NEWSQUIRKS
Curses, foiled again
A bank robber who had a 10-minute head start on sheriff’s deputies on Merritt Island, Fla., was arrested only a block away, with the stolen cash concealed in his prosthetic leg. Paraplegic Christopher Reed made his getaway on a motorized wheelchair, according to Brevard County Sheriff’s Office Lt. Vic DeSantis, who observed, “He probably miscalculated his ability to flee the scene.”
Wrong arm of the law
Police responding to an alarm at a bank in Somerset County, N.J., said they saw at least one person through the windows of the bank, which had its blinds drawn. The Star-Ledger reported they summoned a SWAT team, which sealed off the area to traffic and evacuated residents in three nearby apartment buildings, then used bullhorns to try to make contact with whoever might be inside the bank. After being kept at bay for 90 minutes without a response, the SWAT team entered the bank and discovered the person seen inside was actually a full-size cardboard figure.
Vehicular gratification
After Scottish police stopped a vehicle being driven “erratically” near a Clydesbank high school, Constable Christopher Holmes said driver Guy Milford, 34, had “both hands on his lap, which was unusual, but more unusual was I could see lots of red and green wires poking through his hand,” and “his trousers had been pulled down around his hips. Closer inspection revealed a homemade masturbation device attached to the car’s cigarette lighter.
True confessions
A Catholic priest in New York City was suspended after he apparently used his confessional booth to pick up women. The action came after Judith Rodriguez-Lytwyn filed a $25 million lawsuit against Our Lady of the Snows in Glen Oaks, N.Y. She said she met the Rev. Elvis Elano while going through a divorce when she entered his confessional and he told her, “Your presence struck me like a thunderbolt,” according to her lawyer, Andrew Laufer.
“For lack of a better word, he was hitting on her,” Laufer said, adding that the two began dating and eventually engaged in sex. The woman ended the affair when Elano sent her an e-mail indicating he had a sexually transmitted disease he may have gotten from another woman.
Compiled from the nation’s press by Roland Sweet. Submit items, citing date and source, to P.O. Box 8130, Alexandria VA 22306.
