Now Do I Have Your Attention?
Linda Jean Fahn, 69, of Goodyear, Ariz., finally succumbed to a frustration many wives suffer. On Dec. 30, as her husband sat on the toilet, she barged in and “shot two bullets at the wall above his head to make him listen,” she told Goodyear police when they were called to the scene. Fahn said her husband “would have had to be 10 feet tall to be hit by the bullets,” as ABC15 in Phoenix reported. However, police officers estimated the bullets struck about seven inches over the man’s head as he ducked. She was charged with aggravated assault.
Blood Sausage to the Rescue!
Chris McCabe, 70, of Totnes, England, escaped a frigid death thanks to his own quick thinking on Dec. 15. McCabe owns a butcher shop, and he had entered the walk-in freezer behind the shop when the door slammed behind him. Ordinarily, that wouldn’t be a problem, as a release button inside the freezer can open the door. But the button was frozen solid. So McCabe looked around the freezer and saw the shop’s last “black pudding,” or blood sausage, which he used as a battering ram to unstick the button. “They are a big, long stick that you can just about get your hand around,” McCabe told The Mirror. “I used it like the police use battering rams to break door locks in. Black pudding saved my life, without a doubt.” He believes he would have died within 30 minutes in the -4 degree temperature had the blood sausage battering ram not worked.
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Fighting Fire with…Ice?
One of Quebec City, Canada’s iconic tourist attractions is its ice hotel, the 45-room Hotel de Glace. But on Jan. 9, the hotel’s unlikeliest disaster—a fire—broke out in one of the guest rooms, the CBC reported. Manager Jacques Desbois admitted that, “When I received the phone call, they had to repeat twice that there was a fire in the ice hotel.” Predictably, the flames did not spread and caused little damage to the structure, although smoke spread throughout the hotel and residents were evacuated. “In a room made out of ice and snow, there are few clues to look at,” Desbois said. Each room has candles, and the hotel is considering the possibility that one of them caused the fire.
Family Values vs. Family Valuables
Alyce Davenport, 30, and Diron Conyers, 27, of Southbridge, Mass., couldn’t make it to the funeral of Audra Johnson, Davenport’s mother, on Jan. 5 because they were busy stealing a safe from Johnson’s home. Southbridge police started searching for the pair after the decedent’s boyfriend discovered her safe was missing, reported The Worcester Telegram and Gazette. When police stopped Davenport the next day, they found her deceased mother’s safe in the trunk of the car she was driving (also registered to Johnson) and seized it. Davenport and Conyers were arrested at a Sturbridge motel, where officers found jewelry, keys, cellphones and other items formerly belonging to Audra Johnson.
Pest Control Gone Wrong
An unnamed man tried an unconventional method to kill a wolf spider in his Redding, Calif., apartment on Jan. 7. He set it afire with a torch lighter. Unfortunately, the burning spider ran onto a mattress and caught it on fire. Residents were able to put out the mattress fire, but not before the flames had reached nearby drapes, a flag collection and a closet, reported the Redding Record Searchlight. When a garden hose failed to douse the growing blaze, firefighters were called—preventing it from spreading to other apartments. The blaze caused about $11,000 in damage.
Just Horsing Around?
Daniel Bennett, 18, of Irvington, Ala., was charged in Mobile County with bestiality after “engaging in sexual contact with an animal, to wit: a horse.” The horse’s owner, Francine Janes, and her husband became suspicious when their dogs started barking on the evening of Jan. 4. They found Bennett, dressed in a trench coat and carrying burglar’s tools, hiding in one of their barn stalls, Janes told WPMI-TV. Bennett told Janes “he wanted to pet (Polly) the horse,” but he admitted to sheriff’s investigators he had instead sexually molested Polly. Janes said she suspects Bennett had visited Polly “seven, maybe 10 times,” because “toilet paper had been left; items had been turned over, and that’s as far as I want to go.”
Plan Z From Outer Space?
Troy, Mich., police received two calls early on Jan. 10, both leading them to the Zion Church. One call was from the church, reporting vandalism caused by gunfire. The other was from the alleged shooter, who told police the church was, in fact, “an alien spaceship.” Surveillance video shows the unnamed shooter, 40, driving up to the church around 5 a.m. and firing shots into the doors. “He was talking very strangely about how the Zion Church is an alien spaceship for reptiles,” Troy Police Capt. Bob Redmond told WJBK-TV in Detroit. Police were assessing the shooter’s mental health to determine whether charges would be filed.
