In April of 2010, Raquel Nelson and her four year-old son crossed a busy street near Atlanta. Her son was struck and killed, by a driver who "had been drinking earlier in the day while taking pain medication, was partially blind in one eye, and had two previous hit-and-run convictions." So naturally, prosecutors decide to arrest and charge Nelson with vehicular homicide, for jaywalking.
Petty criminals in Washington, DC are reportedly using Facebook and Twitter to plan raids on local stores, breaking new ground in idiotic criminal tactics.
There's a specific kind of person who thinks, after watching tons of procedural justice TV shows, that he could commit the perfect crime. And there's an even more specific kind of person who actually can. Enacting an elaborate plot to frame his ex-girlfriend for armed robbery, Queens resident Jerry Ramrattan almost became the latter.
The criminal enterprise formerly known at Blackwater USA, Xe Services, is perhaps best known for murdering civilians and ripping America off for hundreds of millions of dollars and getting away with it. Now, after rebranding itself as a "peacekeeping and humanitarian" force (ha), the company is moving up to the D.C. area to kiss some ass and win some contracts. According to the AP: "Xe Services says 20 people will move from Moyock, N.C., to Arlington to foster relationships with customers in and around Washington." Oh God.
Whether you're looking to get a head start on a Halloween costume, planning a neighborhood effigy burning, into weird, ripped-from-the-headlines sex games, or just want to scare the crap out of your delinquent kid, this is the Casey Anthony mask for you. According to the eBay listing, the "Tot Mom" mask is one of only nine in existence — so get to bidding, sickies! (Makes a great companion piece with this equally accurate Nancy Grace mask.) [eBay]
Marijuana is an odd drug! Sometimes when you're stoned you fall asleep in the middle of taking a bite of a cookie. And then sometimes you steal an ambulance from outside a house fire at 4 a.m. and drive across your neighbors' lawns.
Did Anders Breivik, the Norway massacre suspect, act alone? In court today he claimed that he was aided by an extremist organization with two cells still at large. He previously ranted about founding an militant anti-Islam group called the Knights Templar.
Honolulu 5-0 checked into a woman's claim that she had found a severed human hand at the Moku Auia Seabird Sanctuary over the weekend.
A string of strangely motivated assaults in McDonald's restaurants continues to grip the nation. Yesterday, we brought you the story of a woman who launched a half-melted ice cream cake at an employee and then struck her in the face. Today brings the story of a McDonald's in Cobb County, Georgia, where the manager was charged with having punched a woman, seemingly for having entered the premises with a service dog used to help her care for her autistic twin sons.
The city of Los Angeles' "Summer Lights" program, which keeps public parks lit up at night in order to discourage gang violence, is having... mixed results. "A 15-year-old girl was shot in the back and a 19-year-old man was shot in the hand [in an apparent gang shooting] as they were leaving a Summer Night Lights event" this morning. Oh. God. It's just too much. It's like some horrible, horrible movie. "A man was shot in the face near a South Los Angeles park after the lights were turned out last week. It provided all-too-real drama for actors Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Pena, who were on scene at the time while on a police ride-along to prepare for an upcoming movie."
Andrew DeYoung was to be executed via lethal injection on Wednesday night in Georgia — an execution of some historic significance, in that it was to be the first to be videotaped in nearly two decades. But his execution was postponed at the last minute, and officials aren't saying why.
The manager of a McDonald's in Indiana called 911 after a customer went into a violent rage over an ice cream birthday cake she'd left with them for safe-keeping, which had later been handed back to her in a less-than-frozen state. She threw the cake at one employee and then slapped them in the face. You can hear the whole, harrowing 911 call here. No arrests have yet been made.
Nobody bats an eye if a bike gets stolen, or even if two or three bikes get stolen off the same rack. But stealing three dozen fucking bikes at once? That's when you have to stand up and admit: "You, sir or sirs or madam or madams, are an ambitious and talented bicycle thief or thieves whose 'can-do' attitude will take you far in the world of thievery."
The Bluegrass Fair in Lexington, Kentucky, has introduced a new, somewhat controversial attraction to their annual festivities: a Casey Anthony dunking booth!
You have to be pretty stupid, or pretty drunk, to lead the police on a car chase. You have to even drunker, and certainly more Amish, to lead the police on a car-vs.-horse-and-buggy chase.
