Curses, foiled again
David Maksimik, 59, successfully robbed a bank in Darien, Conn., but while making his getaway, he rear-ended a car. He abandoned his car and caught a bus, then a taxi and finally a ride from his sister to get home to Stamford, where he found his 53-year-old roommate dead. He called police, who decided the death was a suicide. The Connecticut Post reported that during their investigation, officers became suspicious of Maksimik and discovered a bag on his bed containing the bank’s $3,745. Maksimik confessed to the robbery.
Chutzpah
Following the April 3 massacre of 14 people in Binghamton, N.Y., James Kauchis, an accounting clerk at the Broome County Department of Social Services, filed a grievance to be paid for the lunch hour he missed because the DSS building where he works was locked down for four hours during the incident. Kauchis declined to comment on his complaint, telling the Binghamton Press & Sun-Bulletin, “That’s a matter between me, the administration and the union.”
Oops!
Paul Duran Jr., 23, an inmate at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary, was beaten to death within 15 minutes after prison guards inadvertently put him in a cell with Jessie James Dalton, a convicted killer whom Duran had testified against.
Heaven can wait
Some 200 mosques in Mecca point the wrong way, according to the Arab newspaper al-Hayat. Muslims are supposed to pray facing the Kaaba, Islam’s most sacred site, located in Mecca’s Grand Mosque, and rely on niches in mosques to indicate the correct direction. The paper said people looking down from newly built high-rises in Mecca noticed the niches in many older mosques weren’t pointing directly toward the Kaaba. Tawfik al-Sudairy, Islamic affairs ministry deputy secretary in Saudi Arabia, said modern techniques had corrected the problem and assured the newspaper that all previous prayers were valid.
Where’s the gratitude?
Two years ago, after Kathleen Slattery, 84, fell and lay on the floor of her Chicago apartment for 15 hours, a 9- year-old girl with a heart defect crawled through a window to rescue the woman, who was her landlady. The Chicago Sun- Times reported that in March, the girl, her sister and her mother, Deb Gordils, were evicted.
Compiled from the nation’s press by Roland Sweet. Submit items, citing date and source, to P.O. Box 8130, Alexandria VA 22306.
