The afternoon temperature Wednesday was a blistering 90 degrees, and the three young children were stuck in the back of the van for nearly an hour. Their babysitter, Jeanie Nickel, 38, of Baltimore in Fairfield County, apparently was too busy doing a cartwheel down the aisle of the Duke & Duchess gas station off I-70 in Pataskala to pay the kids any attention, witnesses told authorities. Inside the store, witnesses say, Nickel came out of the restroom and stumbled into the racks. The State Highway Patrol had already been looking for her. They had received a call of an erratic driver in a minivan on the interstate, and when a trooper and Licking County deputies located the vehicle, they cornered Nickel in the parking lot…Source



A flight attendant charged with setting fire to an airplane bathroom during a flight to Regina failed to show for a federal court appearance Friday. Authorities said he walked away from a halfway house in the middle of the night. Eder Rojas, 19, of Woodbury, Minn., has pleaded not guilty to knowingly and wilfully setting fire to an aircraft. The May 7 Compass Airlines flight was forced to make an emergency landing in Fargo. Defence lawyer Steven Light told U.S. District Judge Rodney Webb on Friday that Rojas has been “incredibly unreceptive” and has refused to speak to Light in recent days…
A man was charged with burglary Sunday night after he broke into a house and made coffee, deputies said. Byron Shipley was at his 6094 Waverly Road home when he noticed Thomas Blizzard, 55, was inside. Blizzard admitted to Hernando County Sheriff’s deputies he entered the residence without permission, but thought the home was vacant. He said he had done work around the house in the past and thought he could use it “to dry off and rest,” according to an affidavit…
A robber’s plan to hold up a Southwest Side convenience store Monday afternoon took a different turn: The robber shot himself in the foot, got stabbed by a store employee and ended up in police custody at a city hospital, Chicago police said. The botched robbery attempt unfolded about 3 p.m. Monday in the Brighton Mini Mart, 2532 W. 47th St., when two men entered the store and one pointed a handgun at the owners and demanded cash, police said…
The Drug Enforcement Administration discovered something unexpected in the Mall of the Americas. DEA agents found a hydroponics lab with more than 200 marijuana plants, standing 3 to 6 feet tall in the air and worth millions of dollars, in a storage area on the second floor of the mall. Authorities said the electricity that powered the lab was diverted from the mall’s main power supply…
Five Chicago teens were arrested Sunday and charged with burglarizing a northwest suburban video game store. Two of them were caught after trying to hitch a ride in a police car. Chicago police received an anonymous call about 2:40 a.m. Sunday from a resident who heard glass breaking at a Video Games store, Deputy Chief Jim Jobe said…
A 35-year-old Texas woman has been jailed after police say she made her 12-year-old daughter drive her to a bar. Police in Longview say they watched a minivan turn into a driveway without signaling on Wednesday and bump into a home at a low speed. They say the car was driven by Jennifer Lynn Rosenberg’s daughter. Police say the girl told an officer she had just dropped her mother off at a bar. They say they found Rosenburg at the bar and that she admitted having her daughter drive her there…