Eideard

 
In the world of animated TV, it’s no stretch to say that good-natured Gumby is far down the list of characters that would commit armed robbery.

But a man clad in a full-figured Gumby costume has made a botched attempt to rob a 7-Eleven store in California, and authorities are looking for the suspect…

It happened early on Monday when the man came into the San Diego store dressed as the green claymation figure, accompanied by an ordinarily dressed accomplice, San Diego Police spokesman Detective Gary Hassen said.

The costumed man announced he was robbing the store, but the clerk thought it was a joke, police said.

“Gumby said, ‘You don’t think it’s a robbery? Let me show you my gun,’” Hassen said.

The suspect then tried to reach into his Gumby outfit but experienced a “costume malfunction” and could not fit his hand in a pocket, he said.

Instead of a gun, the costumed suspect pulled out 26 cents in change which he dropped on the floor, police said.

The accomplice, who had left the store and gotten into a minivan, honked at the man dressed as Gumby. He, too, walked out of the store without managing to take any money, police said. Both men left in the minivan.

Har.

The FBI suspects an Idaho woman jailed over a California heist is the “Bad Hair Bandit” wanted for 20 bank robberies and a judge set her bail on Thursday at $500,000 following her recent arrest.

A robber dubbed the “Bad Hair Bandit” — named for her habit of wearing cheap, ill-fitting wigs — is believed to be behind 20 robberies in four states since December…

They said Cynthia Van Holland, 47, was believed to be that person, although witnesses say she was not wearing a wig in the heist that led to her arrest.

Van Holland and her husband, Christopher Alonzo, 26, were arrested on Monday after Van Holland was accused of robbing the Bank of the West in Auburn, 30 miles northeast of Sacramento, before fleeing in a car driven by Alonzo…

Placer County sheriff’s deputies nabbed Van Holland and her husband a dozen miles from the Bank of the West after a witness gave the license plate and model of their car, said Ayn Sandalo Dietrich, spokeswoman for the FBI office in Seattle…

Agents investigating a string of bank robberies in Washington state and one robbery each in Montana, Oregon and California, believe Van Holland is the robber with the fake hair, Dietrich said.

“The wigs are really what stand out,” she said.

Twenty robberies in four states in eight months. Dumb enough to be a small-time crook – I guess you’re dumb enough to think you’re never going to be caught.

A 59-year-old man has been jailed in Gastonia, N.C., on charges of larceny after allegedly robbing an RBC Bank for $1 so he could get health care in prison. Richard James Verone handed a female teller a note demanding the money and claiming that he had a gun, according to the police report.

He then sat down and waited for police to arrive. “… I say, ‘I’ll be sitting right over here, on the chair, waiting for the police,’” Verone told reporters, recalling the June 9 robbery in an interview from Gaston County Jail.

And wait for the police, he did.

“He’s sitting on the sofa as you walk in the front door,” the bank teller said in a 911 call.

Police arrested Verone where he sat. He was unarmed.

Verone said he asked for $1 to show that his motives were medical, not monetary, according to news reports. With a growth in his chest, two ruptured disks and no job, Verone hoped a three-year stint in prison would afford him the health care he needed.

“I’m sort of a logical person and that was my logic, what I came up with,” Verone told reporters. “If it is called manipulation, then out of necessity because I need medical care, then I guess I am manipulating the courts to get medical care.”

Oh. No one else noticed we live in a nation that guarantees better health care for criminals than ordinary citizens?

Our fear-driven politicians will not notice the passing of a poor man like Richard James Verone through their banking system, jail system – anymore than any other small creature invading their palaces for a moment or two.

Thanks, Helen

An off-duty Chicago police officer dressed up as a clown for a South Side fundraiser shot and killed a teen who held him at gunpoint tonight after the event, authorities said.

The officer…was in his clown outfit for a fundraiser for a day-care business. The event, attended by a group of 50 children, was near West 87th Street and South Damen Avenue.

At 10:10 p.m. after the event ended, the officer went to his car and a teen approached him, asking him for money, authorities said. When the officer said he had no money, the teen pulled a gun on him, authorities said.

During a struggle with the teen, the officer grabbed hold of the gun, opened fire and killed him.

The officer sustained minor injuries, according to a release from police News Affairs.

Don’t carry a gun unless you’re prepared to use it. Don’t pull a gun on someone unless you’re capable of using it. Don’t get close enough to let someone take your gun away – and use it on you.

In this case – I’d say instant justice was meted out.

A spate of hair extension thefts across the US has put the spotlight on the lucrative market for human hair. It may sound an unlikely source of income – but salons across the country are on alert after a series of raids in which hair worth tens of thousands of dollars has been stolen.

In the latest theft, thieves rammed a car through the front door of a beauty supply shop in Atlanta, Georgia, and escaped with an estimated $10,000 in hair extensions.

In Houston, one raid at My Trendy Place hair salon earned the perpetrators $120,000 of Indian “virgin hair” – unprocessed and untreated.

Owner Lisa Amosu said the burglar, filmed on closed circuit television, knew exactly what he wanted and didn’t even bother to raid the cash till, heading straight for the storeroom housing hundreds of extension bundles and wigs.

“They cleared me out,” she says. “It’s so unfortunate, because the hairpieces were made especially for cancer survivors and for ladies who could not usually afford them.

“Hair extensions are a huge part of my business. I have customers who come from Dallas, San Antonio, Fort Worth and Louisiana, because they get high quality…”

Surveillance cameras have shown burglars breaking through walls and windows, slithering along floors to avoid alarms and then grabbing expensive hair extensions from the shelves and stockrooms…

Singers like Beyonce, Gwen Stefani and Christina Aguilera have popularised a look that has been fashionable in the African American community for decades…

Salons in the Western world buy the hair from companies that import it from countries like India.

A BBC investigation in 2008 discovered that some Indian women were having their head shaved voluntarily in a religious ritual…

What’s attractive, what is “beautiful” from society to society is so fleeting, caught up in the culture wars orchestrated by profiteers that it’s hard to take seriously except as either investment – or social commentary.

Beauty is part of love; but, that’s the love of a whole person – unless you are as vacant and shallow as the ideal consumer sought by corporations selling off rendered fat, scent and color as making you more desirable.

Last March, a group broke into military contractor iGov Technologies’ Tampa, Florida, warehouse, where about 3,000 laptops were being stored. While a gang of about 10 were loading the computers onto semi-trucks, police say, the ringleader, Rolando Coca, was caught on a nearby McDonald’s security camera, going through the drive-through.

“That’s really what this came down to,” said Hillsborough County Sheriff David Gee.

During the day, witnesses had noticed a red Lincoln Navigator in the area. A canvassing of local businesses by investigators, uncovered the videotape of Coca, in the driver’s seat, ordering a meal at the Tampa McDonald’s.

Coca, an immigrant who came to the U.S. during the Mariel boatlift in 1980, was arrested in Miami, where about 1,900 of the laptops were being stored in a nearby abandoned warehouse in Opa Locka, Florida.

Police say they have bought back a handful of them in two sting operation, but about 1,000 remain on the street. “We continue to find these computers on Amazon and eBay,” said Sheriff David Gee…

The company, iGov Technologies, is a private contractor for U.S. Special Operations. They are classified as a top-secret facility supplying communications and computers to military forces. The laptops are heavy-duty, rugged computers that can be used by the military in extreme field conditions…

The computers are being sold on the street, on eBay and Amazon for 10-20% of normal retail. No one considered that unusual. Of course.

It was then that I carried you… to jail.

[Dalton, Ga] Officers responded to a burglar alarm going off at a liquor store around 4 a.m. Monday. The glass in the front door had been smashed in.

Frazier said snow had been falling for about four hours before the burglary. Officers found fresh footprints in the snow and followed them to the door of a nearby apartment.

The officers knocked on the door and found two suspects inside. They arrested Sebastian Love and Adrian Estrada, both 19, after finding a backpack with five bottles of the missing vodka in the apartment.

Har!

When Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies pulled up to Likun Sahilu’s liquor store moments after it was robbed at gunpoint Sunday, the slight Ethiopian immigrant was relieved.

That is, until a deputy started shooting at him.

Eight bullets. Eight misses…

The deputies, he said, were about 50 feet away with their lights off. He initially thought they were shooting at the robbers, so he continued to point in the direction in which they fled. Sheriff’s Department officials said the deputy mistakenly believed the unarmed Sahilu was pointing a gun at him and fired in what he thought was self-defense.

When Sahilu realized the bullets intended for him, he dropped to the ground. A day later he says it’s a miracle the deputy missed. He said he was standing still, and within close range.

“I’m lucky he is a new guy,” he said of the rookie deputy who shot at him.

He said he has no plans of taking legal action against the department, but is surprised that no one from the agency has offered an apology…

Sheriff’s Captain Parker said that as customary after shootings, the deputy, whose identity was withheld, would probably not be put back on patrol immediately.

As it does with all shootings involving deputies, the department has launched several investigations of the incident.

Well, as long as safe procedures are followed somewhere or other I guess it’s OK, eh?

But, I’m not certain we’re supposed to get used to police shooting at innocent bystanders.

A 10-year-old boy, who has been investigated numerous times by Seattle police since he was 8, has been charged in connection with a botched robbery aboard a Metro bus and an unrelated theft of a bicycle in June.

The boy and his two half-brothers, ages 12 and 14, were charged in King County Superior Court with first-degree attempted robbery in connection with Tuesday’s incident aboard the bus, in which the younger boy accidentally shot himself in the arm during a scuffle. The 10-year-old also was charged with second-degree robbery and intimidating a witness in connection with the theft of a bicycle June 24 in downtown Seattle.

The felony charges were filed one day after the three boys appeared in juvenile court and were ordered to remain in custody at least until hearings scheduled for next week…

Over the past two years, the 10-year-old has been investigated 13 times for crimes that include theft, robbery with assault and robberies with a weapon, according to police. During that period, six cases have been referred to the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office for potential criminal charges, but Friday marked the first time charges were filed against the boy.

Police say the three boys belong to the Down With The Crew gang in Seattle’s Rainier Valley…

Details of the 10-year-old’s remaining five cases referred to prosecutors have not been released by authorities. Dan Donohoe, spokesman for the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office, said one theft case was sent back to Seattle police for further investigation and the four additional cases were found to have “insufficient evidence” and were not filed in court.

Though the boy has been charged for the incident on the bus, there will be a special hearing to determine whether he will stand trial in that case as well as for the June robbery. According to state law, children between the ages of 9 and 11 “are presumed to be incapable of committing crime” unless a judge determines the youth has the “sufficient capacity to understand the act or neglect, and to know that it was wrong.”

Phew! Anyone for a remake of the Bad Seed?

On-the-job training as a crook?

Two New York Diamond District wholesalers were so desperate to get out of debt that they hired three men to dress up as Hasidic Jews and rob their store at gunpoint, said NYC police.

Investigators became suspicious after the 2008 robbery when they discovered that the two owners, Atul Shah, 48, and Mahaveer Kankariya, 43, took out a new insurance policy just before the heist.

One of the phony bandits is currently being questioned at the Midtown North stationhouse, sources told the NY Post.

The whole thing was set up,” one source told the paper, adding that enhanced video surveillance footage showed the owners stealing the jewelry prior to the fake heist.

The dimwits thought they’d turned off all the surveillance cameras.

The second robber is apparently still at large.

Har! Dumb enough for dumb crooks of the week.