7 Strange Crimes
An inebriated motorist in Liverpool phoned police to report his steering wheel, pedals, and dashboard had been stolen. He rang back minutes later, saying: "Don't worry, I got into the back seat by mistake". He was later arrested. (source: Daily Star 27/02/01)
The following instruction, spotted on a packet of potatoes in a supermarket, demonstrate the importance of punctuation: "Scrub prick and boil". (source: New Scientist 17/02/01)
Egyptian police raided a grocer's in Giza where they found 76 barrels containing 15 tons of green olives which the 25-year-old shopkeeper had painstakingly blackened with shoe polish over several nights. Black olives fetch a better price than green ones. He faced three years' jail for endangering public health. (source: Canberra Times 12/09/99)
In the run-up to Xmas, a man was arrested by customs officers in Melbourne, Australia, after accidentally ticking the 'Yes' box on a form that asked whether he was carrying any illegal substances. When he was searched he was found to be carrying cocaine. (source Sunday Times 31/12/00)
Anton Brieszov was trapped in the lions' enclosure of Moscow Zoo when the ladder he climbed down to retrieve a toy dropped by his child toppled over. He managed to outrun the lions and climb to safety. He then jumped into a moat surrounding the enclosure and, being a non-swimmer, drowned. (source: Guardian 15/02/01)
A woman from Haywards Heath received a rather large quarterly phone bill last December. It was 689 pages long and logged the same same call-out to a 0845 number 35,000 times, or every two minutes. The mystery calls cost her $1,400 on top of her normal $400 or so for the three-month period. A BT spokesman said the disputed bill was being investigated. (source: Mid-Sussex Leader 21/12/00)
Malaysian police have announced that a summons issued to a taxi driver for driving his Proton Iswara car at a speed of 696mph (1,120 km/h) was 'probably' a technical error. (source: AFP 23/02/01)