Watercooler Stories

Police: Robber with sword stole pain pills

GLENDALE, Colo., July 1 (UPI) -- Police in Colorado said a man armed with a 30-inch samurai sword took painkillers from a Walgreens pharmacy.

Investigators said Dylan Lee Suomi, 19, of Denver, jumped over the counter at the Glendale pharmacy, threatened employees with the sword and ran off with an undisclosed amount of Oxycontin pills, The Denver Post reported Wednesday.

Police said Suomi was caught by officers about 100 yards from the Walgreens. He was arrested on suspicion of aggravated robbery of a controlled substance and felony menacing.

Suomi was being held at the Arapahoe County Jail on $50,000 bond.

Pig survives crash, found in woman's pool

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark., July 1 (UPI) -- An Arkansas woman said she was shocked when she looked out a window and saw an 800-pound pig taking a dip in her backyard pool.

The pig, a survivor of a June 22 crash involving a truck carrying 90 sows to a processing plant, was discovered Monday by LeAnn Baldy, who lives in an unincorporated neighborhood near the interchange of Interstates 40 and 430, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported Wednesday.

"It's crazy, it's really crazy," Baldy said. "I'm just shocked. It's cool. Not many people look out their back window and see a pig in their pool."

The pig's death sentence was commuted by Jim Stonehocker, executive vice president for Odom's Tennessee Pride, which had planned to use the truckload of hogs to make sausage products.

"We could not put that into the meat stream," he said. "For a week it has been in the wild. What has happened to it? What has it been in contact with? You need to know what your hog has been eating."

"We believe this hog has earned the right to go and do something else," Stonehocker said. "We're in that process. We don't have it totally resolved."

Man allegedly swiped watch in courthouse

LARGO, Fla., July 1 (UPI) -- Authorities in Florida said a man swiped a $1,000 watch from a courthouse security checkpoint and was arrested while awaiting a pretrial hearing.

The Pinellas County Sheriff's Office said deputies scanned security camera footage of the metal detector checkpoint Monday at the Criminal Courts Complex in Largo after a man who entered the courthouse complained that his Wittnauer watch, worth $1,000, disappeared from the tray he placed it on for scanning, The St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times reported Wednesday.

Marianne Pasha, a spokeswoman for the sheriff's office, said a deputy identified the thief as Willie Earl Jeter, 53, who was found in a fourth-floor courtroom awaiting a pretrial hearing on cocaine dealing charges.

Pasha said Jeter gave the watch to the deputies and told them "he didn't even need a watch but he liked the way this one looked."

Jeter was arrested and charged with grand theft. He was released after posting $5,000 bail.

Man stole computer from jail

KALAMAZOO, Mich., July 1 (UPI) -- A Michigan college student was sentenced to 180 days for what the judge described as "the dumbest crime I've heard today" -- stealing a computer from a jail.

William Bradley, 25, a student at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, was convicted of larceny after he took a computer that was delivered to the jail while he was serving a sentence for a separate case and concealed it behind some trash bins to be picked up later, the Kalamazoo Gazette reported Wednesday.

Bradley's actions were recorded by Kalamazoo County Jail security cameras.

Kalamazoo County Circuit Judge Gary Giguere Jr. said during the sentencing it was "the dumbest crime I've heard today."

"It may be in the top half dozen in my career," he said. "You need to get a handle on this theft thing. Your life of crime is not working out."

Bradley agreed with the judge.

"I'm not the best criminal," he admitted.