Curses, foiled again

After recognizing themselves in a surveillance video on TV, two women went to the police station in DeLand, Fla., and, according to sheriff’s official Brandon Haught, “wanted to know what is going on.” Investigators stepped in and determined from the video that the women were at a beauty store when it was robbed and one of them, Myesha Williams, 20, committed the robbery. (Daytona Beach News-Journal)

    When a man and a woman tried to sell a ring to a jewelry store in Joplin, Mo., owner L.T. Newton recognized it as stolen and called the police. Officers couldn’t find the ring on either suspect, but while questioning the man, he began to cough uncontrollably and eventually coughed up the ring, which he had swallowed. (The Joplin Globe)

Extra crispy

A police officer who saw a man in flames in Portland, Ore., reached for a fire extinguisher in the trunk of her patrol car but instead accidentally grabbed a large can of pepper spray used in riot control. The pepper spray cans are red like a fire extinguisher, according to Police Bureau Chief Rosie Sizer, who said the victim, Daniel Shaull, 26, set himself on fire in an apparent suicide attempt. Sizer noted that although the spray didn’t put out the fire, it isn’t flammable and “didn’t have any additional reaction with him already being on fire.” Shaull died at a hospital. (The Oregonian)

    Police investigating a one-car crash in Prince George’s County, Md., located the driver, Kenneth R. Taylor, 28, nearby. After talking to him briefly, officers went to the crashed vehicle. Police Officer Henry Tippett said that Taylor jumped into one of the officers’ cruisers and sped off. Officers didn’t pursue the cruiser, which ran off the road about a mile away, crashed into a tree and burst into flames. Firefighters responding to the first crash arrived at the second one but were unable to put out the fire and pronounced Taylor dead at the scene. (The Washington Post)

Holy scanner

Grzegorz Sowa, a Catholic priest in the Polish town of Gryfow Slaski, installed an electronic reader to check fingerprints of schoolchildren so he could monitor their attendance at mass. Attending 200 masses in three years exempts them from having to pass an exam before they can be confirmed. “This is comfortable,” one pupil, identified as Karolina, told the newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza. “We don’t have to stand in line to get the priest’s signature in our confirmation notebooks.” (Reuters)

Downhill slide

British police officials reprimanded a group of officers after a passerby recorded them using their riot shields as makeshift sleds and posted the video on YouTube. Conceding that snow brings “out the child in all of us,” Thames Valley Police Superintendent Andrew Murray said he told the officers “that tobogganing on duty, on police equipment and at taxpayers’ expense, is a very bad idea.” (Associated Press)

Compiled from the nation’s press by Roland Sweet. Authentication on demand.