Curses, foiled again
Police charged Brent Nathan Frick, 26, with stealing a safe containing $69,000 in gold coins from a home in Coopersburg, Pa., after a witness who knew Frick saw him bust open the safe in a nearby parking lot. Allentown’s Morning Call reported the witness noticed some of the papers in the safe had another person’s name and notified police. State troopers found four more stolen safes in Frick’s motel room.
Four thieves broke into 16 boats at a marina in Cambridgeshire, England, and made off with luxury electronics items, two electric generators, a large amount of alcohol and a captain’s cap. The Daily Times attributed a quick arrest to their attempting their getaway in a flat-bottomed punt boat with a top speed of 3 mph. Police on the riverbank used nightvision goggles to locate the pole-pushing pirates, aged 26 to 17.
Phone tag
Orlando hotel guest Lisa Kantorski answered the phone and told her husband Mark, a deputy sheriff, it was the desk clerk informing them of a gas leak in their room. Relaying the caller’s instructions, she told her husband to smash the window with a toilet tank, break the mirror on the wall, use a lamp to bash in the wall to reach the trapped man on the other side and throw the mattress out the secondfloor window. The Orlando Sentinel reported the Kantorskis were about to jump to safety when Hilton Garden Inn manager Samir Patel knocked on their door in response to a noise complaint. He informed them there was no gas leak and pegged the damage at $5,000. “When I broke the window, I got suspicious,” Mark explained. “It didn’t seem right, but Lisa was panicking, so I continued.”
The Sentinel noted this was another in a rash of phone pranks across the country. Among the others:
An employee of a Nebraska Hampton Inn believed a caller who said to pull the fire alarm, then called back and said the only way to silence the alarm was to break the lobby windows. The employee sought help from a nearby trucker, who drove his rig through the front door.
Fast food follies
An employee at a McDonald’s restaurant in Aurora, Colo., said that two Denver police officers were waiting for their drivethrough order when one of them, Officer Derrick Curtis Saunders, 29, grew impatient and drew his weapon. According to the allegation reported by the Denver Post after his arrest, Saunders pointed the pistol at the worker to speed up his order.
Compiled from the nation’s press by Roland Sweet. Submit items, citing date and source, to P.O. Box 8130, Alexandria VA 22306.
