CONWAY, Ark. — A man is due in an Arkansas court on charges he used a gas pump squeegee to hit another man during a fight over who was first in line at a gas pump.
Twenty-one-year-old Hector Chavez is to be arraigned Friday in Faulkner County Circuit Court on a second-degree battery charge.
A Conway police report says the victim told officers that he was waiting in line at a gas pump when Chavez cut in front of him. The victim — who was not identified — said he confronted Chavez with the squeegee and swung at him before Chavez took the squeegee and began beating him with it.
Police: Teens taped themselves stealing presents
UPPER DARBY, Pa. — A suburban Philadelphia police chief says two teenagers are being held after officers arrested them and found video recordings they made of themselves burglarizing homes.
Upper Darby Police Superintendent Michael Chitwood told reporters Wednesday that the 15- and 16-year-old boys "terrorized the neighborhood" with their burglaries and added a bizarre twist with the video recordings.
Chitwood says in one of the homes they unwrapped Christmas presents and stole electronic games. He says they can be heard on the video remarking that Christmas came early for them.
Police say they had just set off a burglar alarm when officers caught them on the street with backpacks full of around $1,000 worth of stolen goods, mostly electronics.
They're being held in juvenile detention.
Utah teen to challenge citation for McDonald's rap
SALT LAKE CITY — The case of one of four teens who were cited after rapping their order at a McDonald's in Utah appears headed for trial.
Police in American Fork, about 30 miles south of Salt Lake City, cited the teens with disorderly conduct last month after the drive-through rap.
The teens have said they were imitating a rap from a popular YouTube video, which begins: "I need a double cheeseburger and hold the lettuce."
Spenser Dauwalder, 18, has said employees at the fast-food restaurant told him and his friends they were holding up the line and needed to order or leave.
But Dauwalder said no one else was in line. He and his three 17-year-old friends left without buying anything.
A manager wrote down the car's license plate number and called authorities, police Sgt. Gregg Ludlow has said. Officers later cited the teens in a high school parking lot outside a volleyball match.
"We thought, you know, just teenagers out having fun," Dauwalder told KSL Newsradio last month. "We didn't think it would escalate to that."
Dauwalder is challenging the disorderly conduct infraction in state court in Utah County. He pleaded not guilty earlier this month, and at a hearing Wednesday, a bench trial was set for Jan. 29, said his mother, Sharon Dauwalder.
"It's just, it's wrong," Sharon Dauwalder said. "I think the whole thing is wrong."
Spenser Dauwalder's attorney, Ann Boyle, said the whole incident has been overblown.
"I just believe that the kids had a right to sing their order," Boyle said. "They asked them to leave, and they left."
But attorney Kasey Wright, who represented American Fork in court Wednesday, said the case isn't about free speech.
"This is not a First Amendment case," he said. "This is disturbing the peace. It's interrupting a business."
Wright said he's open to working out a deal in the case "if it can serve the demands of justice and the public interest." He said the trial likely wouldn't last more than an hour and is similar to what would happen if someone fought a speeding ticket in court.
Woman leaves $40,000 with Blessed Mother
HAGERSTOWN, Md. — A woman quietly left $40,000 worth of rare U.S. coins near a Catholic shrine for safekeeping so the Virgin Mary could watch over her life savings while she was out of town, and apparently it worked: The money was returned to her when she got back a week later.
Operators of the National Shrine Grotto of Our Lady of Lourdes near Emmitsburg thought they had been blessed with a big donation when a groundskeeper found the two plastic freezer bags filled with gold and silver while raking leaves.
But Shrine Director William Tronolone said the woman approached him after a noon Mass Sunday, six days after the discovery, to ask whether anyone had found some coins she had hidden beneath fallen leaves at the site on the campus of Mount St. Mary's University.
"I said, 'Why did you leave it there?' And she said, 'Well, I had to go away and I was afraid to leave it and I wanted the Blessed Mother to watch over it for me — and evidently she did because you found it,'" Tronolone said.
By then, university officials had had the coins appraised, notified police and placed the money in a safe while awaiting word from investigators.
Tronolone refused to identify the woman. He said she had been out of town about a week.
After the school's security director returned the coins Monday, he accompanied the woman to her bank and persuaded her to put them in her safe deposit box, Tronolone said.
The shrine, about 50 miles northwest of Baltimore, features a replica of the grotto in Lourdes, France, where Catholics believe Mary, the mother of Jesus, appeared to a French schoolgirl named Bernadette several times, beginning in 1858. The Emmitsburg replica draws more than 200,000 visitors annually, Tronolone said.
Grotto visitors often leave anonymous donations, including a $3,000 cash gift two weeks ago.
"Up here at the grotto, you get a lot of people that are very, very faithful," Tronolone said, "and they do things you and I would never even attempt to do."
