In the news
Robert Piver, 52, accused of illegally storing nearly 10,000 tires at his southeast Texas home, was arrested after, Liberty County authorities said, he didn’t comply with a notice that he was breaching fire codes.
Michael Padgett, 25, who was deemed a “persistent felony offender” and therefore faced up to a decade in prison after he spit in the face of a deputy jailer, will go free after a Kentucky appeals court declared one of his trials improper, according to the Owensboro, Ky., Messenger-Enquirer.
Jordan Smith, a charter boat captain, told the Panama City, Fla., News Herald that he couldn’t believe his eyes when he saw a creature falling from a bridge near Destin, and when he moved his boat closer to the site of the splash, he discovered it was a cat, which he pulled from the water, took to a veterinarian, and plans to adopt and possibly name “Miracle.”
Carl Magee III, 34, of California faces first-degree murder charges in the death of a homeless woman whom Magee drenched in gasoline and set on fire while she slept on a porch in West Virginia, authorities said.
William Francis Hendrickson, 25, of Largo, Fla., was arrested after his 8-month-old son died while being kept in a non-air-conditioned bedroom where the temperature was 109 degrees when police arrived, the Tampa Bay Times reported.
Luke Swofford, 4, of Rockwall, Texas, was reunited with his beloved teddy bear, aptly named Teddy Bear, nearly a week after the toy was forgotten at Dallas Love Field airport and sparked a search that ended when a security guard found it in a break room.
Robert Boyce, the New York City Police Department’s chief of detectives, said a 73-year-old man suffered second- and third-degree burns after a package left on the doorstep of a Queens building he owns detonated when he opened it.
Millie Tjeltweed of New Mexico said “her knees went weak” when she was reunited with her pet of 35 years, a 115-yearold tortoise named Diablo, after a family that bought the animal from some kids at a park for $5 called Tjeltweed when they saw a news report about the pet’s disappearance, the Albuquerque Journal reported.
Tad Cummins, 50, who is accused of running away with a 15-year-old student and leading police on a 38day nationwide manhunt, saw his Tennessee teaching license revoked by the state Education Board.