WhiteBoard News for Friday, August 29, 2003

Phnom Penh, Cambodia (AP):

A woman in Cambodia has given herself up to authorities after accidentally killing her husband in a scuffle in which she squeezed his testicles until he fainted, a newspaper reported Friday. 

Saut Chin, 46, was fed up with physical abuse from her husband when she grabbed his testicles until he passed out in the incident Tuesday, the Rasmei Kampuchea newspaper reported. 

Fearing that her husband, Ouch Yan, 52, might regain consciousness and start beating her again, Saut Chin tied his neck with a scarf to a bed, the newspaper said. 

The exact cause of Ouch Yan's death was not known. 

The incident occurred in a village near Sihanoukville, a port city 115 miles southwest of Phnom Penh, news reports said. 

Saut Chin and her husband Ouch Yan, 52, were arguing when the husband then kicked his wife in the crotch, the reports said. 

"Hurt badly and fed up, she grabbed her husband's testicles and squeezed them with full strength until he fell unconscious on the spot," Rasmei Kampuchea said, citing police reports of the woman's confession. 

After discovering that her husband was dead, Saut Chin reported herself to local authorities and asked to be jailed. She said she had not intended to kill her husband "but only to teach him a lesson," according to the newspaper. 
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Tucson, Arizona (AP):

A parrot's parody of a damsel in distress caused quite a commotion. 

Tucson police and firefighters broke down a door after being called to a house and hearing a woman's screams coming from inside. 

But police soon realized that the sounds weren't coming from a woman in woe. 

"The parrot's screams sounded identical to those of a distressed adult female," Officer Andrew Davies said in his report. 

The ruckus was the work of Oscar, a 2-year-old yellow-naped Amazon parrot. 

Police found him intermittently making laughing and screaming sounds as he sat inside his large white cage. 

The mix-up began on Saturday when a 911-hang up call was made from the house. 

Police arrived to find the house locked with bars on the windows. 

Hearing what they thought was a woman's voice, police called the fire department. Crews used a pry bar and a battering ram to get through a door. 

Police asked a neighbor to call Dana Pannell, the homeowner. The neighbor said he was home at the time but didn't make the emergency call. 

Although the dialer remains a mystery, the parrot is seemingly off the hook. 

Pannell's wife, Judy, said Oscar doesn't know how to use a phone. 

But Oscar _ named after the Sesame Street character because of his sometimes foul moods _ does have his talents, she said. 

"He sings in Spanish," she said. 
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Brooksville, Florida (St. Petersburg Times):

When Circuit Judge Ric Howard granted a change of venue to Hernando County for the first-degree murder trial of James Utsey, he thought it would increase the chances of finding an impartial jury.

He never guessed he'd be recruited to serve on that jury. But the Brooksville resident recently received a summons from the Hernando County Clerk of Court to report for jury duty Aug. 18 _ the same day he's set to begin presiding over the trial.

"What a hoot, that's me!" Howard recalled thinking when he pulled the clerk's letter from his mailbox. "What are the odds of that happening? The one time I send a case out of county for a change of venue, I get called to serve as a juror on my own case."

This is the first time Howard has granted a change of venue since becoming a judge in 2000. 
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Indiana, Pennsylvania (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette):

Should the question arise, the answer is yes, indeed, you can get your arm hopelessly stuck in a prison toilet.

Confirmation comes courtesy of a 19-year-old inmate at the state prison near Indiana, Pa. The way inmate Raymond Davenport told it to corrections officers, he just didn't buy the tale about a fellow inmate getting his arm wedged in a prison cell toilet a couple months ago.

So he decided to try it himself.

"He said that other inmates told him about this, and he was going to prove them wrong," said Douglas Russell, a spokesman at the prison, the State Correctional Institution Pine Grove.

In a low moment for scientific experimentation, Davenport didn't prove anyone wrong. He got his arm wedged deep in the stainless steel toilet. Prison maintenance workers had to unbolt the toilet from the floor, and prison officials called the volunteer fire department to bring an air chisel to cut the toilet from Davenport's swollen arm.
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