Bizarre News - July 22, 2015

Greetings fellow Bizarros:

Even the most carefully thought out scam has a flaw. The woman in today's story had a pretty good scam, as scams go. She would take items off the rack at Nordstrom, and then return them to the register for a refund. And apparently it worked pretty well, too. According to the police she was making hundreds of dollars. But there was one contingency she didn't plan for; what to do if she got caught.

The woman who was accused of shoplifting at the mall in Rhode Island, lost her life when she jumped 25 feet to the ground in a failed attempt to flee from guards.

The 35-year-old woman, who has not been identified, was shopping at the Providence Place Mall when a female security officer saw her taking the clothes.

As the officer approached her, she fled through the garage and she attempted to escape by jumping over a railing barrier. The suspect then fell 25 feet to the grass below and suffered serious injuries. She was rushed to Rhode Island Hospital, where she was pronounced dead.

I don't know what kind of penalties they have in Rhode Island for pinching a $100 blouse, but it can't be as severe as the death penalty. The only other explanation is she thought she was Batman.

Bizarrely,
Lewis

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*-- Police: Man posed as officer, set up fake station in apartment --*
WUHAN CITY, China (UPI) - Chinese police said a disgruntled girlfriend led to the arrest of a man accused of posing as an officer and converting his home into a fake police station. Police in Wuhan City said the man's girlfriend went to police when he threatened to post a sexually explicit video of the couple online, and investigators discovered the man had been posing as an officer named "Inspector Lei" for at least two years. Investigators said the fake inspector had sirens on his car and his apartment was converted into a fake police station, complete with an interrogation room featuring a Chinese flag and a bust of Mao Zedong. Police said the man was posing as on officer for a moneymaking scheme that involved selling falsified Public Security Bureau documents and warrants to members of the public. The man's girlfriend said she started to doubt his honesty after some of her friends told her that he had been flirting with them online. She said he claimed to have been an officer in the military before becoming a police officer. Police said the man admitted to planting a GPS tracking device in the woman's car while it was undergoing repairs. The items seized from the apartment include forged documents, fake police uniforms, GPS devices, pinhole cameras, handcuffs and batons.


*-- Squirrel gets drunk, trashes British bar --*
EVESHAM, England (UPI) - When the secretary of a members-only bar in Britain opened up one day to find the premises trashed, he wasn't expecting the culprit to be a squirrel, let alone a drunk one. Sam Boulter, 62, the secretary of the Honeybourne Railway Club near Evesham in Worcestershire, told the BBC he found the bar covered in beer and smashed glasses and beer bottles when he opened up Sunday evening. After making the discovery, he said he saw a squirrel "staggering around," coming out from behind a box of potato chips. "There were bottles scattered around, money scattered around, and he had obviously run across the bar's pumps and managed to turn on the Caffrey's tap," Boulter said. "He must have flung himself on the handle and drank some, as he was staggering around all over the place and moving a bit slowly. "I've never seen a drunk squirrel before. He was sozzled and looked a bit worse for wear, shall we say," he added. Boulter told the Daily Mail he and two customers spent about an hour chasing around the squirrel, trying to get him out of the bar. He eventually caught the rodent in a trash can and let him go out a window. He said the squirrel's antics cost the bar about $470 in damage. "He is the rowdiest customer we have ever had but I hope he enjoyed his lock-in," Boulter said.


*-- READER COMMENTS --*
I think the people in the Polish town that hath run Winnie
the Pooh 'out of town' must have their heads up the wrong pole...I mean seriously, real bears *don't* wear pants (usually) and the character is based *on* a real bear that was kept in the zoo during the childhood of Christopher Robin Milne.
[And now I know way more about Winnie the Pooh than I ever wanted to.]

That cat shaving thing sounds like a good idea. I get tired of the neighbors letting their cats crap in my yard. I do not own cats so I should not have to clean up their crap. Maybe that would put a stop to that here!? -Gary
[Oh, yeah, that plan doesn't sound like it has any chance to backfire. I suggest you go for it, and please let us know what happens.]

One is left wondering just how long, or short, the umbilical cord is in Mexico compared to the "private parts" of a newborn. They say everything is bigger in Texas, sounds like there might be some competition south of the border in this case. -Tom

*-- END OF READER COMMENTS --*
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