Food fight leads to felony charge

Foodie news from KRGV-TV (Brownsville, TX)…

BROWNSVILLE – A restaurant owner faces an aggravated assault charge.  This is after police say she threw a plate a customer who complained about his order.

Maria Del Rayo Cordero already posted a $7,500 bond.

Police were called to El Rancho Alegre Café, or “The Happy Ranch Cafe,” on East 14th Street Saturday afternoon. Investigators say the customer complained he was served a beef milanesa plate, instead of chicken.

Police say Cordero told the man to pay for the food anyway and leave. An argument ensued. The owner allegedly threw a tray of food and tea at the customer. The customer then threw the tea back. Police say that’s when the owner grabbed a ceramic plate and hit the customer on the forehead. Paramedics treated him at the scene.

Woman fined for “back taxes”

This comes to us from Reuters…

WARSAW (Reuters) – Poland’s tax office has levied a fine of 2.3 million zlotys ($820,000) on an unemployed woman for failing to pay tax on income worth at least 13.7 million zlotys she said she had earned as a prostitute.

The woman told the tax office in the southern city of Katowice that she had very “generous” customers, the website gazeta.pl, which is linked to leading Polish daily Gazeta Wyborcza, reported Tuesday.

One of her clients paid the woman 5 million zlotys during the 1997-2002 period, she was quoted as saying.

The website gave no further details.

A beer, a hug and an arrest

Sporting news from Reuters…

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) – Pakistan’s parliament fined a national hockey player and two team officials for un-Islamic behavior after pictures circulated of them hugging a woman and apparently drinking alcohol in Argentina last month.

Pakistan is a conservative Muslim country where men hugging women in public is taboo and even men shaking hands with women is frowned upon. Drinking alcohol is illegal for Muslims.

National field hockey team player Rehan Butt was fined 100,000 rupees ($1,175) while coach Shahid Ali Khan and manager Asif Bajwa were fined 50,000 rupees ($600) each, the chairman of the National Assembly’s standing committee on sports said.

“Islamic culture does not allow us to hug a lady and have alcohol,” committee chairman Jamshed Ahmed Dasti told Reuters.

Pictures run by a Pakistani television channel and posted on the Internet showed one of the men hugging a woman and another apparently drinking a beer.

Another picture showed a group of men sitting at a table with glasses in front of them, apparently containing alcohol.

Bajwa told Dunya Television the woman in the photograph was a tournament liaison officer.

“All officials and players considered her as our sister,” Bajwa said before the fines were imposed.

The pictures were taken at the end of the tournament, after Pakistan lost in the final to New Zealand, and the woman had put the pictures on her Facebook page, he said.

Field hockey is Pakistan’s national sport although the team’s fortunes have waned since it won Olympic gold in 1984.

Dasti said the team’s failure at the tournament made the “disgusting” activities that much worse.

In 2007, Minister of Tourism Nilofar Bakhtiar handed in her resignation after religious hardliners raised a storm of criticism when a picture of her appeared hugging her parachute instructor after completing a jump for charity in France.

Bus driver charged with DUI

Education news comes to us from WPXI (Pittsburgh)…

PITTSBURGH — Pittsburgh police said a school bus driver was drunk or on drugs when he ran a red light then nearly hit a light pole while driving 15 high school students on a field trip to the Carnegie Science Center.

Brian Dunlap, 36, an SD Transit driver, was charged with driving under the influence and endangering the Carrick High School students on his bus after his arrest about 6:45 p.m. Monday.

A school aide said Dunlap kept looking at her through the rear view mirror and she noticed his eyes were blood shot and glassy. She reported to officers that when the bus turned into the Science Center the driver nearly hit a pole at which time he laughed and his words were slurred.

Upon leaving the Science Center, the aid observed a change in the bus driver’s eyes and demeanor, police said. The aide said Dunlap’s eyes were more bloodshot and his words were slurred.

While driving through downtown, he ran a red light and again laughed, the aide said. The aide called 911 as she and the students were greatly concerned about the actions of the driver.

Authorities pulled the driver over and charged him after he failed a field sobriety test.

The 15 students and aids were transported back to Carrick High School by police, where the students were released to their parents and the bus was released to the owner. No one on the bus sustained any injuries.

Pittsburgh Public Schools officials said the trip was organized by a group that promotes volunteerism, and wasn’t an official school function.

Former NFL’er jailed after passing out in restaurant

Sports news courtesy of the Houston Chronicle…

NOVI, Mich. — Former Detroit Lions receiver Charles Rogers has been sentenced to 93 days in jail for contempt of court after apparently drinking too much and passing out at a Mexican restaurant.

Novi Deputy Police Chief Tom Lindberg says officers arrested Rogers on Tuesday at the suburban Detroit restaurant on a warrant for disobeying a sobriety court order. The order was imposed after Rogers pleaded guilty in September to impaired driving.

Lindberg says Rogers was visibly intoxicated Tuesday and was taken to a hospital. He spent the night in custody, and district Judge Robert Bondy sentenced him Wednesday.

Messages were left with Rogers lawyer Justin Barnett.

Rogers, a 28-year-old Saginaw native who starred at Michigan State, was the No. 2 overall NFL draft pick in 2003.

One man’s art is another man’s felony

Art news from the Houston Chronicle…

Federal agents today arrested a Denver-area man accused of placing pictures of Tiger Woods and his wife on Tropical-Mango Gatorade bottles and putting them on store shelves.

The man told a federal agent that he considered his altered sports drinks bottles, which also said “Unfaithful,” to be something akin to Andy Warhol’s works of art, according to a court affidavit.

Federal authorities apparently considered his work more akin to several felonies.

Jason Eric Kay, 38, of Longmont, Colo., was arrested on charges of misbranding and altering food labels with intent to cause serious injury to the business of any person, according to a release from the Denver U.S. Attorney’s Office and the Food and Drug Administration Office of Criminal Investigations.

While the FDA and Gatorade maker PepsiCo North America were investigating who was tampering with the products, Kay sent a letter to the manufacturer offering to go on a tour placing his altered products in various cities if Pepsi would pay his travel and per diem, according to the affidavit.

The altered Gatorade bottles were numbered to indicate which piece of art they were.

An FDA agent who visited Kay wrote in the affidavit that Kay did the copying at Kinko’s and had placed 67 bottles of the sports drink in various Denver-area stores.

“The consumer must have confidence that the labeling on the products they purchase has not been changed or altered in any way so that the information about the product is accurate,” said Denver’s U.S. Attorney David Gaouette in a written statement. “Once a label is illegally changed, all of the information on that label is put into question.”

The crimes Kay is charged with carry maximum penalties of up to three years in prison and a fine of $250,000.

Gatorade had a Tiger Woods-themed sports drink, but discontinued it last year after the scandal surrounding his infidelity broke.

Why you never pee in your own backyard

Financial news from the Houston Chronicle…

BEAUMONT — A former teller in Beaumont and her boyfriend face up to 25 years in prison after being convicted of robbing the bank as she worked.

No sentencing date was immediately set for 25-year-olds Kimberly Michelle Kirkwood and Mark Anthony Owens of Beaumont.

A federal jury Wednesday convicted both of armed bank robbery.

Prosecutors say Kirkwood let Owens into Texas State Bank as she opened for business on Sept. 8, 2007.

Investigators say Kirkwood, with nearly $90,000 in her teller drawer, posed as a victim while Owens claimed to have a weapon and took another teller hostage.

Owens drove off with the cash, but the freed teller wrote down the truck’s license plate number. The vehicle, which belonged to an Owens friend, was later abandoned.

The money was never recovered.

Austin cop popped for DWI

This comes to us from the Daily Texan (UT-Austin)…

Austin police officer Leonardo Quintana was arrested in Leander for Driving While Intoxicated Tuesday. Quintana is in the middle of a federal civil rights lawsuit brought against him by the family of Nathanial Sanders II, the 18-year-old he fatally shot at an East Austin apartment complex more than eight months ago.

Quintana was held in Williamson County Jail on $1,000 bail, which was posted by 9:30 a.m Tuesday morning.

Quintana was found at the scene of a crash at the intersection of Osage and Saddle Blanket in Leander at 5:15 a.m. by Leander police officers, according to an arrest affidavit.

After smelling alcohol on Quintana’s breath, officers had him perform a field sobriety test and concluded he showed signs of intoxication. Quintana refused to take a breath or blood test.

Quintana fatally shot Sanders, on May 11, 2009, while Sanders was sitting in the back of a Mercedes-Benz station wagon in the apartment complex’s parking lot.

With two other APD officers Quintana investigated the vehicle, which was linked to a series of robberies, but only one officer recorded the incident that morning.

A Travis County grand jury in August 2009 no-billed Quintana after determining that he did not violate criminal law.

APD Chief Art Acevedo said in November that Quintana did not use excessive force and that his use of force was “objectively reasonable based on the totality of the circumstances.” However, as a result of violating APD’s mobile video recorder policy by not recording the incident, Acevedo suspended Quintana for 15 days.

Quintana’s attorney Robert Icenhauer-Ramirez said he does not anticipate that the arrest will have any affect on the lawsuit at all.

Icenhauer-Ramirez said he has not spoken to Quintana about the incident, but that “[Quintana] is going to be retaining an independent council” on the matter.

“These are very stressful circumstances that officer Quintana has been under for the last year,” Icenhauer-Ramirez said. “I just don’t judge people on these sort of minor pitfalls that they get into when they are under this amount of stress.”

Austin Police Association President Wayne Vincent said he does not think the

incident affects Quintana’s credibility and that Quintana has been “under a

tremendous amount of stress after what he has gone through.”

“He is going to have to answer to the charges,” Vincent said. “The police association is going to support him as any family member going through a crisis. He is going to face what has occurred and we will see what happens.”

Quintana has been placed on paid, but restrictive leave by Austin police officials for the DWI arrest.

Dallas cop fired for sexting

This comes to us from the Dallas Morning News and Injusticeeverywhere.com

Dallas Police Chief David Kunkle fired a four-year veteran on Thursday after an eight-month internal investigation found among other things that he sent nude photos of himself to a high school student during school hours, kept several people’s ID cards, and failed to give copies of tickets to several violators who were later wanted for arrest because they didn’t pay the tickets.

Bryan Crews, 30, can appeal his firing.

Crews could not be reached for comment, but in his internal affairs statement, he questioned the fairness of the investigation, which was an unusual one for the department because it involved sexually explicit images that the officer saved on his personal cell phone.

“I do not deny all of the allegations, but question the integrity of the investigation, and how the evidence was obtained,” he wrote. “I am not saying that my behavior was OK.”

The internal affairs investigation started in late February after his wife gave the authorities his private cell phone memory card, ticket books and other evidence. Crews’ wife told officials that she believed some of the sexually explicit images to be child pornography, but the investigation found no evidence that the images were of minors.

Thieves get caught up in the longest yard

Sports news courtesy of KXTV (Sacramento, CA)…

SACRAMENTO, CA – Talk about timing.

The incident began when three brothers allegedly tried to break into a home near Foothill High School in Sacramento Monday afternoon, according to spokeswoman Sheryl Chow with the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Department.

The suspects tried to run away but officers quickly caught Jamario Hill, 19,  a short distance from the duplex on Robert Frost Way where the attempted break-in was reported.

His brothers continued to run from authorities.

The Sacramento Police Department launched its helicopter announcing a description of the two other men they were searching for.

The oldest brother, 20-year-old James Hill Jr., ran through a football field where a group of deputies and cops just happened to be practicing for their annual Pig Bowl, according to Sacramento Sheriff’s Sgt. Tim Curran.

Sheriff’s canine officer and team wide receiver Shane Gregory saw the possible suspect walking along the track beside the field. “He’s looking over his shoulder where the sirens are coming from and as he got closer to us, I looked at him and I said, ‘Hey man, just come here and talk to me for a second. And he took off running up the hillside.”

Gregory ran after him, in full football pads, catching him at the top of the hill. “And I…grabbed him by his hooded sweatshirt and took him down on the ground where we were able to get handcuffs on him,” he said.

Also in on the tackle; Sacramento Police motorcycle officer and team tight end T.J. Price. “It almost felt unreal, honestly,” Price said. ”How often are you going to get a criminal come running through, you know, 60 cops playing out here, and instinct kicks in and he’s our criminal so we’re gonna get him one way or another.”

Officers also arrested 19-year old Jamario Hill and a third brother, a 17-year old juvenile, who was chased down by another group of cops on the field, who were part of the offensive line.

All three brothers face charges of attempted burglary and conspiracy. The two adult brothers are being held at the Sacramento County Jail, while their younger brother was taken to Juvenile Hall.

The 8th annual Guns ‘N Hoses football game between law enforcement and firefighters is set for January 30th at Cordova High School.

The suspect nabbed by Gregory and Price seemed stunned at his arrest. “He didn’t say anything at all, nothing at all,” Gregory said, “I think he was just kind of dumbfounded over what happened.”