Chutzpah
Lake Worth homeowner Phil Fraumeni emerged from his house on July 19 to find a white Tesla not only parked on his lawn, but tethered to an outlet on his house, charging the car’s battery. Fraumeni told WPBF he waited a couple of hours, then called police. The car was not stolen, and police were able to contact the owner, who showed up around noon and told Fraumeni he had been visiting friends in the neighborhood when the battery died around midnight. Fraumeni declined to press charges (pun intended) and did not ask for reimbursement for the 12 hours of electricity the car used.
Recent alarming headline
Alex Bonilla, 49, took revenge to an extreme on the man he told police he had caught cheating with his wife in May, according to WCJB. On July 14, Gilchrist County Sheriff’s deputies said, Bonilla entered a house in the town of Bell, firing a gunshot and forcing a man inside into a bedroom, where he tied the man up and, using scissors, cut off his penis, which he ran away with. Later that day, deputies arrested Bonilla at his place of employment; his bond was set at $1.25 million. The family of the victim declined to comment, but said through the sheriff’s office the victim was doing well medically.
Rude awakening
Alice Coleman, 61, of Fort Lauderdale, hopped out of bed early on Aug. 5 to check on a fire alarm that was blaring outside her apartment. When she opened her door, 34-year-old Fitzroy Morton confronted her, brandishing a “big butcher knife,” Coleman told WSVN. Morton told her, “No, mama. Everything gon’ be all right,” but Coleman set him straight: “Everything’s not going to be all right. I’m not your mama. I don’t know who you are. Get out of my house.” Then she bit him, “… and I didn’t even have my teeth in my mouth like now,” she explained. Coleman ran out of the apartment, where Morton locked himself in, and called police from a neighbor’s apartment. Morton was charged with three felonies, and Coleman is vowing to be more cautious: “I’ll open my door with my Taser because I have one.”
Force of nature
As a storm rolled through Port Charlotte on Aug. 4, Marylou Ward and her husband got an explosive surprise. Ward said she heard a “boom” that was the loudest noise she’d ever heard. “We smelled smoke and I looked outside,” she told WINK News. Smoke was coming from her septic tank, but it was the indoor effect that really shocked them: Her master bedroom toilet was in hundreds of pieces. A plumber explained that a nearby lightning strike ignited methane gas that had built up in the pipes and septic tank, destroying not only the tank and the toilet, but the indoor plumbing as well. Fortunately, no one was hurt: “I’m just glad none of us were on the toilet,” Ward said.
Least-competent criminals
¦ Police in Sydney, Australia, had a drug bust land in their laps on July 22, when an unnamed man slammed a van loaded with 600 pounds of methamphetamines into a patrol car parked outside a suburban police station. The car was empty at the time of the collision, Reuters reported. The van sped away from the scene, but police caught up with the 28-year-old driver an hour later and charged him with drug supply and negligent driving. The drugs had an estimated street value of about $140 million.
¦ Michael Harrell, 54, strolled into a U.S. Bank in Cleveland on July 29 with a note demanding cash from a teller: “This is a robbery. Don’t get nobody hurt.” Unfortunately, according to WJW, he wrote the note on a document he had apparently received from the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles, which included his full name and address. The teller, who called Harrell by his first name after seeing it on the letter, gave him $206 and summoned police, who later arrested him. ¦
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