Odds & Ends

Odds & Ends

Devin D. O'Leary
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5 min read
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Dateline: Minnesota

A burglar in south St. Paul was so easy to track down police didn’t have to lift a finger. Local enforcement officials say that, while breaking into the home of James Wood, 26-year-old Nicholas Wig logged on to his personal Facebook page—and didn’t log back out. “World’s dumbest criminals,” Wood told WCCO in Minneapolis. “I don’t know.” On June 19 Wood came home to discover his house had been ransacked. Credit cards, a cell phone and a watch were missing. “I started to panic,” said Wood. “But then I noticed he had pulled up his Facebook profile.” The social media-loving thief also left behind a pair of Nike tennis shoes, jeans and a belt. It was raining outside the night of the burglary, and the thief apparently removed the wet clothing while surfing the internet. Wood simply posted a notice on Wig’s Facebook page, which included his phone number. Wig texted him later that day. “I replied you left a few things at my house last night, how can I get them back to you.” Amazingly Wig agreed to meet up with Wood. Police arrested the man as he arrived at Wood’s house. He was wearing Wood’s watch when police nabbed him. “I’ve never seen this before,” Dakota County Attorney James Backstrom told WCCO. “It’s a pretty unusual case. Might even make the late-night television shows in terms of not being too bright.” Wig faces up to 10 years in prison and a $20,000 fine.

Dateline: Colorado

The Environmental Protection Agency in Colorado has issued an internal memo instructing employees not to poop in the hallways. In the staff email Deputy Regional Administrator Howard Cantor mentioned “several” inappropriate bathroom “incidents.” Among the incidents were paper-clogged toilets and “an individual placing feces in the hallway.” According to the memo, administrators are “taking this situation very seriously and will take whatever actions are necessary to identify and prosecute these individuals.” Employees with knowledge of the phantom pooper’s identity have been urged to notify management. Following the memo, the EPA consulted a workplace violence specialist, a move that one EPA spokesperson said “reflects our commitment to securing a safe workplace.”

Dateline: South Carolina

And you thought the East Coast/West Coast rap wars were bad? A man who worked at a Chick-fil-A in northern South Carolina has been arrested for robbing a KFC. Jeffrey Coley, 50, is accused of pulling up to the drive-thru at a KFC restaurant in Rock Hill, pulling a gun and demanding money. After driving away with $516 in cash, Coley engaged in a brief car chase with police before being apprehended. He is charged with armed robbery, possession of a gun during a violent crime, failure to stop for police and possession of methamphetamine. Chick-fil-A spokesperson Mark Baldwin told
The Rock Herald Coley was fired on June 18 from a restaurant in Indian Land after he failed to show up for work on two consecutive days. Apparently Coley maintained his brand loyalty, because less than a week later, he allegedly robbed the KFC.

Dateline: Alaska

A couple preparing for their young son’s birthday party suddenly found themselves dealing with a party crasher. “I was literally in the room, and I heard this cracking,” Glenn Merrill told the
Juneau Empire newspaper. “And the next thing you know, there’s this bear that, I mean, literally fell right from [the skylight]. It was like three feet away from me.” A juvenile male black bear had climbed up on the roof of the family’s Starr Hill neighborhood home and came tumbling down through the Plexiglas skylight. Merrill shouted for his parents to take his 1-year-old son upstairs and started closing doors to the living room. The bear quickly recovered from his fall, then calmly wandered over to the living room table and began clearing it of birthday treats. “The bear walks over and puts its paws up on the table and starts licking his birthday cupcakes, and I’m just like, you’ve got to be kidding me,” said Merrill’s wife, Alicia Bishop. The bear devoured most of the lemon blueberry and peanut butter cupcakes before being “shooed” out the house’s front door. In all, the animal was only inside the residence about “three or four” minutes. After being shut out of the front door, the animal wandered around to the back of the house and peered inside from the wooden porch. “It was up against the window like, ‘I want more cupcakes,’” Bishop said. The bear was eventually chased into some woods after Merrill borrowed some bear spray from a neighbor. The Starr Hill neighborhood is located up against Alaska’s Mount Roberts. “That’s just a very bear-y spot,” Alaska Department of Fish and Game Management Coordinator Ryan Scott told the Juneau Empire.

Compiled by Devin D. O'Leary. Email your weird news to devin@alibi.com.

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