Crime Blotter: Old Woman Leads Car Chase
Dec. 2, 2004 -- -- An old lady never speeds in Idaho but allegedly leads police on a car chase; a son's prank on his mother goes to pot; and five men allegedly steal a mechanical deer. It's the Christmas shopping season and time for another edition of "The Crime Blotter."
Old Woman Leads Slow-Speed Chase
BONNERS FERRY, Idaho -- A little old lady from New York faces charges for allegedly leading Idaho police on a car chase that didn't involve speeding.
Bonner County police say Nita Friedman, 66, led police on a car chase through two counties, driving at or under the speed limit for 15 miles. The pursuit started in Bonner County after police chief Mike Hutter got reports of a reckless driver.
Hutter said when he came upon Friedman, he flipped on his lights and siren, but it looked like she was about to pull over. However, Friedman allegedly veered back on the roadway and sped up to between 50 mph and 60 mph.
Hutter admits Friedman never sped during the chase and even stopped behind a left-turning vehicle but he asked Idaho State Police to put a spike strip in the roadway on U.S. Highway 95. When Friedman reached the spike strip, she drove over it, stopped momentarily and then started driving again. Three of Friedman's tires were flattened, preventing her from getting far.
Friedman was charged with eluding police and reckless driving and jailed on $600 bail.
Son's Holdup Prank on Mom Backfires
LA VISTA, Neb. -- A Nebraska man got more than what he bargained for when a prank he played on his mother at her job went up in smoke.
Police say a 22-year-old man walked into a gas station on Nov. 28 and told the clerk -- his mother -- that he had a gun and was about to rob her. The man's mother wasn't alarmed but a customer unaware of the joke called police.
When authorities arrived at the gas station, they found the man and his friend in the parking lot, and they smelled marijuana. Police searched the men, found a quarter-pound of pot and hundreds of dollars of cash and arrested them for drug possession.
The prankster and his friend were on parole and knew they would be sent back to prison if convicted of the drug charges. One of them, police said, called his girlfriend from jail and asked her to tell police that the marijuana seized by authorities belonged to her.
However, that plan went up in smoke, too. The phone conversation was recorded and when the girlfriend called and told officials the phony story, she was arrested for filing a false report.
The Search for the Missing Robot Deer
KINGWOOD, W.Va. -- Five young men stole a mechanical deer from the wrong people.
Five men were charged with stealing a Division of Natural Resources' mechanical deer after one of them left identifying information at the scene, leading police to a pickup truck where the robot deer's head was in plain sight. Officers found the rest of the deer's body hidden in a building at a baseball field.
DNR officers had erected the deer about 75 yards from the road in the Fellowsville, W.Va., area where they had received complaints of poaching the weekend before deer gun season began. Patrick Bolyard, 20; Terry J. Goff III, 19; Joe Thomas Haskiell, 21; Andrew T. Knotts, 16; and Thomas J. Shahan, 19, faced various charges for the Nov. 21 theft. Goff pleaded no contest to petit larceny, destruction of property, spotlighting and failure to stop and check game. He was sentenced to 14 days in jail and was ordered to pay fines and damage costs totaling $1,244
Magistrate Diane Thomas levied 10 days jail time and a total of $744 in fines and costs against Bolyard for his no-contest plea to conspiracy to violate game laws, hunting from a motor vehicle, spotlighting and failure to stop and check game. Shahan was sentenced to 14 days in jail and fined a total of $1,244, including $600 restitution, for his no-contest plea to spotlighting, petit larceny, conspiracy to violate game laws and destruction of property.
Knotts was ordered to pay $577 for tickets charging him with hunting without a license, hunting from a motor vehicle, spotlighting and conspiracy to violate game laws. Haskiell was charged with destruction of property, petit larceny, spotlighting and conspiracy to violate game laws. He has not entered a plea yet.
Maybe these five men would have been better off stealing SpongeBob SquarePants.