by Chuck Shepherd

Lead Story

* Former hostage Terry Anderson, who was kidnaped by terrorists in Beirut
in 1985 and held for nearly seven years, filed a lawsuit against 13
federal agencies in September because they refused to release U. S.
government documents pertaining to the kidnaping.  Among the agencies'
rejection letters was one from the Drug Enforcement Administration, which
said it would not release records unless Anderson provided an "original
notarized authorization" from his captors waiving their privacy rights.
[Washington Post, 10-3-94]

Police Blotter

* As part of an ongoing feud, according to police in Fairfield, Iowa,
Ronald Warren Switzer, 39, flew a small paraplane over the home of Mike
Parsons in July and fired several rifle shots--perhaps the nation's first
fly-by shooting.  And in March, the FBI charged that James A. McClelland,
48, of Spokane, Wash., hired a man to murder his wife with a poisonous
needle in a skate-by pricking. [Des Moines Register, 8-4-94] [Independence
Examiner-AP, 7-27-94]

* According to Durham, N. C., convenience store clerk Saundra Lewis, who
was held up by a man in February, the robber almost could not stop
apologizing.  He said he was sorry when he began the holdup, then again
when he rejected her plea to think it over, then again just as he fled.
A few seconds after leaving, he returned and said, "I'm sorry, really,
I'm sorry," but nevertheless kept the money.  By contrast, in March, the
robber of a tobacco shop in Mesa, Ariz., not only returned the next night
to rob the clerk again but chastised her for having been rude to him the
night before. [Durham Herald-Sun, 2-18-94] [Arizona Republic, 3-26-94]

* Reuters news service reported last fall that a bank robbery in a suburb
of Sydney, Australia, was thwarted when three men, aged 69, 70, and 85,
pinned the 18-year-old robber to the ground and held him until police
arrived. [Chicago Tribune-Reuter, 11-17-93]

* In August, Cindy Hartman, 26, startled a burglar when, upon encountering
him in her home in Conway, Ark., she dropped to her knees and began to
pray for him.  The man apologized and called to his partner outside,
"We've got to [give back] all of this.  This is a Christian home.  We
can't do this."  The two burglars brought back the items they had stolen
and even left their gun with her. [Santa Maria Times, Aug94]

* The Leesburg (Fla.) Daily Commercial reported in December on the
response of shoplifting suspect Darlene Oar, 25, when asked for personal
ID by Officer Scott Gray at the station house.  When Gray asked Oar her
color of hair, Oar allegedly stood up, pulled her pants down to her knees,
and asked, "Why don't you look?" Oar was warned she would face additional
charges if she continued to expose herself. [The Daily Commercial, 12-
31-93]

* Paul Bivens, 28, was charged with attempted burglary of a liquor store
in Greenville, Miss., in May after police matched fingerprints.  The
prints on Bivens's fingers matched the print on a severed finger that
police found on the floor of the store, the result of the burglar's having
slammed a door on his hand.  [Columbia Daily Tribune-Greenville Delta
Democrat Times, 5-20-94]

* A 45-year-old Leesport, Pa., man fleeing a street robbery attempt in
September was shot in the buttocks by the robber.  The .22-caliber bullet
lodged in his penis, but the man was in satisfactory condition after
surgery. [Reading Eagle/Times, 9-3-94]

* A 27-year-old man in Salt Lake City reported in September that a burglar
had taken $50 and a bottle of Rogaine, and that the thief had probably
entered through an open bathroom window in his apartment.  The victim said
he usually leaves the bathroom window open so that he can come and go
freely, without neighbors' knowledge, while dressed as a woman. [Salt Lake
Tribune, 9-25-94]

* Recent uses of food as a weapon:  Laurie Remillard was pelted with
doughnuts in May in a drive-by attack in Biddeford, Maine; Gary Boyington,
23, was charged last winter with a robbery in Olathe, Kan., in which,
though he claimed he had a gun, he was armed only with a chili dog he had
just purchased; McDonald's restaurant employee Greg Dean stopped a robber
in Oklahoma City in August by hitting the man in the chest with a
Quarter-Pounder, startling him and causing him to flee; Teresa Ann
Johnson, 27, was arrested in Wilmington, N. C., in August and charged with
tossing a vat of hot crabs on the police officer who had come to break up
a fight at her home; film producer Donald P.  Borchers claimed in July
that one of his actors, Hunter Von Leer, had hurled a bowl of green Jello
at him in Goldfield, Nev., during a break in making the movie, "The
Stranger." [Chicago Sun-Times-Reuters, 6-11-94] [Olathe Daily News,
12-30-93] [Pryor Daily Times-AP, Aug94] [Wilmington Morning Star, 8-11-94]
[Gateway Gazette (Pahrump, Nev.), 7-28-94]

* Recent uses of live animals as weapons:  Two people in Camden, N. J.,
in August, and the owner of a store in Columbia, S. C., in May, said they
were robbed by men brandishing only large, black snakes; Roland Wood, 31,
said in July that he was assaulted by a man in Austin, Tex., who threw a
Mexican freetail bat at him; a woman in Coraopolis, Pa., decided not to
press charges against her former boyfriend, whom she had accused in June
of chasing her with a snapping turtle in a fight over their breakup.
[Washington Post, 8-12-94; The State (Columbia, S. C.)], 5-28-94] [Dallas
Morning News-AP, Jul94] [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 6-21-94; Wilmington
Morning Star-AP, 7-13-94]

I Don't Think So

* The Sumter (S. C.) Item newspaper reported in September that state Rep.
Grady Brown, on at least seven occasions this year, paid constituents'
utility company bills out of his campaign treasury, but that he saw
nothing wrong with the practice, which he called "common."  Said Brown,
"A person is not going to vote for you for that reason." [Charleston Post
& Courier-AP, 9-28-94]

Least Justifiable Homicide

* At the time of the world population conference in Cairo in September,
the newspaper Al-Wajd reported that a man in the southern town of Qena
stabbed his wife to death, after a discussion about the conference,
because she would not go to bed with him. [Washington Post-Reuter,
9-13-94]