- * Florida Justice: In February in Lakeland,
after Justin Rezendes scuffled with teachers, the principal, and the school
police officer, biting and scratching them, he was arrested, booked, and
fingerprinted, and mug shots were taken. Justin is 6 years old. Two weeks
earlier in Pensacola, Chaquita Doman, 5, scratched and bit two officials
at her school, and she, too, was arrested, booked and fingerprinted, and
mug shots were taken. Master Rezendes seemed not to have been deterred
by his brush with the law, declaring to a reporter minutes after he was
released from custody, "I kicked their [school officials'] butts."
-
- * In February, police in Abha, Saudi
Arabia, threatened new parents Adbullah Mohammed Ali, 55, and Hasna Mohammed
Humair, 40, with arrest if they did not come soon to the hospital and get
their septuplets, who were born January 14 and almost all of whom no longer
need hospitalization. Hasna said she took a fertility drug only to regulate
her menstrual flow and had no idea this would happen. Abdullah has two
other legal wives and nine other kids, but is employed as a cab driver
and does not believe he can support the new ones.
-
- * In January DigiPen Institute of Technology
opened in Redmond, Wash., offering the nation's first four-year college
degree in video game development, with tuition of about $11,000 a year.
Forty students were in the first class, but already 1,000 applications
for the 100 seats in the fall class have been received. The curriculum
is heavy on computer languages and graphics but also includes math, physics,
business marketing, and mythology.
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- COURTROOM ANTICS
-
- * Michael Ng, 26, was sentenced to 10
months in jail in Hong Kong in July for contempt of court, apparently because
he drew the skepticism of Magistrate James Lee as he was being sworn in
on the witness stand to testify to charges that he sold obscene CD's.
Before Lee would accept Ng's testimony, he asked Ng a series of Bible-related
questions to determine his fitness to swear to God (e.g., How old was Jesus
when he died? Where was he born?), and Ng failed.
-
- * Just outside a Fort Lauderdale, Fla.,
courtroom in September, defendant Mark Gusow, age 36 and 140 lbs., told
his court-appointed attorney, Laura Morrison, 52 and 150 lbs., that he
was about to tell the judge he wanted a new lawyer. Morrison tried persuade
Gusow to stay outside and talk about it some more, but he broke away and
started back inside, at which point Morrison clamped on a headlock and
allegedly raked his face with her fingernails.
-
- * In July, James P. Morrow, a recent
resident of an Ohio penitentiary, filed a lawsuit in Dayton against Gov.
George Voinovich and 300 other officials because they allegedly tried to
"beam" security people down to confront Morrow every time he
entered a courthouse. According to Morrow's petition, the only way he
could bypass such beaming is if the court granted him "Wallydraggle,
Mummery Feg Winple Soupcon-type relief."
-
- * In a New Year's Eve ruling, Hillsboro,
Ohio, Municipal Judge James Hapner ordered chronic drunk driver Dennis
Cayse (18 convictions) to move to within a half-mile of a liquor store
so that he will not be tempted to drive to and from bars. Furthermore,
when he travels by automobile, he must either have another person between
him and the driver or must be handcuffed to the passenger-side door, so
as to reduce the likelihood that he could be driving and change seats if
stopped.
-
- * Swindon, England, magistrate Ms. Josie
Lewis, 45, got into a dispute with a reporter in April 1997, which was
exacerbated when he began to take photographs of her. As she was walking
away, she mooned him, which the man of course captured on film, and in
September her boss, lord chancellor Lord Irvine of Lairg, fired her.
-
- * George Gaillard had confessed to murder
at trial in New Haven, Conn., in July, which had the effect of helping
his pal Lawrence Fuller, who had been charged with the killing and who
thus was left only with the lesser crimes of kidnapping and assault. However,
at his own trial in December, Gaillard testified that he did not kill anyone
and said he confessed only to help Fuller. Partners in crime occasionally
try to pull these feeble-sounding switches, but the New Haven jurors bought
it and acquitted Gaillard. An Associated Press dispatch said Gaillard's
own lawyer was "stunned" by the decision, and prosecutor Michael
Dearington said he was "humiliated."
-
- LEAST COMPETENT PEOPLE * In October,
Polson, Mont., sheriff's deputy Grant Holle was suspended for 14 days for
violating department policy. He had come to help fellow officer Tina Schlaile,
who was detaining multiple-DUI offender Rich Logan from driving away in
his car. Though Logan's car was barely creeping along, Holle pulled his
gun and fired a total of eight shots toward Logan's tires, from close range,
and missed each time (though he did hit the fender twice). Schlaile also
fired six shots at the tires and missed each time. Logan was captured
when he got out of his car voluntarily a few minutes later.
-
- * In November, George Moscatello, 46,
a free-lance Bigfoot investigator and novice camper from Woodside, N.Y.,
traveled to a remote area in Canada's Northwest Territories province, alone,
to research the legendary beast. At 4 a.m. on his first night in the field,
after hearing what he described as "pitter-patter sounds" outside
his tent, he set off an emergency beacon, summoning a rescue plane from
Toronto to pick him up at a cost to taxpayers of about $8,500 US.
-
- * In November in Annapolis, Md., during
a celebration of Gregory Johnson's 32nd birthday, his cousin Darwin Derwood
Coates, 21, tucked a .22-caliber handgun into the waistband of his trousers
and accidentally shot himself in the groin. As guests tried to assist
Coates, Johnson relieved him of the gun and stuck it in the most convenient
place he could find, which was the waistband of his own trousers. The
gun fired again, striking Johnson in the buttocks. Both men were hospitalized.
-
- * An unidentified man tried to rob a
Toronto-Dominion Bank in St. Catharines, Ontario, in November, but apparently
had not cased the joint beforehand. It was one of a new kind of branch
banks that consist only of an employee or two and a row of ATM's. After
entering the branch aggressively and demanding money from the employee,
the man looked around in disbelief and walked out.
-
- * In September in Blaine, Minn., a 19-year-old
man fatally shot himself with a .38-caliber revolver while playing Russian
roulette. According to a Minneapolis Star Tribune report, citing police
Lt. Larry Klink, the man loaded one bullet, spun the cylinder, and put
the gun to his head. His friends tried to stop him, but the man assured
them that the bullet was not behind the barrel, but next to it. According
to another police officer cited by the Star Tribune, "Not everyone
realizes how a revolver works. As you pull the trigger, the cylinder rotates,
bringing the next chamber under the hammer. If that [next] chamber is
loaded, then it's going to fire."
-
- * In February, the Connecticut Court
of Appeals upheld the kidnapping-robbery convictions of Michael Carter,
thus rejecting his claim that witnesses' identification of him should have
been suppressed at his trial. At the time of arrest, according to New
Haven police officer Dario Aponte, Carter had proclaimed his innocence
but resisted being returned to the scene of the crime so witnesses could
see him, asking Aponte, "How can they identify me? I had a mask on."
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