Dateline: Wisconsin— Police in Mukwonago said a man was arrested after he used a cigarette lighter while trying to siphon gasoline from a van. The man, who was visiting friends, went to drive home early Saturday morning but realized he didn’t have enough gas in his SUV. Police said the man tried to “borrow” some gas from a nearby vehicle. Apparently, the man couldn’t see how much gas was in the container. Naturally, he used a lighter to check. Nearby residents called police after the inevitable blast of fire burned the man’s hands. Police later found the injured man in a store parking lot. He was arrested for theft and negligent use of burning materials. Dateline: Ohio— Cincinnati Local News 12 reports that Michelle Allen, 32, was charged with disorderly conduct after chasing children, peeing on a porch and blocking traffic while wearing a cow suit. Allen was arrested after blocking traffic on North Verity Avenue. It was reported that earlier Allen had been chasing children in the 3100 block of Wilbraham and urinated on a neighbor’s porch. The arresting officer said she smelled of alcohol, slurred her speech and cursed at him. After she was booked and released, police told her to go home and stay there. Police reports, accompanied by Allen’s udder-exposing mug shot, did not speculate as to why the woman was wearing a cow costume during her crime spree. Allen is allegedly known in her community for a number of bizarre incidents, including once standing outside the police station with a fishing pole, fishing the front lawn. Dateline: Missouri— A hungry pit bull was knocked out of the running for his second straight Frisbee-catching championship after swallowing a plastic spatula. Wallace the pit bull was to have defended his 2007 crown in the freestyle Frisbee event at the 11 th Purina Incredible Dog Challenge in Gray Summit last weekend. Last Tuesday, owner Andrew Yori, 31, from Rochester, Minn., tried using a piece of cheese to lure Wallace into a pool for a workout on an underwater treadmill to gear up for the event. Unfortunately, Yori placed the cheese on a rubber spatula. Wallace wolfed down the cheese—as well as the spatula. “It was classic Wallace,” Yori told the St. Louis Post-Dispatach . “It was like, ‘Ummm, cheese,’ then whoops ! Down the hatch.” Yori said vets tried to extract the spatula through endoscopy, and when that failed Wallace went into surgery. The vets recommended Wallace take a few weeks to rest after his operation. “That’s going to be hard,” Yori told the newspaper. “Wallace is not exactly the type of dog that chills out.” Dateline: Washington— Monroe police are searching for a man who robbed an armored car guard and escaped by using an inner tube as a getaway vehicle. The robbery happened last Tuesday morning around 11 a.m. in the Bank of America parking lot. The man watched as a security guard walked from the bank to the armored car with an undisclosed amount of cash in a canvas bag. He confronted the guard and sprayed him with pepper spray. According to witnesses, the man then headed to the nearby Skykomish River, “got into an inner tube and floated westbound.” Debbie Willis, spokesperson for the Monroe Police Department, told KING-5 News, “We did get an inner tube that was about 200 yards from the place where he entered the water and took that for evidence.” Making matters even more complicated is the fact that the robber had at least a dozen unwitting assistants. Police believe the robber placed an ad on Craigslist looking for workers for a road maintenance project. Would-be workers were advised to meet near the bank at 11 a.m. wearing “yellow vest, safety goggles, a respirator mask … and, if possible, a blue shirt”—the exact same outfit the robber was sporting. Local media reported at least a dozen similarly dressed workers were at the scene of the robbery. There was no road project in the area. Police say they now have the Craigslist information and they are trying to piece it all together to find the suspect. Dateline: California— Thousands of dollar bills stolen from a restaurant in California’s high desert were allegedly used to pay a court fine. It didn’t take a lot of work for authorities to figure out the crime, either. Patrons of The Homestead restaurant in Inyokern had a tradition of writing on the dollar bills before tacking them to the eatery’s walls. Kern County sheriff’s Sgt. Tyson Davis recognized the stolen loot immediately after 34-year-old Donald Dejarnette used some of the bills to pay off a previous court fine. Several of the bills even had “Homestead” written on them. Dejarnette and four others have been arrested on suspicion of taking $8,000 from the restaurant. About $1,000 has been recovered so far.
Compiled by Devin D. O'Leary. E-mail your weird news to devin@alibi.com.
