HOT OFF THE PRESS: A bank employee had to work the Saturday shift recently. His dull morning took a turn for the weird when he noticed a small fire right outside the front door. The blaze was quickly put out. What was the burning item? The Charlotte Observer. Yes!
DAMN YOU, ZORRO!: Having your car vandalized is one thing, but having it vandalized by a masked freedom fighter is a whole different ball game. This actually happened recently when a woman found that her car had been keyed, her hubcaps had been stolen, and her radio antenna had been bent into a “Z” shape.
SHE’S SO POPULAR: She could have turned her ringer off, and she could have simply left the phone off the hook, but a woman decided she’d rather just tell her obsessed caller to stop harassing her after his 1,500th call in four days.
GOOD SAMARITAN PROFILING?: Can’t anyone just make a kind gesture in this day and age? A woman recently called police to report that an unknown man pulled up in his car next to her as she was walking in a parking lot and offered her a ride. She said no and he drove off. The woman then called police and told them that she didn’t feel threatened at all but you just never know.
WATCH YOUR LANGUAGE: A man was sitting at a bar one evening drinking and watching the big game. He decided that what the atmosphere needed was a whole lot of cursing. So he obliged himself and let loose a diatribe of profanity-laced sentences. A man sitting next to him didn’t take kindly to his words, so he walked up to the curser and beat the hell out of him.
PANTS BANDIT IS BACK: A local hardware store was the scene of the latest pants crime when a man stuffed two cans of weed killer down his trousers. He was stopped in the parking lot by security, removed the cans and threw them in their direction, then sped off in his car.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK: You better live your life to the fullest the next couple of hours because you are going to die.
GOOD CALL!: Unfamiliar with the sound of a recorded voice, a man called a bank to tell them that he was going to rob the joint. After pressing 1, then 2, he left his threat on their answering machine.
SIGNATURE SERVICE?: A woman hired a company to resurface her driveway. When she returned home from work, however, she noticed that there were obscene drawings, curse words, names, and footprints engraved in the wet cement.
GAVE THEM THE FINGER: After years of getting the bird from school children, one bus driver had had enough. He approached a group of children and began poking them repeatedly in their chests with his index finger.
THE NEXT WATERGATE?: Deep Throat is back, ladies and gentlemen. Sources have confirmed a break-in at a Charlotte government office building. The crime took place between 1:30pm and 7pm on a Saturday. The stolen item was a two-pound tub of cookie dough from the refrigerator of one of the workers. Woodward and Bernstein could not be reached for comment.
SLICED: Items like knives, pipes, bottles, bricks, and 4x4s have been used as assault weapons. One man took it up a notch recently, however, when he beat his wife with a loaf of bread.
Blotter items are taken from the files of the Charlotte Police Department.
This article appears in Dec 3-9, 2003.
