human fireball after he was zapped by officers called to his home to investigate a domestic incident.
They found Andrew in the back garden covered in liquid and holding a can of fluid…An officer deployed the Taser and Andrew immediately burst into flames…
Andrew suffered serious burns and was rushed to hospital after the incident in Honicknowle, Plymouth, last Thursday.
Police initially said his injuries were not life-threatening…But the Independent Police Complaints Commission revealed today that Andrew died from his injuries in Frenchay Hospital, Bristol, on Tuesday…
IPCC Commissioner Sarah Green said…“Our investigation will be looking at what information was known to the officers attending the scene, the officer’s rationale for discharging a Taser on a person known to be dowsed in flammable liquid, whether the discharge of the Taser caused the fuel to ignite, and we will look at training and policies.”
How do you get to be ignorant of the explosion or fire danger coincident to firing a Taser at a flammable liquid?
Testing company errors kept students out of advanced program
Almost 2,700 New York students excluded from a gifted and talented program due to test scoring errors will get another chance to apply, school officials said.
The city’s Education Department said…the company that created and scored the admission tests has apologized and department officials were notifying parents that students originally blocked from the talented and gifted programs can apply…
Thirteen percent of the students in kindergarten through third grade who took the tests — 4,735 students — were affected, Education Department spokeswoman Erin Hughes said.
Of that total, 2,698 students were newly declared eligible for district-wide programs, scoring at or above the 90th percentile.
Chancellor Dennis Walcott said the errors made by the testing company, Pearson, were “unacceptable.”
“Pearson has an established record in this field and we depend on its professionalism and deep capacity to deliver for the public,” Walcott said in a statement. “But in this case, they let our children and families down. I have told the company’s officials in no uncertain terms that I expect this will never happen again.”
The only acceptable part of this fiasco is that someone caught the screwup in time for students to be retested. Cripes, imagine how they felt. No doubt in my mind they had a personal idea of how well they did on the test – only to be shot down.
Coppers bust Elvis impersonator for poisoned letters – UPDATED
Federal prosecutors filed criminal charges on Thursday against a Mississippi man, who worked as an Elvis impersonator, for threatening to harm President Barack Obama by sending him a letter that initially tested positive for the deadly poison ricin.
Paul Kevin Curtis…was believed to have sent three letters, all with identical wording and type-written on yellow paper, to Obama, U.S. Senator Roger Wicker of Mississippi and Justice Court Judge Sadie Holland of Lee County, Mississippi.
The FBI confirmed the presence of ricin in the letters to Obama and Wicker, but said it is “not aware of any illness as a result of exposure to these letters…”
Wearing handcuffs and leg shackles, Curtis appeared in court in Oxford, Mississippi. Local media reported that he made no comments except to say “yes ma’am” when the judge asked if he understood what was happening. His lawyer told reporters outside the court that Curtis was not guilty…
According to an affidavit signed by FBI Special Agent Brandon Grant and Secret Service Special Agent Victor Dickerson, all three letters contained a “suspicious granular substance” and the same eight line threatening message…
Wicker told reporters he had hired Curtis once as an Elvis impersonator. “I have indeed met the gentleman before,” the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call cited Wicker as saying. “He’s an Elvis impersonator. He entertained at a party my wife and I helped give for a young couple that were getting married. Quite entertaining.”
Apparently, the President never hired Elvis impersonators – for any reason.
UPDATE: Released, charges dropped.
Dubai coppers the latest to add Lamborghini chase car
Dubai Police has added a Lamborghini Aventador to its fleet, the force announced on its Twitter feed.
On Wednesday, the official DubaiPoliceHQ feed posted a photo of its latest purchase driving outside Dubai Mall, the world’s biggest shopping centre, and said: “Dubai Police patrols, now at your service.”
The Lamborghini Aventador, named after a bull, is capable of speeds of up to 349km/h and has a price tag of around $400,000…
The Italian-made Lamborghini Aventador will be mostly dispatched to tourist areas to show – in the words of deputy police director General Khamis Matter al-Muzaina – “how classy Dubai is”…
The car is reported to be the crown jewel of a wider upgrade in Dubai police wheels.
The force is also adding some American Camaros cars.
How cool is this?
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