Extracted from US news papers:
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A 24-YEAR-old man being chased by a police officer from a Beverly Hills, Calif., house that he was
suspected of burglarizing ran into a tree branch and knocked himself unconscious. In September, in
Akron, Ohio, police said that Christopher S. Dobbins, 28, in the process of robbing Leonardo's Pizza,
slipped on a streak of grease on the floor, which was the result of a dropped pizza earlier in the
evening, and knocked himself out.
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IN ST. LOUIS IN OCTOBER, according to police, Robert Puelo, 32, stole a hot dog from a 7-Eleven and
left the store, cramming it into his mouth as he ran. Minutes later, Puelo choked to death on a
6-inch piece of the hot dog that lodged in his throat.
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In Council Bluffs, Iowa, seven relatives ranging in age from 10 to 71 piled into the family car
intending to commit suicide over money troubles. The driver smashed into a second car, injuring the
three occupants but leaving the seven depressed people uninjured.
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Early in the morning on Oct. 30, a man described by the New York Daily News as a "career criminal"
was apprehended in the middle of a burglary at an upscale Fire Island, N.Y., home. The residents had
arisen to check out noises in the house but found no one. However, in the vicinity of a closet door,
they heard evidence of flatulence and discovered Richard Magpiong, 56, hiding in a closet. They held
him until police arrived.
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In Martin, Ohio, two or more burglars unsuccessfully attempted to break into the safe at W&W Custom
Applicators Inc. at 4 o'clock one morning in October. They rolled the 4-foot-high, concrete-lined
safe outside and used a front-end loader to smash it against the side of a building to open it. The
safe crashed through the wall but did not open. Then they smashed it against the side of a utility
trailer, with the same result. Then they placed it on nearby railroad tracks so that a Conrail train
could plow into it, but the train pushed it along the tracks, far out of the sight of the burglars.
The burglars then fled, nearly empty-handed. (They had remembered to loot the petty cash box at W&W.)
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IN OCTOBER, AFTER AN evening of drinking with friends, Christopher Millwood, 20, was found dead with
his head, shoulders and upper body wedged into a Federal Express drop box in Hot Springs, Ark.
Police, who knew of no motive for the incident, said Millwood suffocated when his head got caught
between the box and a drawer inside.
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According to Department of Justice figures, 30,000 inmate lawsuits were filed last year (added to
heavy backlogs -- more than 28,000 in New York alone) against prison officials for "civil rights"
violations, the vast majority described by judges and court officials as frivolous. Among the
lawsuits were those by prisoners complaining: that the prison canteen supplied "creamy" peanut butter
when a prisoner bought "crunchy"; that guards wouldn't refrigerate his ice cream snack so that he
could eat it later ($1 million lawsuit); that his toilet seat was too cold; that, as an
inmate-paralegal in the prison law library, he should make the same wage that lawyers make; that
prisons should offer salad bars ($129 million); that a limit on the number of Kool-Aid refills is
"cruel and unusual punishment"; and that the scrambled eggs were cooked too hard. In New York, 20
percent of the entire budget of the Attorney General's office is spent on prisoner lawsuits.
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Ex-student Jason Wilkins sued the University of Idaho in July for $940,000 to pay for injuries he
suffered when he fell through a third-story dormitory window while mooning students. Wilkins had
climbed onto a 3-foot-high heater to reach the window but claimed the university should have posted
warnings.
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Robert Garner, who won the Republican nomination for Hawaii's congressional seat in September,
dropped out of sight after that and missed the entire campaign before losing the election in November
to incumbent Patsy Mink. The party hired private detectives to track him down but discovered his
address and phone number were invalid and that he had no credit history.
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In Brownsville, Texas, in September, Laura Lugo, 27, accused two women of luring her to a Mexican
clinic in 1992 when she was 8 1/2 months pregnant, drugging her, arranging for a C-section and
stealing her baby. Paulyna and Rosa Botello, Mexican nationals who were living legally in the U.S.,
denied the charges and told investigators that each of them was the mother of the child, who is now
in a foster home. Lugo submitted to DNA testing, which established a 99 percent likelihood that she
is the mother.