An apparently deranged man jumped into a moving truck parked at Avenue I in Marine Park, and took both Good Samaritans and police on a wild chase. He was wearing nothing but a shirt and underwear. Photo and caption courtesy of the NY Daily News
I’m sitting in Logan airport waiting for my flight to Chi-town to visit Sam before she begins her residency and I don’t see her for the next four years. Thanks to Emirates United (who knew), I have free internet and have been surfing the web for the day’s best stories. They are, in no particular order, all below, and all fabulous.
CLASSY
A couple was arrested Wednesday for trying to sell their 6-month-old baby in a Walmart parking lot in Salinas, California. They approached two women, who of course thought they were joking, but as the man persisted, the women became alarmed and called the police. The couple, Samantha Tomasini and Patrick Fousek, was arrested in their (messy) house, and police noted that they seemed high on methamphetamine. Tomasini, 20, told Child Protective Services when they took the baby from her that she’d breastfed while on drugs. They were arrested for being under the influence of narcotics, and in addition Fousek, 38, was charged with violating probation….(via the Daily Beast)
WTF
An unidentified man wearing only underpants, sneakers, and an unbuttoned dress shirt was arrested yesterday in Brooklyn after stealing a delivery truck and going on a joyride/demolition derby through the borough. And that’s not the weirdest part: According to the Daily News, “the lunatic was munching on leaves straight from tree branches and menacing kids with a garden hose in Marine Park before he suddenly hopped behind the wheel of a parked delivery truck and sped off — with a worker still inside.” Straight from the tree branches? Not from the ground like a normal crazy person? During the wild ride (throughout which the passenger was screaming and hanging on for dear life), the driver hit parked and moving cars on either side of the road, and eventually clipped two 12-year-old girls. They were relatively unharmed, and one summed up the occurrence with classic New York–child impassivity: “I turned around and the truck hit me,” Amelia Hellebusch told the Post. “It was a fun day until this happened.” (via New York Magazine)
And Just Downright Mean
Sometimes it seems like, say, seven out of ten times you get into a cab, if you asked the person driving it if he or she knew how to kill a man, the driver would say yes. They’ve got road rage all day long, they’re constantly meeting new and scary people, and they never get to go to the bathroom. Good odds, right? Well, Veronica Escalona gambled on those odds, and lost, when she asked a friendly cabbie to put her in touch with someone who would murder her husband for hire.
Veronica wasn’t just asking anybody. She was asking Rachid Rakhis, whom she knew pretty well from hiring him over and over for a month to drive her around, following her estranged husband in a desperate attempt to catch him cheating. From the Post:
When he commuted to the Upper East Side, she watched. When he strolled through shopping malls, she tailed him. And when he slept in his new home in North Jersey, she was outside — waiting with the well-meaning cabby she paid to drive her on her jealousy-fueled jaunts.
The taxi fares soon exceeded $1,000. Not long ago, she’d had enough, and she turned to Rakhis and said: “I want him dead!” At which point, Rakhis made a judgment call: “I said to myself, ‘This guy is innocent. I’ve never seen him with another woman.'” And he’d know, from following the guy for a month. So instead of putting her in touch with the Cabdrivers’ Hit-Man Hotline (on call 24 hours in all boroughs except Staten Island), he contacted the police, who set up a sting. Veronica was busted paying an undercover cop $2,000 to kill her husband.
She should have known it costs more than two grand to get a man killed. At least, it does if you don’t have the taxi-driver courtesy discount…(via New York Magazine)
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