An unarmed man, suspected of no crime, who three years ago was shot 16 times by police while lying in his bed, told a Seattle Times reporter in March that he bears no ill will for the cops who shot him. Said Dustin Theoharis, now 32, “Sometimes (police) make mistakes.” Theoharis was napping in a friend’s house in Puyallup, Washington, when police arrived to arrest the friend’s son, and when Theoharis reached for his ID, one officer imagined a gun, and the two officers opened fire, hitting Theoharis in the jaw, both upper arms, both lower arms, wrist, hand, shoulder, abdomen and both legs. He spent months in a hospital and skilled nursing facility and today is largely immobile and unable to work. (He “won” legal settlements totaling $5.5 million, but one-third went to lawyers, and much of the rest has paid medical bills.)
Least competent criminals
Recurring Theme: Perpetrators on the run frequently, unintentionally reveal their whereabouts by their need to show off on social media, but Christopher Wallace has reached legendary show-off status. Being sought in connection with a January burglary, he went to his home in Fairfield, Maine — and posted on the Snapchat site that that’s where he was. Police arrived and, during their canvass, noticed a brand-new Snapchat post from Wallace — mischievously writing that police were in his home right then, searching for him, but that he was cunningly hiding in a cabinet. Police opened the cabinet and arrested him.
Can’t possibly be true
• Update: According to the mayor of Rio de Janeiro, it appears that some of the 2016 Summer Olympics aquatic events will take place among floating household trash and raw sewage in Guanabara Bay (although Mayor Eduardo Paes noted to the Associated Press in March that the events are scheduled for the “cleanest part” of the bay). To acquire the games, organizers had promised a massive cleanup, but now, with 500 days to go, Paes conceded that the goals will not be met and that, indeed, infrastructure improvements still have not halted the sewage flow into the bay.
• Despite the skepticism of a few tech writers, the Internet pornography super-site Pornhub insists that it is developing a wristband that stores energy (enough to power a cellphone) that can be generated by the “up and down” motion of masturbation. Pornhub announced in February that it will soon begin recruiting human testers for its Wankband.
Compelling explanations
• According to the 17-year-old bicyclist who was broadsided by a motorist at rush hour in Sheffield, England, on March 6, a woman at first alighted from the car to help. However, upon seeing the extent of the cyclist’s injuries, she apologized and walked away, telling the sprawled-out victim that her children were in the car and would be “scared” to see all that blood — and so she would drive them on to school. (Witnesses provided a description of the vehicle, but the hit-and-run driver was still at large.)
• Trying to stake out a position on the Paris murders of the staff of Charlie Hebdo magazine, Pope Francis in January told an audience during his Philippines tour that freedom of speech is important, but that there are limits. “If my good friend Dr. (Alberto) Gasbarri (who organized the pope’s visit and was standing at his side) says a curse word against my mother,” Francis said, “he can expect a punch.” He then “threw” a mock “punch” toward Gasbarri. (The Vatican press office was later moved to clarify that violence in God’s name can never be justified.)
Awesome!
Chicago’s WGN-TV was forced to apologize in March for a misjudgment in booking its “Morning Show” after an unconventional “circus” performer, in a live-television publicity segment, took a power saw to a metal box affixed to her crotch. “Dancer” Shana Vaughan-Gabor, of the Cirque De La Femme, created a dazzling shower of sparks, provoking the male host to first demand that the camera cut away, but then admitting,
