BURGlARY SUSPECT CRASHES THROUGH RESTAURANT CEIlING
Investigators in the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office in north Florida say they are searching for a clumsy burglary suspect who was caught on surveillance video falling through the ceiling of a Popeyes fried chicken restaurant.
First Coast News reports that the video shows the man crashing to the floor in a heap last Monday. He’s then seen struggling to pry open a safe under a counter, using a variety of items that were on hand. According to a news release on the Sheriff’s website, the man got away with an undetermined amount of cash. No further details were immediately available, police said.
(AP)
DOE OPENS DOOR, STROllS THROUGH US lIQUOR STORE
A Virginia deer paid a visit to a local liquor store after managing to push open the front door. The Virginia Department of Alcoholic Beverage shared security camera photos that show the animal walking through the front door of one of the State’s oldest stores in Clifton Forge and making its way to the back of the store.
“The doe reportedly pushed open the store door and headed straight for the bourbon aisle before being shown out the back,” they wrote on Facebook.
While the deer wound up leaving the store without making a purchase, the Facebook post speculated whether the deer was shopping for some spirits to celebrate having survived hunting season. The page also encouraged its followers to come up with their best caption for the photograph.
(UPI)
HUNGRY MICE THWART FIX FOR BRUSSElS’ TRAFFIC CHAOS
As if the European Union does not have crises enough, now traffic chaos in its congested capital Brussels is being blamed on hungry mice. EU leaders gathering for a summit last Thursday to deal with the refugee crisis and British threats to quit the bloc find a city struggling to cope with repeated closures of key road tunnels caused by crumbling concrete and years of decay.
Now the Belgian Capital’s regional Parliament has been told that repairs are being held up because original construction plans have been destroyed — apparently eaten by rodents.
The tunnels provide vital arteries across what is often described as Europe’s most traffic-congested city. But for decades the plans for their construction were stored in the pillars under a motorway bridge for want of space elsewhere. “They may have been eaten by mice,” the former head of the city’s infrastructure agency told city lawmakers last Wednesday.
The state of the roads in the city of 1.2 million, home to the European Union and NATO headquarters, has become a hot political issue in Belgium, with an estimated bill of some 1 billion euros ($1.1 billion) to repair all the tunnels.
(Reuters)
NY MAN RECORDS ‘BEST WORST DRIVER IN SNOWSTORM HISTORY’
A New York state man shared a video of a motorist he describes as “possibly the best worst driver in the history of a snowstorm”.
Mark Reussow, who posted the video to Facebook, captured footage on a highway near Rochester of a motorist swerving back and forth on the snow-covered road in an apparent show of skill. “He’s just having fun,” Reussow says in the video. “He’s a pro! He’s a professional.” However, Reussow’s admiration for the driver proves shortlived: “I hope he bites it,” he says.
“Freakin’ idiot,” Reussow says. “Kinda entertaining, though.” Reussow described the motorist in the video’s description as “possibly the best worst driver in the history of a snowstorm”. He said in a comment he decided to film the motorist because the dangerous driving made him “a bit nervous.”
(UPI)
PRESIDENTS’ BUSTS lITTER VIRGINIA FARMER’S lAND
Aerial footage from a Virginia farm shows the eerie scene of 43 enormous busts of US Presidents rescued from a defunct theme park. The video, posted to YouTube, shows the statues in various states of disrepair in Croaker, Va. The 20-foot-tall concrete busts, which depict the first 43 Presidents of the United States, were built for Presidents Park, a Williamsburg attraction that opened in 2004 and was shuttered just six years later in 2010.
Howard Hankins, a construction company owner who was originally hired to help build the park, was contracted to get rid of the heads, which each weigh between 11,000 and 20,000 pounds, but he instead made arrangements to have the heads moved to his farmland in nearby Croaker.
A Facebook post by the Williamsburg Presidential Museum Project revealed Hankins is spearheading the effort to build a new Presidential Museum and Park in Williamsburg to give the busts a new home.
The project has a GoFundMe page attempting to crowdfund the estimated $500,000 cost of the new park.
(UPI)