Watercooler Stories

Gun-toting grandma foils burglars

CARTHAGE, Mo., Nov. 28 (UPI) -- A gun-toting grandmother in Missouri foiled a pair of would-be burglars.

Police, who did not release the 63-year-old woman's name, said she temporarily captured Faith Barrick of Carthage and a teenage boy, the Joplin Globe reported. The pair escaped when she went to her telephone to call police but two suspects were arrested three hours later based on the description she gave.

The grandmother was eating lunch with one of her grandchildren when she saw a woman in her yard, Lt. Aaron Richardson of the Jasper County Sheriff's Office said. She got her gun and waited while the teenager broke through her door.

Barrick contacted police before her arrest, claiming she had stopped at the woman's house because of car trouble and the woman pulled a gun on her, Richardson said. He said Barrick apparently feared the grandmother had obtained her license plate number.

Barrick and the 16-year-old boy are suspected of carrying out other burglaries in the area, Richardson said. He said the spunky senior may have solved several crimes.

"We're thinking of hiring her," he added.

TV stations' food orders mixed up

WACO, Texas, Nov. 27 (UPI) -- Two Waco, Texas, TV stations found themselves competing for more than ratings when a local restaurant mixed up their delivery orders.

Luby's was charged with the task of delivering food to KWTX-TV and KXXV-TV on Thanksgiving, but in the midst of the hectic holiday rush the broccoli and cheese casserole requested by KWTX staffers was delivered to KXXV instead, the Waco Tribune-Herald reported Tuesday.

"We were laughing about it because we got their broccoli and cheese casserole and they got our yams," KXXV news director Dennis Kinney said.

However, KXXV's yams never made it to KWTX. The second station was left without any food at all until Luby's noticed the mix-up and whipped up a second casserole for the holiday-shift workers.

"Those poor people at Luby's," KWTX news director Katherine Iglesias said. "If you've ever been there on Thanksgiving, the place is a madhouse ... We could all skip a meal just fine. (Luby's) did a wonderful job. So Happy Thanksgiving to the people over at Channel 25 (KXXV)."

Man charged with shooting out traffic cam

KNOXVILLE, Tenn., Nov. 27 (UPI) -- A Tennessee man has been charged with shooting out a traffic camera, allegedly telling police he wanted to avoid a ticket for running a red light.

Clifford Edward Clark III of Knoxville was arrested early Sunday morning by officers who heard shots fired, WBIR-TV reported. The officers reported finding Clark in his car with a hunting rifle and the camera with three holes in it.

He was charged with felony vandalism and reckless endangerment.

Clark had a new box of bullets with four of them missing, police said. One of the bullets apparently tore right through the camera casing, police alleged.

Investigators say there is no record that Clark had received a ticket from a red-light camera. But they said that records were only available through Nov. 20.

Fla. officials fail to snag bear in city

ORLANDO, Fla., Nov. 27 (UPI) -- The black bear roaming an Orlando, Fla., neighborhood seems to be smarter than the average bear having avoided a trap set for him.

The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Committee said it removed the trap after determining the bruin hadn't come near it or the bait since they were put in place last Wednesday, WKMG-TV Orlando reported Tuesday.

Officials said the black bear, which was spotted roaming the neighborhood last week, appears to have moved on to another area or has found a place to seclude itself.

Locals reported seeing the bear wandering through yards and searching through neighborhood trash bins Tuesday.

"We saw police cars outside, so we came outside to see what was going on. There were a couple of people on bicycles who said they saw maybe two bears, like a mother and a cub, which really surprised us," resident Karen Thomas said.

Officials theorized the bear may have originated from the Wekiva River area.

Two arrested after finding lost ring

SALEM, Ore., Nov. 27 (UPI) -- Two people have been arrested in Salem, Ore., after they brought a ring that had been reported lost into a jeweler for appraisal.

Salem Police Sgt. Albert Gordon, head of the property crimes unit, said the ring's owner reported it lost at a grocery store Nov. 15, and that same day the ring was brought into to a Fred Meyer jewelry department by a man and a woman seeking an appraisal, the Salem (Ore.) Statesman-Journal reported Tuesday.

Gordon said Lonnie Anderson and Jacqueline Shimmin told employees at the store that they had been given the ring by a friend about a month prior to bringing it in to be appraised. However, police determined the ring to be the one reported missing and the two were charged with first-degree aggravated theft of lost or mislaid property.

The sergeant said Anderson and Shimmin did not commit a crime by taking the ring to be appraised, but they lied repeatedly to investigators about the ring's origin and admitted to seeing the ring reported stolen in a newspaper ad that ran Nov. 17, 18 and 19.

Gordon said Oregon law requires people who discover lost property to make a reasonable attempt to return it to its owner.