Post insane / odd / unique news releases here

[LWM]

Police: Cheeseburger found in SC woman's gas tank (July 29th, 2010 @ 6:25pm)

ROCK HILL, S.C. (AP) - A South Carolina woman found out fast food won't make your car go fast. The Herald of Rock Hill reported Thursday a 30-year-old woman made a complaint to police after she took her car to a Rock Hill mechanic last week because it would suddenly stop running.

Police said a mechanic found a cheeseburger and pickle inside the car's gas tank. The woman told officers she had no idea how it happened.

Investigators said the damage cost about $1,000 to repair.

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Inmate sues man he's convicted of burglarizing (July 30th, 2010 @ 5:00am)

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (AP) - A Florida inmate is suing the man he's convicted of burglarizing, claiming the man and two others roughed him up during a citizen's arrest.

Michael Dupree is serving a 12-year sentence for burglary and cocaine possession stemming from a 2007 break-in of a van in St. Petersburg. Dupree allegedly stole a bicycle locked inside and was apprehended after the owner, Anthony McKoy, saw him with the bike down the street.

Dupree says McKoy and two others pointed a gun at him, handcuffed him and placed a knee painfully in his back. He's seeking $500,000 for disabilities and distress suffered during the takedown.

Dupree filed the civil lawsuit on his own, without the help of an attorney.

After being served with the suit, McKoy said, "I thought it was a joke. I'm the victim."

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Police: Ohio driver in chase stopped at red lights (July 30th, 2010 @ 6:20am)

CINCINNATI (AP) - Cincinnati police say a speeding driver tried to flee arrest while obeying red lights.

Police say a 26-year-old woman was going 78 mph in a 55 mph zone early Friday on Interstate 75 when an officer tried to pull her over. Police say she exited the highway to drive home.

Police say that when the woman reached local streets, she drove the speed limit and stopped at red lights. They used sticks that punctured her tires, just yards from her home.

She told police she feared having her car impounded, which they did.

Police say she resisted, and they used a stun gun before charging her with resisting arrest, failing to comply with police, speeding and driving under suspension.

[LWM]

Country's oldest mail carrier retires at 91 (July 30th, 2010 @ 1:13pm)

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) - At 91 years old, the country's oldest mail carrier is finally hanging up his keys after driving more than 1.1 million miles delivering mail in Tennessee. According to the U.S. Postal Service, rural carrier Mancel Prince will make one more lap of his nearly 100-mile route before he retires on Friday in Decherd.

Prince was born in Tennessee and served in World War II, the Korean War and in Vietnam before retiring as a command sergeant major after 34 years. He returned home after his military career and began working as a mail carrier.

He earned a Million-Mile Safe Driving award for 35 years of accident-free driving.

[LWM]

Giant South Dakota hailstone breaks US records (July 30th, 2010 @ 2:00pm)

VIVIAN, S.D. (AP) - The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says a giant hailstone that fell in central South Dakota has broken U.S. records, even though the man who found it says it melted somewhat while waiting to be evaluated.

The NOAA's National Climate Extremes Committee says the hailstone found in the town of Vivian on July 23 measures 8 inches in diameter and weighs 1 pound, 15 ounces. The committee says the South Dakota ice chunk breaks records set by hailstones discovered in Nebraska and Kansas.

Ranch hand Leslie Scott says the hailstone was about 3 inches larger when he found it. Scott says he put it in the freezer but that he couldn't prevent some melting because of an hours-long power outage that followed the storm.

[LWM]

Woman with broken leg calls 911; Suspect collapses (July 30th, 2010 @ 6:21pm)

WALKER, La. (AP) - Livingston Parish sheriff's deputies arrested a man who passed out while allegedly trying to break into a mobile home where an 82-year-old woman was calling 911, crowbar in hand. Deputies said 24-year-old Derrick Gauthreaux of Denham Springs was checked at a hospital Thursday, then booked into the parish jail on one count of attempted burglary.

Investigators said the woman reported an attempted break-in about 10:30 a.m. Thursday, and said she was recovering from a broken leg but had a crowbar for protection.

Chief of Operations Perry Rushing said Gauthreaux told deputies he had been released from the New Orleans jail around midnight, and records showed he'd received a summons for an open alcoholic drink about an hour before his arrest.

He remained jailed Friday in lieu of $50,000 bond. It was not clear whether he had an attorney.

[LWM]

Store manager tells robber Jesus wouldn't approve (July 31st, 2010 @ 1:04am)

POMPANO BEACH, Fla. (AP) - A cell phone store manager in South Florida dissuaded an armed man from robbing the store by telling him Jesus wouldn't approve. Instead of panicking when the suspect pulled a weapon, Nayara Goncalves started talking with him. He was jobless, and the 20-year-old Christian offered to connect him with friends who could help him find work.

She said she believed the man when he said he attended church and wasn't a bad person. She told him the answer to his financial problems wasn't in the cash register.

Then, the clerk nudged him with a little sin of her own. She said the store would hold her responsible for any cash he stole.

Goncalves said, "I just wanted to remind him that he knew better."

[LWM]

Police: 2 men tried to sell wood blocks as laptops (July 31st, 2010 @ 11:54am)

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) - Investigators in Mississippi say two men wrapped blocks of wood in duct tape and bubble wrap, attached Toshiba labels and tried to pass them off as laptops.

Hinds County authorities charged the men with trademark infringement and selling goods with counterfeit labels. WLBT-TV in Jackson reports the men were caught Thursday when they tried to sell the fake laptops to an off-duty state trooper.

Hinds County Sheriff's Lt. Jeffery Scott says authorities also found binders filled with paper being passed off as computers.

However, no one actually bought the fakes.

[LWM]

Arrests sought after burgers, fries tossed in pool (July 31st, 2010 @ 1:46pm)

DALE CITY, Va. (AP) - The hamburger patties, French fries and pretzels tossed into the pool were bad enough. But did a vandal really have to smear mozzarella cheese on the water slide?

Officials in northern Virginia's Prince William County said that mischief was done overnight at Waterworks Waterpark, plus more.

But it's no laughing matter: The park is closed until workers can drain, sanitize and refill the pool.

Prince William County Park Authority spokeswoman Dianne Cabot says the vandalism took place between 10 p.m. Friday, when the last lifeguard left, and 8 a.m. Saturday. A reward is being offered for tips leading to an arrest in the case.

Officials say in addition to the food, someone threw tables, chairs, lifeguard stands and cigarette butts in the water.

[LWM]

Brazilian men swapped at birth work, live together (July 31st, 2010 @ 12:33pm)

By STAN LEHMAN Associated Press Writer

SAO PAULO (AP) - Two years back, Dimas Aliprandi and Elton Plaster didn't know of each other's existence. Then they learned they had been accidentally switched at birth more than 20 years ago.

The discovery didn't bring bitterness or recrimination. Rather, it led to the creation of a bigger family.

Today, the two 25-year-olds are living and working together with both sets of parents growing vegetables and coffee on a small farm in southeastern Brazil.

The chain of events started with Aliprandi, who was always intrigued that he did not resemble the four sisters he grew up with.

"There was something different," he told The Associated Press by phone. "I had blonde hair and blue eyes and my sisters had dark hair and eyes.

"I had the typical features of a descendent of German immigrants, while my sisters and parents were of Italian stock. Something did not add up"

Aliprandi said he was 14 when his suspicions intensified after watching a TV news report on babies getting switched at birth because of mistakes at hospitals.

"I told my father of my doubts and that I wanted to do a DNA test. But it was too expensive" for the family, he said.

A decade later, Aliprandi did it on his own.

"In December 2008, when I was 24, I decided I needed an answer to my doubts and paid 300 reals ($166) for a DNA test that confirmed my suspicions that I was not the birth son of the man and woman who had raised me," he said.

It was a big shock for his parents, Zilda and Antonio Aliprandi. They at first refused to believe the results, but eventually decided to help him look for his biological parents.

The search began at the Madre Regina Protmann Hospital, where he was born.

"I showed the hospital the results of the DNA test and told them that they proved that I had been switched at birth," Aliprandi said.

But hospital officials were skeptical, he said, and asked him to have another DNA test, which he did three months later.

Repeated calls to the hospital for comment went unanswered.

The DNA results were the same as the first- Aliprandi had been given to the wrong mother as an infant.

He said the hospital then searched its records and found Elton Plaster was born there on the same day.

The records led Aliprandi to the 35-acre (14-hectare) farm where Plaster lived with his parents, Nilza and Adelson, in the town of Santa Maria de Jetiba, about 30 miles (45 kilometers) from the Aliprandi home in Joao Neiva.

The Plasters agreed to do DNA tests.

"They discovered that Elton was the biological son of the man and woman that I had been calling Mom and Dad for 24 years," Aliprandi said. "Meanwhile, Elton discovered that the couple he had always regarded as his biological parents were mine."

The discovery did not cause any upset, he said.

"Instead it sparked a desire to join our families," Aliprandi said. "Elton and I wanted to remain with those who raised us and with our birth parents. We wanted to expand our families."

So about a year ago, Aliprandi and the parents who raised him accepted an offer from the Plasters to move to their farm, where they built a home.

"This is the way it should be," Adelson Plaster recently told Globo TV. "We are all together and I now have two sons living and working here."

Aliprandi and Plaster both feel blessed by their new circumstances.

"It's not everyone who can say he has two fathers and two mothers living together with him," Aliprandi said.