News Roundup for Week March 3, 2007
8 Year Old Caught Selling Pot
SAGINAW, Mich. – Police said they caught an 8-year-old trying to sell marijuana to other children at a counseling center. Police were called to the Westlund Child Guidance Clinic after another boy told a teacher the 8-year-old had tried to sell pot to him. Investigators found the marijuana in a box of Lego toys belonging to the boy, television station WNEM reported.
The boy is enrolled in a program for students with disabilities, WNEM said. He was turned over to his parents. It wasn’t known if charges will be filed.
Mayan Priests to Purify Site After Bush Visit
GUATEMALA CITY – Mayan priests will purify a sacred archaeological site to eliminate “bad spirits” after President Bush visits next week, an official with close ties to the group said Thursday.
“That a person like (Bush), with the persecution of our migrant brothers in the United States, with the wars he has provoked, is going to walk in our sacred lands, is an offense for the Mayan people and their culture,” Juan Tiney, the director of a Mayan nongovernmental organization with close ties to Mayan religious and political leaders, said Thursday.
Tiney said the “spirit guides of the Mayan community” decided it would be necessary to cleanse the sacred site of “bad spirits” after Bush’s visit so that their ancestors could rest in peace.
BASE Jumper Lands in Trouble
TAMPA – William “Wild Bill” Stroup peered over the top of the future SkyPoint condominiums in downtown as wind whipped against a video camera’s microphone.
It was about 3:45 a.m. Tuesday atop the high-rise construction site, under a nearly full moon. Thirty-two stories separated Stroup from his target: a fenced-in plot on North Franklin Street where the Maas Bros. building once stood.
As Stroup floated to the ground, a man in a truck southbound on Tampa Street looked up.
“I noticed something come over my head,” Kenneth Glumm, 37, said on a taped 911 call to Tampa police. “It’s a guy with a kind of parachute kind of thing.”
“You didn’t see me. Don’t tell anybody you saw me,” Stroup said, according to Glumm. “That set off alarms,” Glumm said, recalling the fires on North Franklin Street he had heard about earlier that evening. He dialed 911. “With everything going on in the world, you never know. I thought some fool could’ve jumped out of a plane.” (So the fear mongering by the Bush Administration worked…Poor Mr. Glumm is just a scared little rabbit.)
Jailed Man Exonorated After Ski Mask Tested for DNA
West Palm Beach — A man who spent four months in prison on robbery charges was exonerated on DNA evidence, authorities said.
Cody Davis, 22, who was convicted in October of robbery and sentenced to three years in prison, spent more than four months incarcerated, but on Friday he walked out of Charlotte Correctional Institution a free man, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel reported.
Two witnesses to the robbery identified Davis, and a jury convicted him. DNA testing on a ski mask found at the scene was not done immediately because it was not worn by the burglar during the crime, Chief Assistant State Attorney Al Johnson said. Test results came back with DNA matching another man in the DNA database, and a Palm Beach County sheriff’s detective noticed Davis and the other man had similar characteristics.
