Dateline: Massachusetts The North Adams Transcript reports that a high schooler has pled not guilty to stealing a school bus—for the third time. Brandon Bolte, 17, allegedly climbed into the window of a bus parked in the northwestern Massachusetts community of North Adams. According to a police report, keys had been left inside the vehicle’s ignition. Officers pulled over the bus and arrested Bolte after receiving a call from his grandmother. The teen later told police he was driving the bus to visit his biological mother, who lives about 20 miles away. Adams Police Officer Thomas Cook wrote in the police report that he did not get the sense Bolte “understood what he did was wrong,” but he did note that this was was the youth’s “third time stealing a school bus in Berkshire County.” Despite being ratted out by his own grandmother and getting caught red-handed, Bolte pleaded not guilty to charges of larceny of a motor vehicle and unlicensed operation of a motor vehicle. Dateline: Florida Suburban Tampa Bay resident Doyle Hardwick is in jail because his wife wouldn’t let him check his Facebook page. According to the Tampa Bay Times , Hardwick tried plying his wife with beer so that she would fall asleep, but 54-year-old Julie Hardwick refused to go to bed. According to Pasco County arrest reports, she wanted to sit by her husband and look at his Facebook page. With no other recourse open to him, Mr. Hardwick called 911 and told dispatchers that his wife was refusing to let him look at Facebook. According to the 911 transcripts, the caller (CLR), “says him and his wife are sitting next to each other. … CLR is upset because she won’t go to bed. Now they are bickering about who has been drinking. CLR has had 4 beers. Wife has had 8 beers. … CLR is upset because she wouldn’t let him look at Facebook peacefully.” A sheriff’s deputy arrived at the couple’s trailer home in Wesley Chapel while Hardwick was still on the phone to 911. Hardwick told the deputy he had “called 911 because he was upset about his wife sitting next to him and not going to sleep after he gave her beers to go to sleep.” According to Hardwick’s statement to the deputy, “His wife was supposed to go to sleep after he gave her the beers because that was their agreement.” Hardwick allegedly told the deputy, “I just wanted someone to make my wife do what I wanted her to do.” Instead, Mr. Hardwick was arrested for misuse of 911. He pleaded guilty to the crime last month but never showed up to serve his time. A warrant was issued for his arrest and he turned himself in to the Pasco County jail on March 20. He is now serving a 60-day sentence. Hardwick pleaded no contest to a misuse of 911 charge in 2010, serving 10 days in jail for that incident. Court records for the time say he called 911 then to issue a complaint “regarding neighbors defecating into old vehicle fuel tanks for the past three weeks.” Dateline: North Carolina Some bold thieves actually broke into a minimum security prison in Salisbury in order to steal copper. Investigators say the unknown culprits scaled a barbed-wire fence at the Piedmont Correctional Institution and stripped out an air conditioning unit—valued at about $3,000. The Salisbury Post says officers only discovered the theft after finding insulation strewn about both sides of the prison fence. Dateline: Minnesota A high school senior in Oakdale has had his teen sex comedy dreams dashed after a school district superintendent said the boy will not be able to bring two porn stars to his senior prom. After being turned down by a number of local girls, 18-year-old Mike Stone started a Twitter campaign to land a date to his Tartan High School prom, sending requests to some 600 celebrities in January and February. Stone received affirmative messages from Internet porn stars Megan Piper and Emy Reyes. Piper, 19, was unable to attend her own senior prom in Georgia and told The Huffington Post “I thought it would make his night by saying ‘yes.’ ” According to the St. Paul Pioneer-Press , Stone is in the process of raising funds via Twitter to fly his dates to Oakdale. Unfortunately, Patty Phillips, superintendent of the North St. Paul-Maplewood-Oakdale district issued a statement saying all non-students wishing to attend prom need to be approved by officials. Phillips said allowing the porn stars to attend prom would by “inconsistent” with district policies. District spokesperson Jennifer McNeil went further, telling press that Stone’s double date was “not in the best interest” of the school. “if they don’t let us in, I’m going to throw my own party,” Stone told Minnesota’s KSTP-TV.
Compiled by Devin D. O'Leary. Email your weird news to devin@alibi.com.
