Oklahoma City - Dennis Newton was on trial for the armed robbery of a convenience store in a district court this week when he fired his lawyer. Assistant district attorney Larry Jones said Newton, 47, was doing a fair job of defending himself until the store manager testified that Newton was the robber. Newton jumped up, accused the woman of lying and then said, "I should of blown your [expletive] head off." The defendant paused, then quickly added, "-- if I'd been the one that was there."
The jury took 20 minutes to convict Newton and recommend a 30-year sentence.
A woman was reporting her car as stolen, and mentioned that there was a car phone in it. The policeman taking the report called the phone, and told the guy that answered that he had read the ad in the newspaper and wanted to buy the car.
They arranged to meet, and the thief was arrested.
PENNSAUKEN, N.J. - A would-be-burglar allegedly left behind just the ticket for police to nab their man. It seems Jose Sanchez needed to make sure the door to Hill-Rom Corp. wouldn't fully close while he allegedly looted the place, police said --so he stuck a piece of paper in the door: a traffic ticket he'd been issued the night before.
Police found the ticket Thursday -- with Sanchez's name and address on it -- in the door at the robbery scene. He'd been issued the ticket for driving with a cracked windshield. Sanchez, 31, was arrested at his Camden home and jailed on $5,000 bail. Authorities recovered some of the stolen property at a Camden tavern.
Clever drug traffickers used a propane tanker truck entering El Paso from Mexico. They rigged it so propane gas would be released from all of its valves while the truck concealed 6,240 pounds of marijuana. They were clever, but not bright. They misspelled the name of the gas company on the side of the truck.
Chicago - A man robbing a dry cleaning store blew off part of one finger with a shotgun, police said. "This is no toy; the gun is loaded," the robber said to his victims Monday in the Pekin Cleaners on Chicago's south side. Police said the robber, wearing a red handkerchief over his face and carrying a sawed-off 12-gauge shotgun, then opened the gun to show it was loaded. When he closed it, the weapon fired, taking off two-thirds of the little finger of his left hand. After the gun fired, he took $10 from the cash register and a portable television set from the counter and fled.
Police said they recovered the tip of the finger and were able to get a fingerprint. A store employee, Hattie Butler, said she did not realize the robber had injured himself because he did not show any signs of pain.
R.C. Gaitlin, 21, walked up to two patrol officers who were showing their squad car computer equipment to children in a Detroit neighborhood. When he asked how the system worked, the officers asked him for a piece of identification so they could demonstrate. Gaitlin gave them his driver's license, they entered it into the computer and moments later they arrested Gaitlin because information on the screen showed that Gaitlin was wanted for a two-year-old armed robbery in St. Louis, Missouri.