WhiteBoard News for Monday, February 10, 2003
Miami, Florida (Reuters):
A man the FBI dubbed the "bumbling bank robber" was convicted after investigators matched his DNA to the gold teeth knocked out when a van hit the fleeing suspect, prosecutors said Wednesday.
Charles Edward Jones was convicted of bank robbery on Tuesday in U.S. District Court and faces up to life imprisonment, U.S. Attorney Marcos Jimenez said.
On Sept. 30, 2002, Jones walked into a Wachovia Bank in Miami, pulled a gun from his pocket and robbed a teller of about $16,000, according to trial evidence.
As he ran out of the bank, he stuffed the gun into his waistband, accidentally firing it into his pants. The bullet missed him but when he stepped into the street he was hit by a van delivering school lunches in the area, investigators said.
Jones managed to stumble to a waiting car, leaving two gold teeth, his gun and hat lying in the street, prosecutors said. The FBI later matched DNA from the teeth with Jones' DNA, proving he had been in the bank.
Jones was arrested a few days after the robbery at a Miami hotel, where agents found a sock full of money from the robbery stuffed into his trousers. The serial numbers from the recovered money matched the bills taken from the bank, Jimenez said.
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Summit County, Colorado (Rocky Mountain News):
The diamond may be forever . . . lost.
A couple pledging their love on a Colorado mountaintop fumbled the ring, and it disappeared into the fresh snow.
Debra Sweeney, 34, of Highlands Ranch, and her husband-to-be, Derek Monnig, 33, notified Summit County authorities that they bungled their betrothal at the top of South Bowl at Keystone Resort last weekend.
While exchanging a 1.25-carat, $6,500 diamond-and-platinum engagement ring, the couple dropped it, losing it in at least a foot of fresh powder at 12,000 feet, said Keystone spokesman Mike Lee.
Sweeney and Monnig had hiked to the top of the mountain, where Monnig proposed.
"He said, 'I have something for you. Honey, I love you. Will you marry me?' " Sweeney said Thursday. "He pulled this box out, opened it up, went to put the ring on my finger - and it dropped.
"It was horrible."
Sweeney would not say who actually fumbled the ring.
"We made a pact up there: We are not going to tell anybody who dropped it," she said.
The ring bounced off her sleeve and fell into the snow by her boot.
Distraught, she stayed frozen in place on the steep, windswept mountain for 15 minutes as Monnig looked for the ring.
A passer-by called the ski patrol for them and then stayed to help in the search.
For about three hours, until about 3 p.m., as many as six ski patrollers - along with the director of the patrol - helped the couple sift through the snow.
Sweeney returned to the mountain the next day to search with a metal detector - to no avail. Plans to call out search dogs were abandoned because the ring was so new it didn't have a human scent.
Luckily, the ring was insured, and Sweeney says it will be replaced.
The couple plan to return to the mountain in the spring to search for their ring, but Sweeney says she can bear the loss.
"It's much better to lose the ring than the guy," she said.
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Rio do Janeiro, Brazil (Jornal da Globo):
A Brazilian woman and a Japanese man who "met" on the Internet have got married without ever meeting each other in the flesh.
The couple, who dated online for two and a half years, were married through documents at a city council in Brazil.
The couple have exchanged pictures.
The woman, Ida Freitas Nirakami told Jornal da Globo: "At first I thought it was weird but then I realised he was the man of my dreams."
Sergio Takashi sent a document from Japan allowing Mrs Nirakami's best friend, Viviane Pereira, to represent him at their wedding and to say "I do" on his behalf.
They will finally meet next month when Mr Takashi arrives in Brazil and they still plan to hold a conventional wedding ceremony.
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Edogawa-ku, Japan (Mainichi Times):
Sumo wrestlers will be enlisted to fight the growing crime rate by conducting a nighttime patrol of the area around their Edogawa-ku stable from this week.
Officials from the Isenoumi Stable hope that their hefty help will not only thin out the ranks of criminals, but also swell the number of fans of the ancient sport.
"Anybody thinking of committing a crime would run away if they were confronted by a sumo wrestler," Isenoumi Stablemaster Fujinokawa said.
Starting Wednesday, two Isenoumi grapplers will walk the streets of the districts near the stable each night for about one hour beginning at midnight. They won't be armed, but will carry whistles to alert people of the presence of a wrongdoer and perhaps track them down.
Fujinokawa suggested the idea as much to boost the flagging popularity of sumo as to fight crime, which Metropolitan Police Agency statistics suggest is not so rampant around Edogawa-ku.
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Chow
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