In the news
Doris Morrill of The Villages, Fla., who heard a creaking noise about 1 a.m. and called police to report a prowler, actually heard the first of a half-dozen sinkholes that opened up in her retirement community, displacing seven people in four homes, authorities said.
Michael Jensen, 36, of Inola, Okla., was charged with child neglect after Rogers County sheriff’s deputies said he gave his 12-yearold son, who later suffered minor burns, advice on how to commit suicide by lighting himself on fire.
Tiffany Nowicki, director of a day care center in Bangor, Maine, said parents will no longer be allowed to carry in food after a tray of cookies dropped off by a parent and placed on a staff room table left two workers feeling drugged and about 10 others with less intense symptoms.
Ryan Robinson, 36, a Hawaiian man on vacation in London, escaped jail time after pleading guilty to drunkenly confronting and punching two police officers outside Buckingham Palace on Valentine’s Day but was ordered to pay each victim about $280.
Lamar Dill, 92, and his 95-year-old wife, Mary Nelle, both of Anniston, Ala., will celebrate their 69th wedding anniversary by returning for the first time since getting married in 1949 to the hotel in Mobile where they spent their honeymoon.
Judah Zeigler, the mayor of Leonia, N.J., said the town is replacing new “Do Not Enter” signs with more “business friendly” signs that warn nonresident drivers not to use its side streets as rush-hour shortcuts to the George Washington Bridge into New York City.
Gavin Haynes, 38, accused of fleeing a state trooper on Interstate 70 in a pursuit that reached speeds of 150 mph before a crash and his arrest as he hid in a barn near Springfield, Ohio, pleaded innocent to fleeing, aggravated vehicular assault and other counts, prosecutors said.
Ernest Ervin, 48, of Memphis, who has 54 previous felony and misdemeanor convictions for offenses ranging from assaults to driving offenses, is facing up to six years in prison after being found guilty of stealing from $10 to $15 in change from a car.
Jessica Dutch, 40, of Springfield, Mo., was charged with child endangerment for making her reluctant 14-year-old daughter drive to prepare for taking her learner’s permit test, resulting in a crash that injured five people, state police said.