In the news
Lee Upchurch, chief sheriff’s deputy of Choctaw County, Miss., said a 16-year-old was home alone when he fired a single shot from a .270-caliber rifle to kill his hatchet-wielding uncle, who was on the front porch trying to get into the house after making threats two weeks earlier.
Patrick Callahan, a Boston firefighter, said he was just doing “what we do” by standing precariously at the top of a tooshort ladder to grab a little boy being dangled by his mother from a third-floor window of a burning home.
Paige Burnett, 10, said she was at first excited but then became “so scared” about a possible explosion when she and 9-year-old friend Sage Menzies found a World War I-era practice bomb while swimming at a lake northwest of Detroit, but authorities later determined that it was harmless.
Dana Lombardo, spokesman for the Philadelphia Zoo, said one of the four peacocks that escaped onto a nearby interstate Wednesday and snarled traffic for hours, was found dead, likely hit by a car, as authorities continued hunting for the other three birds.
Jonathan Bayle said he initially thought a television show or movie was being filmed when he saw a soft-top Porsche Carrera crash under another vehicle in Sydney, with the driver, a hotel valet who was parking the car, having to be cut free of the wreckage.
Joe Onosko, police commissioner in Portsmouth, N.H., said it’s “not a good work environment,” but everyone is “soldiering on” as consultants prepare a plan to deal with rats, mold and roof leaks at the city’s Police Department.
Shane Foley, an Indianapolis police sergeant, said officers used a drone to drop a flotation device to a 41-year-old theft suspect who dove into a pond as officers were chasing him, but then struggled to tread water.
Ryan Barr, 24, of Moundsville, W.Va., was arrested, accused of child neglect after authorities received calls about videos posted on social media reportedly showing Barr putting his two children in a dryer one at a time, shutting the door and turning it on.
Toni Whaley and her husband, Jeff, of Douglas County, Kan., who adopted five siblings ranging in age from 3-12, said they were lucky to learn about the children’s desire to stay together before a story about the kids went viral and generated so much interest that it crashed the “Adopt Kansas Kids” website.