Slashdot Mirror

An anonymous reader writes: 18-year-old Casey Viner, who instigated the 911 call which led to a fatal shooting in Wichita (hiring Tyler Barriss to perform the actual call), is in big trouble. "If convicted on the 10 counts he faces, Viner could spend almost the rest of his life in prison and pay a $1,000,000 fine," reports a local Cincinnati news site. Ironically, Viner's father is a corporal with the county sheriff's department.

The 19-year-old intended target for the SWAT attack had supplied a real address in Wichita for a house where he used to live. But in an eerie coincidence, ten days before the fatal shooting in Wichita, Cincinnati police had responded to a similar SWAT call which had sent them to a house where Viner used to live. The local police said "the facts and circumstances and the verbiage were very, very similar."
25-year-old Tyler Barriss also faces a life sentence for false information which resulted in a death -- as well as several local charges. And Thursday a federal grand jury also indicted Barriss "for a threat that caused an evacuation of a high-profile FCC hearing" into net neutrality regulations just two weeks before the fatal Wichita shooting, "and another threat eight days later that targeted FBI headquarters."

Barriss's lawyer insists that his client wasn't responsible for the Wichita death, blaming instead a "gung-ho, crazy cop."

An anonymous reader quotes WLWT News: Starting Saturday, "Mario Time" will be available on the Google Maps app for iOS and Android, letting you drive around town with Mario as your guide, cruising the app in a go-kart similar to the iconic "Mario Kart" video game. When users launch the latest version of the app, the feature is activated by tapping a "?" beside the start button normally used to start navigation.
It includes sound effects -- "Woo-hoo! Let's-a go!" says Mario -- and will be available for the next week. It's to commemorate "Mario Day" -- Mar.10 -- that magical time of year one Portland newspaper has described as "the most manufactured of corporate holidays," on which Nintendo lowers the price on their Super Mario Run app and offers other discounts.

They take lawnmower sales serious in Kentucky. Nobody knows this better than Harvey Westmoreland who was forced to eat his own beard at gunpoint after an argument about a lawnmower. "Troy offered to buy it from me for $250 dollars. I paid twenty bucks for it. He thought I was trying to cheat him. One thing led to another, and before I knew it, there were knives and guns and everything just went haywire. (Then) they cut my beard and forced me to eat it," he said.

In a story straight from the stereotype news generator, 89-year-old Edna Jester is facing theft charges because she refuses to give a child back a football that ended up in her yard. Police say there had been an ongoing dispute over the football and a child's parent called to report that Jester kept the ball after it landed in her yard again. "I'm 89 years old and I want a little peace of mind," Jester said. "This is my life here in this chair, looking out that door, and all I see is playing the ball down and all over and all over. If it doesn't come in my yard, OK, but if it comes in my yard, I'm going to get it. No trespassing."

Monday night for Michelle Allen consisted of dressing in a cow costume, chasing children, and urinating on her neighbor's porch. You know, the usual. When police arrived and told her to go home and stay there, she did what any of us would do — she ran out into traffic. The police promptly arrested her for disorderly conduct. The officer's report notes that she was verbally abusive on the trip to jail and smelled of alcohol. Unlike our office, the police did not speculate on why she was wearing the cow costume.