In the news
Johnny Bobbitt, the homeless man who spent his last $20 to help a woman who ran out of gas on an interstate in Philadelphia last November, is suing the woman and her boyfriend, claiming they mismanaged a large part of the $400,000 they raised on his behalf through an online fundraising campaign.
John Guerrero, 48, and Virginia Yearnd, 39, both of Houston were charged with child endangerment after authorities said they left their 11-year-old daughter home alone while they traveled to Detroit to attend a concert by the metal band Godflesh.
Nicola Weydeveld, 19, told police in Santa Fe, N.M., that he needed some trash carts for personal use when he and Kenneth Brooks, 50, were arrested in the thefts of several industrial grade trash cans and carts, including one valued at more than $3,200.
Krystal Story, a television news reporter in Colorado Springs, Colo., and her cameraman, Pete Miller, escaped serious injury when a motorist plowed through a crime scene and struck a police car as Story was doing a live report about a shooting.
Jack Harris, the police chief of Lyndonville, Vt., said it was better to be safe than sorry, referring to a high school that went on lockdown after officers received a report about someone carrying a “long gun” near campus that turned out to be a student with an umbrella.
Paul Gonzales, 45, described as a serial “dine-and-dasher,” was arrested by Los Angeles police on 10 felony charges accusing him of taking at least eight women out to dinner at expensive restaurants and then sneaking away, leaving them to pay the bill.
Shane Hale, a Florida man who sent out an alert on social media that his dog, Harley, had been washed overboard during a storm as the two sailed to the Florida Keys, got his dog back the next day when it was found safe on a nearby beach.
John Jenkins of Dunmore, Pa., who told state troopers he cut a brake line on his girlfriend’s car to get a piece of pipe so she could smoke crack, was arrested on a homicide charge after the girlfriend died when the car crashed into a tree.
Wesley Pompa, a deputy fire chief in Harrison, Wis., said an 11-year-old boy who had been playing in a flooded ditch when he was sucked into a storm sewer, was pulled to safety after rescuers saw him wiggling his fingers up through an opening in a nearby manhole cover.