In the news

■ Greg Kliemisch, a U.S. Postal Service inspector, said his agency has begun an investigation after some residents in Paterson, N.J., reported a gluelike substance on mailboxes that prevents their letters from going down the chute — a method thieves use to try to snatch envelopes containing money.

■ Kathleen Romans, a juvenile court judge in Ohio’s Butler County, dismissed charges against a 9-year-old boy who said he took a handgun to school because he’d been bullied.

■ Tonya Virtue, 33, of Mountain Grove, Mo., has pleaded guilty to selling counterfeit Louis Vuitton items to customers throughout the country in a scheme that netted $50,000, prosecutors said.

■ Paul Thompson says many curious drivers have pulled over near his Whitehall, N.Y., business after he paid a local artist for an 11-foot-8-inch-tall, half-ton steel sculpture of Bigfoot and placed the piece out front, an idea Thompson said he had after meeting people who were searching for Bigfoot around the town, where some say the creature of legend lurks.

■ Scott Rogers said he thought his 6-month-old baby’s pacifiers were disappearing in the usual places like restaurants or in between couch cushions, Oklahoma’s KFOR-TV reported, but when his and his wife’s Shar-Pei, Dovey, became ill, they took her to an Edmond veterinarian, who removed 21 of the plastic objects from the dog’s stomach.

■ Sgt. Ray Kelly of the Alameda County, Calif., sheriff’s office said Darion Mulder, a psychiatric patient, was recaptured after escaping from a hospital, attempting to steal two cars, then running into freeway traffic where he was hit by a car.

■ Lisa Harding, 32, of Madison, Wis., was sentenced to four years in prison, the State Journal reported, after she pleaded guilty to robbing three banks in December 2016 — when she was eight months pregnant.

■ Mark Seaman says a Philadelphia cabdriver ordered him and his male domestic partner out of the vehicle after Seaman kissed his partner on the top of the head, and now, eight years later, The Philadelphia Inquirer reports that the city has ordered the taxi company to pay Seaman $500.

■ Kamaron Lyshe said he’ll have to start from scratch after his Avondale, Ohio, residence burned down because another tenant in the multifamily home accidentally set the building ablaze while trying to kill bedbugs.