East central Florida weirdness in the extreme...

TCPalm runneth over with strangeness this week:

+ Authorities said a 67-year-old man used a screwdriver in repeated sexual assaults on a 4-year-old girl.

+ A 23-year-old Stuart woman stabbed and killed her dog Sunday, according to an arrest affidavit.

+ “I asked him why he had brought a gun and two knives into the police station, concealed, and he said to ask what the law was for carrying the gun.”

+ A gunman bought a lollipop from an ice cream truck driver Monday before hopping in the truck and robbing the driver, a police captain said Tuesday.

+ A nude man covered in feces broke into someone’s backyard and jumped into the pool Saturday, according to a Martin County Sheriff’s Office report.

+ A suspected burglar caught rummaging through a woman’s home asked for a glass of water before he fled, according to an arrest affidavit.

+ St. Lucie County Sheriff’s Office investigators arrested two men after an Saturday night fight involving a golf club and a metal CD rack, according to affidavits released Monday.

+ A 69-year-old Fort Pierce man learned the hard way there are no clothing-optional beaches in St. Lucie County, according to St. Lucie County Sheriff’s Office arrest report.

No, officer, it's *kitty* porn

Keith R. Griffin insisted that he was not responsible for the more than 1,000 images of child pornography found on his home computer by a Martin County Sheriff's detective, TCPalm reports.  So who was?

Well, Griffin blamed...wait for it...his cat.  According to a law enforcement press release, Griffin told the detective that when he got up from his computer and left it running, the cat jumped onto the keyboard in his absence, causing all those nasty pix to be downloaded to the hard drive.

The detective was somewhat skeptical.  Thus, the 48-year old Jensen Beach man was arrested and charged with 10 counts of possession of child pornography, and currently sits in the Martin County jail in lieu of $250,000 bail.

Hope he left enough food and water for the cat.

Deputies confiscate $100,000 in illegal fireworks plus other assorted explosives

Acting on a tip from a confidential informant, Martin County Sheriff's deputies entered a Stuart residence Wednesday and found roughly $100,00 worth of illegal fireworks, along with an assortment of other explosive materials and weapons.  TC Palm reports that the home and its garage contained boxes and boxes of fireworks -- "city crasher," “solar flare," “rumble ramble,"  “Molotov cocktail,” and “pyro protest,” among others -- stacked floor to ceiling.

A Martin County Sheriff's bomb disposal expert told the newspaper this was the biggest stash of pyrotechnics and explosives he'd ever seen at a residence and that, if ignited, a bunch of nearby homes would have been destroyed.  Deputies arrested homeowner James Buhs, 46, a convicted felon who'd already been in trouble for illegally possessing firearms.
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Photo:  OSHA

Man walks out on meal to get 'rehab'

   A homeless man in Stuart decided he would eat better in the Martin County jail, so he walked out on an $18 tab for a steak dinner at an International House of Pancakes, TCPalm reports.

   Bryan Keith Coley, 40, waited for police outside the restaurant after leaving.

   He told police he didn’t pay his check because he was hungry and wanted to go to jail for “rehab,” according to the arrest affidavit.

2 Fla. men kill attacking bobcat with hammer

STUART, Fla. (AP) -- Wildlife officials say two men putting up a fence in Martin County on Florida's east coast fended off and killed a 30-pound bobcat with a hammer.

The two men were working on a ranch when the bobcat attacked. One of the men hit the bobcat with a hammer and was able to get it off the other. Florida Fish and Wildlife spokeswoman Gabriella Ferraro says one of the men was treated at a hospital for scratches to his chest and bite marks to his shoulder. The other man was not injured.

Ferraro says authorities will test the bobcat for rabies because normally bobcats do not attack without being provoked.

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Information from: The Palm Beach Post, http://www.pbpost.com

© 2009 The Associated Press.  All rights reserved.  This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Man arrested for pouring urine over girlfriend

A 43-year old Delray Beach man who told police he keeps his urine in a plastic container so he doesn't have to seek out bathrooms was arrested and charged with simple battery Tuesday after dumping the contents of said container over his girlfriend.  According to police, Paul Thomas Hamill "saturated" his girlfriend with the urine during the course of an argument in the parking lot of a Stuart service station.  She responded by dousing him with red wine and calling the cops, reports TCPalm.

Bank robbed with front-end loader

A front-end loader was used to rob a bank in Jupiter, according to PalmBeachPost.com.

The machine was used to rip a cash machine from its foundation at a Bank of America.

A video shows the thieves loading the machine onto the bed of a "large white commercial flatbed truck."

Woman assaulted with sweet potato pie

TC Palm reports that Martin County Sheriff's deputies arrested an Indiantown man on Thanksgiving after he expressed dissatisfaction with the holiday repast by hitting his girlfriend in the face with a hot sweet potato pie.

After 46-year old Christopher Ford ran out the back door of the residence, the woman's three teenagers entered the kitchen to see what the disturbance was about, police said, and they saw their mother with pie all over her face.  After deputies arrived, the woman was taken to a local hospital for treatment of burns and blisters on her neck.

Police found Ford later that night and arrested him on a charge of domestic battery.

Flagrant fragrance gets gassy student bounced

Maybe the 13-year-old student at Martin County's Spectrum Junior/Senior High thought he was being funny by repeatedly and purposely passing gas during computer class.

His teacher, D.C. Carden, didn't bust a gut over the boy's breaking wind -- not to mention his continuous turning off classroom computers -- so he gave the boy a referral and sent him packing to the school resource officer for a little talk.

SRO Warren Pettaway asked the (perhaps) obvious question: Did the boy deliberately cut the cheese (and the computer lines)?  "He subsequently informed me it was factual, and I informed him as a result of his behavior he was being charged with Disruption of a School Function," Pettaway wrote in his report.

That's right. The boy was arrested for farting. He was released to his mom. No word on what he did in the car on the way home.

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From the Times Gradebook Blog, via Stuart News.

 

Three bizarre food stories...

...all from TCPalm.

Bizarre story number one:
A 19-year old man was arrested on domestic battery and child abuse charges after whacking his girlfriend with a sandwich  while she was driving on I-95 with their child in the car.  According to police, he knocked her glasses off, nearly causing an accident, and also yanked off the rear view mirror and beat on the windshield, causing it to shatter.  "The type of sandwich hurled was not specified in the (police) report," according to the newspaper.

Bizarre story number two:
A 35-year old Stuart man was arrested after trying to abscond from a Publix with surf-and turf stuffed down his pants -- specifically, $75 worth of steaks and a package of shrimp.  After shoving a "loss prevention officer" who tried to detain him, the man was pursued into the parking lot by store employees, who "subdued" him, police said.  He told police he had the money to pay for the food and that he ran because he was frightened; nonetheless, they charged him with retail theft and two counts of resisting a retail merchant.

Bizarre story number three:
A 43-year old Fort Pierce man, apparently upset that his ex-girlfriend had opened a can of Vienna Sausages and a can of sardines while he was out, "told her not to disrespect him in his house and punched her several times," according to police, who responded to a 911 call from the victim.  When questioned, the perpetrator told police "he had no past or present relationship" with the woman, whom he called "a friend of a friend." He said she was only there to smoke crack and started to "flip out."  Police arrested him on a battery charge.

(Image:  NOAA)