In the news
TyLon Pittman, 5, told his mom that he had dialed 911 to tell police in Byram, Miss., he was worried the Grinch was trying to steal Christmas, but she didn’t believe him until officer Teresa Pittman knocked on the door to reassure TyLon that the green creature wasn’t going to take anyone’s gifts.
Julie Centeno, 25, and her fiance, Curtis Wilson, who escaped with just their coats when their apartment building in Woburn, Mass., caught fire, now also have her wedding dress and diamond ring, which firefighters found undamaged in the wreckage.
Jeff Flynn, a New Jersey State Police spokesman, said investigators are searching for the person who stole from a trooper’s home in North Brunswick an unmarked police SUV containing weapons and uniforms and used it in two robberies and a gasoline theft before abandoning it.
David Eiffe, fire chief in Fulton, N.Y., said firefighters pulled a man to safety with a rope and then used ice rescue suits to rescue a woman stranded in her kayak when the pair ran into problems while saving the woman’s dog, which had fallen through the ice into the Oswego River.
Robert Scheuerer, 26, a Long Island, N.Y., police officer, faces up to nine years in prison after pleading guilty to aggravated vehicular homicide when he was driving drunk and crashed into a van in 2016, killing the driver.
Phyllis Lindsey, 70, of Edmond, Okla., said that what she thought was a social media romance ended in an FBI investigation when her son learned that she was duped out of more than $225,000 by a man who claimed to be a U.S. Army general stationed in Syria.
Mike Chapman, sheriff of Loudoun County, Va., praised the department’s drone operators, who needed just 20 minutes to locate a lost 92-year-old hunter who spent the night in the woods, after about two dozen people, dogs and a helicopter spent about 16 hours hunting him.
Gregory Norwood, 56, faces burglary charges after Caddo Parish, La., sheriff’s deputies said he used his boat to steal fishing gear, furnishings and outdoor equipment from boathouses and piers on area lakes.
Gina Raimondo, the governor of Rhode Island, is telling people a week before Christmas, “Don’t worry, we’ll get a new tree,” after media reports that the Statehouse Christmas tree had bare branches and its needles posed a fire hazard.