In the news
Ballard Rose, 23, was arrested on a drug possession charge when he was found atop a utility pole pulling on electrical equipment, telling police in Monroe, La., that he was chewing grass so he wouldn’t be electrocuted.
Luis Hernandez-Gonzalez, 46, of Miami Falls, Fla., who sold gardening equipment to clandestine marijuana growers and hid $22 million in cash and valuables in 5-gallon buckets to keep from reporting it to the government, pleaded guilty to money laundering and other counts and will be able to keep about $4 million of the money.
Stephen Friot, a U.S. district judge in Oklahoma City, gave Summer Creel, 34, a reduced sentence of a year in prison and supervised release for pleading guilty to using a counterfeit check after Creel, who had lost parental rights to six of her seven children, underwent medical sterilization at the judge’s suggestion.
Neko McBee, a fire captain in Wichita, Kan., said firefighters donned wet suits and used an inflatable boat to rescue an injured cat that had likely been thrown off a downtown overpass onto the frozen Arkansas River.
Kate Murray, a sophomore at an all-girls Roman Catholic school in Greenwich, Conn., was told by school officials to remove a sticker supporting Planned Parenthood from her laptop if she wanted to attend class and is now deciding whether to stay at the school, her parents said.
Juan Martinez, 62, was arrested on battery and other counts in Newnan, Ga., accused of spanking a stranger’s 2-year-old son who kept asking his father for a candy bar in a grocery store checkout line.
Walter Roney, 99, of Dearborn, Mich., accused of driving his RV the wrong way on a highway in Fort Pierce, Fla., resulting in a crash that injured him and killed two teenagers, had just four weeks earlier passed vision, written and road tests that allowed him to continue driving.
Stephen Adams, 24, of Evanston, Ill., who was seen during a live video post driving around brandishing a loaded handgun and was arrested when police recognized where the video was being shot, was sentenced to three years in prison on a weapons charge.
Shonna Lynn Calaway, 48, a high school teacher in Matador, Texas, was sentenced to nearly 16 years in federal prison for using sexually explicit photos to entice a 16-year-old male sophomore into having sex with her.