Curses, foiled again

Three women ran from a Waffle House restaurant in Springfield, Mo., without paying their $39 check, but they didn’t get far before one of them returned, asking for the three purses the women had left behind. She fled when the manager told her she’d have to wait, but the purses contained the women’s identification. (Springfield News-Leader) After Lori Shannon Turner, 39, complained loudly at a McDonald’s restaurant in Spartanburg, S.C., that she hadn’t received a sandwich she ordered and demanded another one, a sheriff’s deputy who arrived on the scene noticed Turner had a large grease stain on her pants. When a female officer was called to the scene for a search, Turner removed the missing sandwich from her pants. (The Herald Journal)

Slightest provocation

Dennis Zeglin, 67, admitted shooting his family’s 20-year-old African gray parrot to death with a pellet gun in Randolph, N.J. Zeglin’s lawyer explained that the bird’s squawks distracted his client from a NASCAR race on television. (Asbury Park Press)

Reasonable explanation

When Eugene Todie, 29, tried to return home to Buffalo, N.Y., from Canada, border agents observed that he was wearing an ankle monitor. Todie, who’s on probation for criminal contempt and not supposed to leave the country, explained that he was wearing the monitor as a show of support for actress Lindsay Lohan, who earlier this year had to wear an alcohol ankle monitor. (Associated Press)

Mensa rejects of the week

An 11-year-old boy from Laval, Quebec, was hospitalized in critical condition after being pierced in the head by a metal pole thrown by a 17-year-old boy, according to police Sgt. Francois Dumais, who noted the pole was the type used to mark property lines for snow removal. “Both of them were playing a type of baseball,” Dumais explained. “They were throwing the metal pole, and the other one was trying to hit the pole with a stick.” (CTV Montreal)

Captive audiences

After two inmates managed to escape over the wall of a prison in Argentina’s Neuquen province, workers told a local newspaper that only two out of the 15 guard towers were staffed. A third featured a dummy made from a soccer ball wearing a prison officer’s cap “so that the prisoners see its shadow and think they are being watched,” a source told Diario Rio Negro. “We named him Wilson, like in the film Cast Away.” Daniel Verges, director of the penitentiary service, confirmed the use of “a type of mannequin” for guard duty, blaming budget cuts. (Britain’s The Guardian)

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