True Stories of the World

[Pina]

Nicaraguan fisherman chokes on live fish while joking with friends
27/01/2005


MANAGUA, Nicaragua (AP) - A man who joked to friends that he would eat a fish live choked to death when the creature squirmed and lodged in his throat, police and coroner's officials said Thursday.


Police said the incident occurred when Jose Angel Torres Padilla, 22, was fishing with friends on Monday in the municipality of Dario, about 70 kilometres north of the capital.

Police said the man's friends told them he had put the fish in his mouth, joking that he was going to eat it live. But the fish squirmed and slipped down his throat.

Benito Lindo, coroner for the provincial capital of Matagalpa, told The Associated Press by telephone that doctors conducting an autopsy had found a fish in the man's throat.

[Pina]

Lawyer plans to strip, jump in friend's car; gets in wrong car, goes to jail

24/02/2005

KEY WEST, Fla. (AP) - A prosecutor who may have had a little too much to drink thought it would be funny to run naked across a parking lot and hop into a friend's car.

It was funny, until he jumped into the wrong car.

Albert Tasker, who works for the Monroe County State Attorney's Office, apparently got in the back seat of a car occupied by a woman waiting for her boyfriend.

The woman screamed and her boyfriend appeared. After the woman called 911, a Key West police officer found the naked Tasker in the middle of the parking lot.

Tasker, 28, was arrested Monday morning and faces charges of disorderly intoxication and indecent exposure, both misdemeanors.

He has been placed on administrative leave without pay and his office is conducting an internal review of the incident.

"It's terribly embarrassing for both him and for us, and we'll wait to see how the facts unfold," said J. Jefferson Overby, the chief assistant state attorney for Monroe County.

[Pina]

GROSS!!!!!!!!!!


Wendy's staff fingers counted as search continues for owner of digit in chili
24/03/2005

A woman bit into a partial finger served in a bowl of chili at California a Wendy's restaurant, leading authorities to a use a fingerprint database Thursday to determine who lost the digit.

The incident occurred Tuesday night at a San Jose Wendy's restaurant and left the customer ill and distraught, said Joy Alexiou, a spokeswoman for the Santa Clara County Health Department. "She was so emotionally upset once she found out what it was," Alexiou said.

"She was vomiting."

Employees at the Wendy's store were asked to show investigators their fingers after the Tuesday night incident. All employees' digits were accounted for, officials said, adding the well-cooked finger may have come from a food-processing plant that supplies the company.

"All of our employees have ten digits," said Denny Lynch, a spokesman for Wendy's International Inc., based in Dublin, Ohio.

He said there have been no reports to the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration of injuries at any supplier of chili ingredients to Wendy's.

"By law, you can't hide that sort of stuff," Lynch said.

"All of our chili suppliers report no accidents."

Investigators seized the remaining chili and closed the restaurant for a few hours late Tuesday.

Health officials said the fingertip was approximately four centimetres long. They believe it belongs to a woman because of the long, manicured nail.

Alexiou said the woman who bit into the finger, who asked officials not to identify her, is at minimal risk of contracting illnesses from the finger.

"It's an extremely low chance because the chili was cooked at a very high temperature that would have killed anything in the finger," Alexiou said.

Still, she said health officials would ask the woman's doctor to test her blood to make sure nothing got passed to her.

[Miss Melissa]

That is just nasty.

Brings new meaning to the term Finger Foods! LOL

BAAAD Melissa, Bad Melissa

[Pina]

Wendy's has its hands full with the chilling tale of the finger in the chili
15/04/2005

SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) - Somewhere out there is a woman, dead or alive, who is missing a well-manicured finger about four centimetres long.

Authorities know where the finger ended up - in a bowl of Wendy's chili - but just who it belongs is a mystery. Anna Ayala's claim that she bit down on the finger in a mouthful of her steamy stew on March 22 initially drew sympathy. But when police and health officials failed to find any missing digits among the workers involved in the restaurant's supply chain, suspicion fell on Ayala, and her story has become a late-night punch line.

"She went back there for lunch today - she's trying to collect all five," quipped David Letterman.

Jay Leno joked: "Instead of a spoon, they serve it with nail clippers."

For executives at Columbus, Ohio-based Wendy's International Inc., it is anything but funny. Sales dropped sharply at franchises in Northern California. The company has hired private investigators to run a hotline for tips, and is offering a $50,000 US reward for information leading to the finger's original owner.

"We are more anxious than you are to find out what really happened," Wendy's spokesman Denny Lynch said.

DNA tests are being done on the finger. A partial fingerprint failed to turn up a match in a national database.

Tips are coming in from across the country, from "folks who either have lost a finger, or know somebody who lost a finger," said San Jose police Sgt. Nick Muyo.

"Our goal is to find where that finger came from and who it came from. Is this an industrial accident, is this a homicide? Once you determine that, then we can start working backward."

Health officials said it is apparently a woman's finger, because of the long, manicured nail. But investigators will not say which finger on the hand it was.

The most curious turn yet led to a dead end this week, after the owner of a Texas animal refuge called Wendy's hotline to say she remembered seeing a leopard being kept as a pet bite the fingertip off a Nevada woman. The victim, Sandy Allman, lost the part of an index finger in February when she was bitten by a spotted leopard, one of several exotic pets she kept around her trailer in Pahrump, Nev., about 100 kilometres from Las Vegas, where Ayala lives.

However, the sheriff there later cast doubt on the Pahrump connection after learning that Allman had lost a mere fingertip.

Ayala hired a lawyer and filed a claim against the Wendy's franchise owner, Fresno-based JEM Management. But after police searched her home in Las Vegas and continued to question her family, she dropped the lawsuit threat, saying the whole situation was just too stressful.

"Lies, lies, lies, that's all I am hearing," Ayala said after police started questioning her. "They should look at Wendy's. What are they hiding? Why are we being victimized again and again?"

As it turns out, Ayala has a litigious history. She has filed claims against several corporations, including a former employer and General Motors, though it is unclear from court records whether she received any money. She said she got $30,000 from El Pollo Loco after her 13-year-old daughter got sick at one of the chain's Las Vegas-area restaurants. El Pollo Loco officials say she did not get a dime.

The San Jose Police fraud unit joined Las Vegas police in the search of her home there, and officers have questioned her relatives. A family friend, Ken Bono, 24, said the warrant indicated police were looking for a cooler, a blue bag and "any family documents about anybody dead."

Ayala's sister Mary, who lives in San Jose but missed the fateful meal at Wendy's, has been outspoken in defence of her sister.

The police "wanted to know if I ever asked her, even jokingly, 'Hey, did you do it?' " Mary Ayala said. "I said, 'No, my sister wouldn't do that.' " She added: "It's just a mess right now. Things are out of hand."

If police do obtain evidence that Ayala planted the finger, she could face charges of fraud, extortion or making false statements, legal experts said.

Back at the Wendy's where the chili was served, customers seem convinced the tale of the finger was a scam.

"There's too much in this country today with people trying to get things by conning them out of it. Wendy's has been good for years," said longtime customer Ralph Woodman, 81. "How the hell would you get a finger into the pot without seeing it in there when you're stirring it? It had to be some sort of screwball ruse."

[Cartman]

Man sues for $10 million; says he was hurt in toilet explosion in West Virginia

03/06/2005

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. (AP) - A man who says he was severely burned when a portable toilet exploded after he sat down and lit a cigarette is suing a general contractor and a coal company, accusing them of negligence.


John Jenkins, 53, and his wife, Ramona Jenkins, 35, of Brave, Pa., filed the suit Tuesday in county circuit court seeking $10 million in damages from Chisler Inc. and Eastern Associated Coal Corp.

The lawsuit claims Jenkins' face, neck, arms, torso and legs were severely burned last July after the cigarette ignited methane gas leaking from a pipe underneath the toilet unit.

"When I struck the lighter, the whole thing just detonated - the whole top blew off," said Jenkins, a methane power plant operator with North West Fuels Development Inc. "I can't tell you if it blew me out the door or if I jumped out."

Eastern Associated owns the Blacksville property where the explosion occurred. Jenkins alleges that heavy equipment from Chisler Inc. ran over the pipelines before the explosion, causing the methane gas leak.

A call to the Charleston office of Peabody Energy, the parent company of Eastern Associated Coal, was not returned.

A man who answered the phone at Chisler's office in Fairview said the company would have no comment.