In Redding, California, there is currently a 5′ 11”, 350-pound man still at large who may have just committed one of funniest attempted burglaries in the history of convenient store burglaries.
Lucky for us, there’s surveillance footage.
[Redding.com via reddit]
As movies such as Psycho and Identity demonstrate, small motels are often the setting for nightmares. However, one actor saw a nightmare come true this week after being attacked at a Travelodge.
Clive Mantle, the actor who played Lord Greatjon Umber in the HBO series Game of Thrones, was attacked at a Travelodge in Newcastle on Sunday. According to The Guardian, Mantle had a portion of his ear bitten off during the attack. Surgeons were able to reattach the lost portion of his ear.
Mantle reportedly requested that fellow hotel guests keep their noise levels down before he was attacked. Two men were arrested in connection with the attack, and one has been charged with wounding with intent.
Mantle was part of a traveling production of The Ladykillers that had been performing at a Newcastle theatre. He has withdrawn from the production following the attack.
I’ll say it once and I’ll say it again: if you don’t come home to find a stranger browsing Facebook on your couch, you haven’t truly lived the college experience.
CBS Atlanta reports that a woman returned to her University of Georgia residence hall living quarters to find another woman sitting on her couch, using her laptop to mindlessly browse Facebook.
When the woman confronted her unwelcome Facebooker, she reportedly “stammered and apologized” before grabbing her things and scurrying off.
Later, it was determined that the woman had also peed on the couch that she was using to browse Facebook.
According to police, the intruder was an 18-year-old UGA student.
A college student stammering, in the wrong house, mindlessly clicking around Facebook and pissing on a couch? Wait a minute, that sounds familiar. Oh yeah, that basically describes every single night of a college freshman. Sounds like someone simply had too many jello shots and wandered into the wrong house.
Or, we have something much more sinister afoot. Police say the investigation is ongoing.
A trip to a local Target turned into a nightmare for Pittsburgh shoppers when a man wielding a kitchen knife began stabbing people in the store.
According to a Pittsburgh Tribune-Review report, the man was chased into the Target and proceeded to take a 16-year-old girl hostage. It is unclear who exactly was chasing the man.
The man reportedly entered the Target and ran to a second floor bathroom. He was then chased back downstairs, where he grabbed the girl, who was at a check-out line with her family.
The knife-wielding man was jumped by several men while holding the girl. According to the report, he was beaten using fists and a baseball bat. Police arrived soon after and arrested the man using Tasers and pepper spray.
The girl was stabbed in the back and arm, and is recovering at a hospital. Two others men were stabbed, one in the mouth and the other had his finger slashed.
As Lamar Odom can attest, child custody arrangements are often contentious and exhausting. The stress involved is enough to engender harsh feelings, but one Pennsylvania man has taken his hatred much further.
The Altoona Mirror is reporting that Kenneth Ayers of Petersburg, Pennsylvania shot and killed his two-year-old son before killing himself on Saturday, March 23. The shooting took place during a child custody visit and the boy’s mother, Hollie Ayers, was shot as well, but is expected to survive.
Kenneth arrived at his mother’s house on Saturday, where his supervised visit with his son was to have taken place. He allegedly shot Hollie in her leg and arm, then shot his son, Michael, before taking the boy’s body to his car. Hollie is reported by the Mirror to have followed and attempted to retrieve Michael before being shot once more in the face.
Kenneth drove off, switched vehicles, and was later found in the cab of his truck, dead from apparent suicide. The newspaper reported that the man was under a protection from abuse order, a type of domestic violence protection issued in Pennsylvania. Police stated that Kenneth may have planned the shooting.
If Panic Room taught me anything – it’s that burglaries are scary things. Men with guns trying to ransack my home are scary enough, but it becomes even scarier when said burglar breaks out the colorful squirt guns filled with semen.
A very unlucky man encountered such a scenario in January after a couple of burglars, including 21-year-old Eric Miller, broke into a house looking for one of the people who lived there. Their target wasn’t present, but they decided to make an example of the roommate sleeping on the couch.
The men reportedly held the unlucky roommate at knifepoint as they beat and pistol-whipped him. After the beating, Miller reportedly pulled out a squirt gun filled with semen and sprayed it on his face. After the heinous crime was committed, Miller said “Now you’re like the rest of my (expletives), covered in semen.”
It’s not said what kind of squirt gun was used, but I like to think it was this one:
After all of this, Miller turned himself in to police. He was convicted with first-degree burglary, but not before the judge considered tacking on a sexual motivation charge. It was the prosecutor’s opinion that Miller didn’t get any sexual gratification out of it. Miller will spend 18 months behind bars.
Note: This post contains strong language.
Convicted murderer T.J. Lane was sentenced to life in prison for the 2012 murder of three high school students in the Ohio town of Chardon.
According to an Associated Press report, the 17-year-old Lane, who attended an alternative school, walked into the Chardon High School cafeteria on the morning of February 27, 2012 and fired a .22 caliber pistol at a group of students. Three students died, and Lane, now 18, pleaded guilty to three counts aggravated murder last month. To date, he has provided no reasoning for his actions.
At his sentencing today, Lane showed his contempt for the court and his victims by wearing a white t-shirt with the word “KILLER” scrawled on it in marker. Lane smirked and gazed off while family members of his victims testified that he should receive the maximum penalty available.
During the sentencing Lane opted, against his lawyer’s advice, to address the courtroom. In a shocking display, Lane turned toward the families of his victims and spouted vulgarities, raising his middle finger to the courtroom.
“This hand that pulled the trigger that killed your sons now masturbates to the memory,” said Lane. “Fuck all of you.”
Lane’s three life sentences do not allow for the possibility of him ever being paroled. The death penalty was unavailable to the prosecution, as Lane was only 17 at the time of the shooting.
A 64-year-old Pennsylvania pastor has been sentenced to life in prison for the murder of his wife in 2008.
According to an Associated Press report, Arthur Schirmer was convicted of first-degree murder for the death of his second wife, Betty. Schirmer was found to have killed Betty with a crowbar, then staged a car accident to explain her injuries.
The report states that police originally accepted the murder as a car accident. A thorough investigation began, however, when Schirmer’s affair with his church secretary led to the woman’s husband committing suicide in Schirmer’s office. Along with evidence from Betty’s autopsy, police found her blood on the floor of Schirmer’s garage.
Schirmer has also been charged with the murder of his first wife, Jewel. In that case, according to the AP, Schirmer claims he was out running and found Jewel dead when he returned home. The trial for Jewel’s murder has yet to begin.
Schirmer has a girlfriend and two daughters, who all told the AP that they believe the man is innocent.
There’s a lot of stupid going on in this story, so we’ll just start from the top.
A Dakota County, Minnesota man has been charged with solicitation of a minor and solicitation of a child via electronic communication after he tried to use nude photos of a 15-year-old girl as leverage to get her to have sex with him.
18-year-old Deuvontay Shelby Charles was released on $10,000 bail and is scheduled to appear in court next month.
According to the police report, Charles requested that the 15-year-old girl send him nude and sexually explicit photos – a request that was obliged. When he acquired the nude pictures, Chalres apparently told the girl that he would post them all over Facebook and Instagram unless she had sex with him.
Police say that Charles did end up posting at least one of the photos on a specially-created Facebook page.
And for his troubles, Charles is now facing multiple felonies. Shocking to hear how this one turned out.
Don’t ask for nudes from a minor. Also, don’t send nudes if you’re a minor. Don’t try to blackmail a minor for sex. And when things don’t go your way, don’t post child pornography on Facebook. These are some basic rules that if you follow, can help you to avoid becoming a story on the evening news. Yikes.
[via TwinCities]
ABC News is reporting that a California man is now in jail after attempting to poison his girlfriend with Visine eye drops. The man allegedly put eye drops into the woman’s drink in order to make her sick.
According to the report, the 27-year-old man, Shayne Carpenter, was arrested last week on charges of poisoning and domestic violence. Carpenter’s girlfriend reportedly found texts on the man’s phone that referenced the poisoning and called police. The police had Carpenter’s girlfriend speak to him over the phone and were able to obtain an admission from Carpenter.
Eye drops, such as Visine, and some nasal sprays contain Tetrahydrozoline, which can be poisonous when swallowed. Symptoms of Tetrahydrozoline poisoning can include difficulty breathing, blurred vision, rapid heartbeat, nausea, headaches, and vomiting.
How can you tell if a neighborhood has a low crime rate? The police will be mobilizing officers to search for an exhibitionist.
The NBC affiliate in Denver is reporting that police in the Sloan Lake neighborhood in Denver will soon begin searching for a man they’ve dubbed the “thong bandit.” The man has been “terrorizing” northwest Denver with his nakedness since last summer, but wasn’t active during the winter. Now that the weather in Colorado is turning nice again, police have received new reports of the flasher.
Police say the man will start out fully clothed before ducking into an alley and stripping down to a thong. He then proceeds to “expose himself further” in front of women. The man is reportedly white or hispanic, in his 20s or 30s, and has an “athletic build.” Reports show that he has switched from a pink thong to a black or dark thong in the past.
According to NBC 9, the Denver police are sending teams of officers out to Northwest Denver to search for the flasher. They have a sketch of what the man might look like and have asked citizens to call 911 immediately when they encounter him.
A deacon at the St. Joseph’s Catholic Church in Fullerton, a suburb of Baltimore, has been arrested and charged with multiple child pornography counts after Verizon tipped authorities to materials stored on the company’s online cloud backup system.
67-year-old William Albaugh was arrested and released on $75,000 bond after police found underage porn images and videos on his Verizon cloud backup as well as on numerous thumb drives in his home. Police confiscated two storage units, a laptop, and an iPad as well.
According to police, there is no evidence that any children at St. Joseph’s church were victims.
Albaugh reportedly told police that he has been viewing child pornography since the 1970s, but was in no way involved with any of the porn’s creation.
Albaugh had been a deacon at the church since 1996, but the archdiocese has confirmed that he has been suspended.
The police were first tipped to Albaugh’s child pornography collection when Verizon notified the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Verizon said that they had detected the images and videos stored on his Verizon Online Backup and Sharing account.
[Baltimore Sun via Ars Technica]
An Alberta, Canada court has handed down an interesting ruling regarding detainees’ rights and how they run up against the modern world.
According to the ruling, police must provide the accused access to the internet so that they can initiate a Google (or Bing, I guess) search for legal counsel.
The case in question involved a 19-year-old man who was detained for possible driving under the influence. Since his cellphone was already in lockup, police offered him the phone at the station as well as the local Yellow Pages.
Also available to Christopher McKay was the 411 directory assistance, but according to court documents he didn’t even consider it a “viable search engine.” The court asked McKay how he would have found legal counsel if given the choice, and he said Google.
The court agreed that he should have been given access to a computer with internet access to aid in his lawyer search.
“The Crown says that the police do not have any duty in law to provide access to the internet for detainees when there is no specific request to access the internet. The Court disagrees. In particular case, the accused was actually directed to use the toll free number and he did so in ignorance of the potential to use other resources with which he might have been more familiar. In the Court’s view, in the year 2013 police providing access to the internet is part of a detainee’s reasonable opportunity to contact legal counsel. This is so even whether counsel of choice is not an issue and the accused is simply seeking general information from a source such as Google,” said the court.
The court showed that a quick Google search for “Calgary criminal defense lawyers” turned up plenty of viable options, and even came to the wild conclusion that the information of Google may even be more up-to-date and helpful than the information contained in the Yellow Pages or the like.
The court also noted that police are now routinely using the internet in order to assist with their investigations, so it stands to reason that they should provide the accused access to the internet to find a lawyer.
Basically, it boils down to the fact that plenty of young people have no idea what the hell 411 is, and Google is how they find information in their daily lives.
“There are sufficient numbers of individuals born post computer age who have no understanding of the paper world who have extensive knowledge and understanding of the virtual world,” said the court. “These individuals must be accommodated and the only way to do that is to ensure that detainees under arrest be given the opportunity to use the internet to call a lawyer in the same way that they can use a telephone book to call a lawyer.”
[via The Star]
It’s always nice to check back in on some of our favorite Facebook-using criminals. This time, we have an update for now-38-year-old Jason Valdez from Ogden, Utah.
Back in June, 2011, Valdez holed up in a motel room for 16 hours in a standoff with police. Inside the room with him was a single hostage, Veronica Jensen. You can see a picture that he snapped of the two inside the motel room above.
During the course of the standoff, Valdez made a series of Facebook posts giving friends and family the live play-by-play of the whole event.
Classic.
Throughout the entire standoff, Valdez claimed that Jensen was not actually a hostage, but with him willingly. Some of his Facebook friends even tried to warn Valdez about police movements, to little avail. Police eventually stormed the room and Valdez shot himself in the chest, which put him in critical condition.
But he survived, and he has now been sentenced.
According to the L.A. Times, Valdez plead guilty to attempted aggravated murder and possession of a dangerous weapon by a restricted person for the June, 2011 standoff. He was sentenced to two concurrent sentences – five years to life for the attempted murder and 1 to 15 years for the weapons charge.
“Well everyone I’m lettin Veronica go here real soon but this is the end,” was Valdez’s final transmission before the standoff ended. At least he’s a man of his word. The hostage left unscathed.
Police say that a 37-year-old former member of the Navy raped at least one woman after finding her on the religious-based dating site ChristianMingle.com.
According to reports, Sean Patrick Banks was apprehended and charged with two counts of rape. He plead not guilty and was released on $500,000 bond.
Police allege that Banks sexually assaulted a woman in La Mesa, California back in November, after meeting her on the ChristianMingle site. It was their first “face-to-face” date as a result of their online communications.
ChristianMingle.com calls itself a “a Christian personals community where you can find singles that share your values and love for God in Christ.”
Apparently, the break in the case came when ChristianMingle.com helped police by divulging user records.
“We continue to assist the La Mesa police department with its investigation in every way possible. The safety and security of our members is extremely important to us. In addition to having experts manually review all profile content and photos, we have developed several proprietary, automated tools to ensure the highest possible level of safety and privacy for our communities,” said a ChristianMingle.com spokesperson.
Police suspect that Banks may be responsible for additional assaults, carried out through various ChristianMingle.com profiles.
They say that he trolled the site using aliases like “Rylan Butterwood” and “Rylan Harbough.”
“We’re looking to see if there are any other victims. We’re trying to locate other victims who recognize him by his face, because they may not know his real name is Sean,” say police.
[via ABC News]
[Lead Image via ChristianMingle.com – not associated with the crime]
Another Apple Store finds itself the victim of a smash and grab – this time in Boulder, Colorado.
According to ABC7 in Denver, a yet-to-be-identified assailant used a few rocks to smash through the glass door of the Apple Store before making off with $64,000 worth of stolen goods.
This included Macbooks, iPhones, iPads, and more. Investigators expect to see the devices hit the internet for fast resale.
But the stolen goods weren’t the biggest hit that the Apple Store took – at least not financially.
According to reports, the custom-made glass door at the front end of the Apple Store was worth nearly $100,000. Yikes.
Apple Stores make tempting targets for burglars – and I guess that trademark glass store front just looks like it’s in need of smashing. This Boulder burglary isn’t even close to taking home the prize for dumbest Apple Store robbery. That prize still goes to that guy last who who smashed through the store front in his BMW, left his license plate behind, and was arrested as he attempted to retrieve it.
The FBI does not send unsolicited email.
That’s the simple message behind a press release just issued by the government agency. They were forced to put out this release because many residents in the state of Mississippi have received a scam email which claims to be from the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
The FBI says that they don’t send out these types of emails and that clicking on any embedded link could result malware, phishing, or any number of headaches.
Here’s what the email in question looks like:
From: FBI ALERT
Date: February 2, 2013, 5:47:06 p.m. CST
To: undisclosed-recipients:;
Reply-To: FBI ALERT
We have an information for you regarding the person you are transacting with online. You need to see this yourself. Contact us immediately for this is very important to you. Keep it to yourself and contact us, get back to us immediately. There is something you need to know about this person or you might end up loosing everything you ever worked for. Stop e-mailing until you hear from us. Contact FBI secret service with the e-mail below [email protected] FBI secret service.
Other than the fact that it sounds like total horsecrap, you should be tipped off by the ibgen.com.br address. And what the hell is the FBI secret service?
Anyway, the advice here is the same as with any scam email. Don’t reply with any personal information and don’t click anything. That’s the surest way to maintain your safety.
And in the future, know that the FBI will never send you unsolicited emails. It’s that simple.