Worldwide Doofus Awards

Part II

45 year-old Amy Brasher was arrested in San Antonio, Texas, after a

mechanic reported to police that 18 packages of marijuana were packed

in the engine compartment of the car which she had brought to the

mechanic for an oil change. According to police, Brasher later said

that she didn't realize that the mechanic would have to raise the

hood to change the oil. 

Portsmouth, R.I.Police charged Gregory Rosa, 25, with a string of

vending machine robberies in January when he:

1. fled from police

inexplicably when they spotted him loitering around a vending machine

and

2. later tried to post his $400 bail in coins. 

Karen Lee Joachimi, 20, was arrested in Lake City, Florida, for

robbery of a Howard Johnson's motel. She was armed with only an

electric chainsaw, which was not plugged in. 

The Ann Arbor News crime column reported that a man walked into

Burger King in Ypsilanti, Michigan at 7:50 am, flashed a gun and

demanded cash. The clerk turned him down because he said he couldn't

open the cash register without a food order. When the man ordered

onion rings, the clerk said they weren't available for breakfast. The

man,

frustrated, walked away. 

James Burns, 34, of Alamo, Mich., was killed in March as he

was trying to repair what police described as a "farm-type truck."

Burns got a friend to drive the truck on a highway while Burns hung

underneath so that he could ascertain the source of a troubling

noise. Burns' clothes caught on something, however, and the other man

found Burns "wrapped in the drive shaft." [Kalamazoo Gazette, 4-1-95] 

Bowling Green, Ohio, student Robert Ricketts, 19, had his head bloodied

when he was struck by a Conrail train. He told police he was trying to

see how close to the moving train he could place his head without

getting hit. 

In Wesley Chapel, Florida, Joseph Aaron, 20, was hit in the leg with

pieces of the bullet he fired at the exhaust pipe of his car. When

repairing the car, he needed to bore a hole in the pipe. When he

couldn't find a drill, he tried to shoot a hole in it.

Police in Wichita, Kansas, arrested a 22-year-old man at an airport hotel after

he tried to pass two (counterfeit) $16 bills.

 A man in Johannesberg, South Africa, shot his 49-year-old friend in the face,

seriously wounding him, while the two practiced shooting beer cans off each

other's head.

According to Industrial Machinery News, the film's depiction of gory industrial

accidents was so graphic that twenty-five workers suffered minor injuries in

their rush to leave the screening room. Thirteen others fainted, and one man

required seven stitches after he cut his head falling off a chair while watching

the film.  

 The Chico, California, City Council enacted a ban on nuclear weapons, setting

a $500 fine for anyone detonating one within city limits.

A bus carrying five passengers was hit by a car in St. Louis, but by the time

police arrived on the scene, fourteen pedestrians had boarded the bus and had

begun to complain of whiplash injuries and back pain.

Swedish business consultant Ulf af Trolle labored 13 years on a book about

Swedish economic solutions. He took the 250-page manuscript to be copied,

only to have it reduced to 50,000 strips of paper in seconds when a worker

confused the copier with the shredder.

 A convict broke out of jail in Washington D.C., then a few days later

accompanied his girlfriend to her trial for robbery. At lunch, he went out for a

sandwich. She needed to see him, and thus had him paged. Police officers

recognized his name and arrested him as he returned to the courthouse in a car

he had stolen over the lunch hour.  

Police in Radnor, Pennsylvania, interrogated a suspect by placing a metal

colander on his head and connecting it with wires to a photocopy machine.

The message "He's lying" was placed in the copier, and police pressed the

copy button each time they thought the suspect wasn't telling the truth.

Believing the "lie detector" was working, the suspect confessed.

When two service station attendants in Ionia, Michigan, refused to hand over

the cash to an intoxicated robber, the man threatened to call the police. They

still refused, so the robber called the police and was arrested.

 A Los Angeles man who later said he was "tired of walking," stole a

steamroller and led police on a 5 mph chase until an officer stepped aboard

and brought the vehicle to a stop.