In the news
Jim Caldwell of Unequal Technologies, a company that makes bullet-resistant panels, called it “a gift that hopefully they’ll never have to use” after the company gave eighth-graders graduating from a private school in Chadds Ford, Pa., 10-by-12-inch ballistic shields for their backpacks as the youths head to high school.
Scott Carline, police chief of Mashpee, Mass., said investigators are trying to find out who took a lifesize silhouette of a kneeling soldier, which was set up as a tribute to a Marine killed in Iraq, from a home’s front yard, prompting the homeowners to put in the image’s place a sign that reads “Put It Back.”
Duncan Hutchinson, 52, attempting to row across the Atlantic Ocean from New York to Scotland, was caught in a storm and had to call the U.S. Coast Guard to rescue him about 20 miles off the New Jersey coast.
Dennis Alexander, who resigned from his teaching job after accidentally shooting a gun during a firearms safety class in a classroom in Seaside, Calif., will not face charges after prosecutors said he didn’t commit a crime when he shot a round into the ceiling.
Eiwnetu Kano, an Ethiopian police officer, said fishermen and residents tried to rescue Docho Eshete, a Protestant pastor who died when he was dragged underwater by a crocodile as he performed a baptism in Lake Abaya.
David Gabriel, sheriff of Oglethorpe County, Ga., said he “wouldn’t worry” about questions from outsiders about his decision to hire Taylor Saulters, who was fired a day earlier from the Athens-Clarke County Police Department for hitting a fleeing suspect with his patrol car.
Julian Whittington, sheriff of Bossier Parish, La., said the parish mailed 8,000 $200 citations to vehicle owners who drove their uninsured cars or trucks past one of 12 license-plate readers installed at intersections in 2017.
Clarissa Rose Smith, 83, who crashed into an Amish buggy nine months ago, killing a pregnant newlywed, rear-ended another buggy on the same road near Licking, Mo., telling police she “didn’t see the buggy in time to get around it.”
Robin Garlock, 44, of Warren, Ohio, was wounded in both shoulders by a handgun he’d hidden inside his oven when his girlfriend, unaware of the gun’s presence, turned on the oven to do some baking and several cartridges inside the gun exploded, police said.