In the news

■ Tracy Samuels of Templeton, Mass., was sleeping on the couch when she heard a bang, woke up and asked, “Why is there a truck in my living room?” after a pickup smashed into her house, destroying the family’s Christmas tree and gifts but missing her.

■ Melinda LeBarron, 51, of Muncy Creek Township, Pa., who survived being attacked by a black bear that dragged her about 80 yards near her rural home, said her Chihuahua-mix dog named Bear, which was also bitten, helped save her life by distracting the bruin so she could get away.

■ Tierun Bush, 56, of Jackson, Miss., convicted of stealing the identity of a U.S. military veteran and using it to get more than $130,000 in benefits, including medical care, narcotics and housing, was sentenced to three years in prison and ordered to make full restitution.

■ Sean Harrington, 45, was wearing a shirt and hat decorated with stickers displaying the word “cocaine” when, New Orleans police say, he was caught spray-painting the word on several buildings, including a historic structure, along Bourbon Street.

■ Charles Stratton, 50, was jailed by police in Okeechobee, Fla., on charges of aggravated battery, grand theft and assault after police say he snatched a handbag from a 76-year-old woman in a restaurant and when she ran out to try to get it back, he ran over her in the parking lot.

■ Timothy Lee Robinson, 46, charged in Mobile, Ala., with raping a 3-year-old child almost 30 years ago after DNA tests connected him to the case, has asked a judge to treat him as a youthful offender because he was 17 at the time of the 1989 assault.

■ Sean Castorina, 43, a jail inmate in Graham, N.C., faces conspiracy and other charges after sheriff’s deputies were alerted about a letter he sent to the wrong address that contained bomb-making instructions for two accomplices to blow a hole in a wall so he could escape.

■ Massimo Montalbano, a senior animal sciences major at the University of Missouri in Columbia, took one of his favorite dairy cows, a 3-year-old Holstein named Amelia, to campus to join him in his graduation photo.

■ Tony Harper, whose 4-foot lighted snowman cutout in front of his Milwaukee home was decapitated, got an apology and $50 for a new snowman from a man and two women who said they vandalized the snowman after drinking at a local bar.