In the news
Jasen Dixon of Sycamore Township, Ohio, said that someone vandalized the “Zombie Nativity” scene he puts up annually at his home, beheading the ghoulish-looking Mary figure and flipping the greenish baby Jesus into the yard.
Kendell Nisbit, 30, a New Yorker from Brooklyn, faces charges after police said he tried to stab another Staten Island Ferry passenger, who dodged the knife, during a fight over an onboard power outlet.
Lillian Maduro, 49, was arrested by New York City police on robbery and assault charges after they used DNA to connect her to the mugging of a 90-yearold Holocaust survivor who wouldn’t let go of her purse when a thief tried to snatch it.
Monica Ross, a research scientist for the Florida’s Sea to Shore Alliance, said Washburn, a pregnant manatee rescued off Cape Cod, Mass., in September and later released in Florida, has traveled to the northern Bahama islands, also a rare spot for manatees.
Elizabeth Womack of Sparta, Mo., will get a $6,000 settlement from the city after the city’s police chief at the time caught her roaming pit bull, Chase, and put it in a crate but then killed the dog at the department’s shooting range when he was called away and didn’t have anywhere to leave the animal.
Tyler Krayer, 17, a transgender high school student in Derby, Kan., was named king of the winter Holly Ball after receiving the most votes from students, saying, “I wasn’t expecting to win because there were so many, like, athletic candidates.”
Anthony Heard, 36, of Pittsburgh, arrested in a convenience-store robbery, told authorities that he couldn’t go to jail because his wife had been arrested the day before and his five children, ages 1 to 12, were home alone, police said.
Tammy Van Dyke of Apple Valley, Minn., filed a lawsuit against a Minneapolis hospital after her newborn son was mistakenly taken to another mother and breast-fed when nursery workers in 2012 didn’t properly match the codes on the identification bands of the infant and mother.
Mary Smith, 47, of Brownsville, Pa., had holiday music blaring from her car as she drove through the yard of her ex-boyfriend’s home, nearly running the man and his family over as they set up a Christmas-light display, resulting in her arrest on multiple charges, including driving under the influence, state police said.