Guy Tweets Pot Request, Cops Tweet Him Back

(Newser) – Twitter, it seems, might not be the best place to conduct your weed-related transactions. A worker at an auto shop near Toronto has lost his job after tweeting for pot to be brought to his workplace. "Any dealers in Vaughan wanna make a 20sac chop? Come to Keele/Langstaff Mr. Lube, need a spliff," Sunith Baheerathan posted. He got an enthusiastic reply—from police, the Canadian Press reports via the Globe and Mail. "Awesome! Can we come too?" tweeted the York Regional Police. The conversation became a trending topic in the region.

Baheerathan's firing also became clear through Twitter, where he announced it to a friend. A coworker wouldn't say whether the firing was directly related to his less-than-smooth transaction. Meanwhile, Baheerathan offered further thoughts on the matter: "I've lost complete hope in society man," he tweeted. "There's killers/rapists/people missing and all they care about is a dude asking for weed." His Twitter account has perhaps wisely been converted to private, USA Today notes. (The York Regional Police have a number of other gems on its Twitter feed.)

View the original article here

Cops: Drug Dealer Accidentally Texts Police

(Newser) – A detective in New Jersey's Andover Township got a strange text on his new cell phone: Hey, it asked, want to buy a quarter-pound of pot? Well, sure, replied the detective, who then set up a rendezvous. The would-be seller smelled a rat upon arrival and fled, but police soon confiscated four bags of marijuana from his vehicle, reports NJ.com. Nicholas Delear (yep, his real last name), 33, now faces a slew of drug charges in what might be the easiest bust of the year.

View the original article here

Inmate Plotted Murder ... via Paper Airplane: Cops

(Newser) – A Long Island man accused of rape will now also be charged with conspiracy to murder after what police say was a plot hatched using, well, paper airplanes. Patrick O'Sullivan, 21, had hoped to kill his alleged victim and a witness, police say, and offered a fellow inmate $23,000 to make it happen, via flying notes the men called "kites," NBC New York reports. "Without a vic's statement, the DA's case against me would lose all the power right? As long as you get that done, I will be Gucci," said one message, which the other inmate (who is set to be released soon) then handed over to police.

O'Sullivan's alleged plot was particularly gruesome: He wanted the victim's body dumped in the water, but the witness' body buried ... "so after the case against me collapses and I get out of jail I can dig up the body, cut its head off and mail it to his family for the holidays," one of the notes allegedly said. O'Sullivan is accused of raping the woman at gunpoint while she was housesitting, the New York Daily News reports; he allegedly admitted in one of the notes that he wasn't wearing a condom. O'Sullivan could face life in prison for the rape charge alone. (In another recent case, a wife convinced her husband to shoot their neighbor ... over "telepathic rape.")

View the original article here

Ex-NFLer Watches, via Twitter, as Teens Trash Home

(Newser) – A Labor Day party at an ex-NFLer's Stephentown, New York, vacation home turned into a real mess, as hundreds of partying high-schoolers smashed windows, punched holes in walls, and graffitied the place, the AP reports. But it wasn't just that Brian Holloway was upset by the $20,000 in damage; his main concern was that he wasn't invited. His 19-year-old son spotted tweets about the party and told Holloway, who watched it unfold—by way of tweets and Twitter photos—from his Florida home; one photo showed people standing on a table that the former Patriots offensive lineman bought with his Super Bowl XX bonus. And the kids weren't exactly secretive: The New York Daily News reports that some spray-painted their names on walls; others tweeted invites to the Aug. 31 party a full five days before it happened.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, "It's not hard to identify who they were," says Holloway. "We've got 170 tweets. We have 200 to 220 names already confirmed today. And that data is all going to the sheriffs." That's not the only place the data is going: He has also been posting it to a website dubbed helpmesave300, in an effort to get the teens to come forward, take responsibility, and adjust their behavior. He also wants them to come back, only this time it's to clean up. "I believe that they can be turned around," he explains, per Fox Sports, which has photos from the party and its aftermath. "If we do nothing regarding these 300 students, we will have missed our chance to take a stand for their future."

View the original article here

Dye Trap Nabs Green-Faced Thief

(Newser) – A luckless thief in London was caught not red-handed, but green-faced after breaking into a police "decoy car" equipped with a dye trap, the BBC reports. The 28-year-old, who stole a laptop and other items from the car, was arrested when the system alerted police to the theft and was convicted when police produced photos of his face glowing bright green under ultraviolet light.

The otherwise invisible liquid had been sprayed on him by the booby-trapped car. Police in London are in the process of testing three separate devices that spray thieves with a fine mist that can link them to specific incidents through a combination of chemicals as well as turning them green, reports the Daily Mail.

View the original article here

OJ's New Crime: Cookie Theft?

(Newser) – OJ Simpson has managed to get himself in trouble again—from behind bars. After lunch, guards spotted the former football star, in a Nevada jail for armed robbery, concealing something under his prison outfit, according to the National Enquirer. Turns out there were more than a dozen cookies underneath, Gawker reports. "OJ just stood there with a goofy grin on his face as the guard kept digging inside his shirt and throwing the cookies on the floor," says the Enquirer's source.

Simpson has been urged to cut down on sugary foods due to diabetes, the Daily Mail notes. But "the temptation of the cookies in the prison chow line was too much for him," says the source. "When the guard started pulling cookies out of OJ's shirt, the other inmates started laughing so hard they nearly fell over." His punishment, per the Mail: just a warning.

View the original article here

5 Craziest Crimes of the Week

(Newser) – A crime-fighting fencer and a bizarre cold case involving decades-old murders make the cut: Fencing Coach Foils Crime as Only a Fencing Coach Can: Two Nashville robbers had the misfortune to try to steal a purse in a shopping center parking lot just as Franco Scaramuzza pulled in. That's because Scaramuzza is a fencing coach who had just left practice and still had his equipment with him.Cops: Elderly Pair Killed Their Spouses, Kids Decades Ago: It's a pretty shocking allegation: that a Missouri couple in their seventies killed their spouses, along with two children, decades ago. But that's exactly what prosecutors allege.9-Year-Old Assaults Teacher After She Takes iPad: Police in Rock Hill, South Carolina, were summoned to a school when a boy erupted into a rage after his 26-year-old female teacher made the mistake of ... confiscating his iPad.Inmate Allegedly Plots Murder via Paper Airplanes: A Long Island man accused of rape also faces murder conspiracy charges after police say he tried to recruit a fellow inmate to kill his alleged victim and a witness. His method of communication? Paper airplanes, of course.Cops: Drug Dealer Accidentally Texts Police: A detective in New Jersey's Andover Township got a strange text on his new cell phone: Hey, it asked, want to buy a quarter-pound of pot? The result might be the easiest bust of the year.Click for more crazy crimes.

View the original article here

Scrooge McDuck Helps Crack Murder Case

(Newser) – In life, Miguel Rodriguez was apparently a big fan of Scrooge McDuck. In death, the cartoon character may have helped catch his killers. The Hartford Courant explains the weird case: The 25-year-old Rodriguez was shot to death on a city street this summer, and his killers stole a custom-made gold chain from around his neck that featured the famous duck. His fandom (no explanation offered) and a new state law requiring more thorough records at pawn shops combined to break the case.

Police kept scouring the records of local shops after the killing, and, voila, the McDuck necklace finally turned up, along with the name and photo of the person who sold it. As a result, Tyquan Turner, 21, and Lorenza Christian, 22, were charged in the case. Selling such a distinctive piece of jewelry to a local shop so soon after a murder? Slate assesses the case and awards Christian a 5.5 out of 10 on its dumb-criminal scale.

View the original article here

Bank Burglary Suspect Falls Through Roof, Is Arrested

(AP) – A burglar who tried to break into an ATM at a bank in San Francisco was arrested today after he hopped onto the roof of a nearby building to escape and fell into an apartment, police said. The 230-pound suspect was not seriously injured. "There was a hole in the roof where he fell through just as we were ordering him to put his hands up," says a sergeant. The man used a crowbar to try to break into the ATM inside a Bank of America branch in the Portola neighborhood around 3:45am, say police. He apparently got in through a ventilation shaft, but tripped a silent alarm in the process. He was on his way out when police arrived, and the chase was on.

View the original article here