Free Republic

Montreal police Const. Anie Lemieux said the initial investigation suggests the youths may have been spray-painting graffiti. It's believed they had parked their cars near the scene before heading to the tracks. Lemieux said they were in an area where it would have been difficult to hear trains approaching.

He developed the idea in the early 1970s on expeditions to the Franconian Jura mountains, when he would paint a red “x” on each piton he could avoid using for a foot- or handhold. Once he was able to complete a route avoiding all of them, he would paint a red dot at the base of the climb so that others could have a go. Albert’s “redpoints” sparked the development of the sport climbing movement and the term “redpoint” is used as a measure of performance.... A turning point in his life came in 1973 during a trip to the...

Jerome Williams was 12 when he fought a teacher at Northview Heights Elementary School. He was 14 when police accused him of shooting out windows in the Northview Heights housing complex where he lived. At 15, four days after a juvenile detention center released him, he died in a shootout with police officers responding to a home invasion robbery on Monday. "He was always one of those kids who didn't listen," said his mother, Kisha Adams, 34, of Northview Heights. "He had a hard head."

A Berks County man paralyzed in a bicycling accident several years ago was killed Thursday when he collided with an ambulance near his home while riding an adaptive cycle recently donated to him. Stephen B. Johnson, 49, of Exeter Township, was riding the three-wheel cycle modified for people with leg paralysis west on Rugby Road in Exeter Township when he veered into the path of the ambulance, according to police. The ambulance was returning to its station from a call and was not carrying any patients, police said.

POMPANO BEACH — When an angry motorist came rushing up to the window of his pickup truck Wednesday, Cleveland Murdock had a gun and Florida law to back him. The Broward Sheriff's Office said Thursday their case is closed in the road rage incident that left Patrick Lavoie, 33, dead in the middle of a residential street. Murdock acted in self-defense by shooting in the heart the man who approached him, investigators determined. Witnesses told investigators Lavoie jumped out of the Honda Civic his girlfriend was driving, upset that Murdock seemed to be tailgating the couple. Lavoie angrily charged toward...

Handheld laser pointers are commonly used in lecture halls and are considered to be harmless and safe.1 However, laser pointers can cause severe eye injury, as demonstrated by the case of a 15-year-old boy. The boy had ordered a handheld laser pointer with green light on the Internet to use as a toy for popping balloons from a distance and burning holes into paper cards and his sister's sneakers. The boy's life changed when he was playing with his laser pointer in front of a mirror to create a “laser show,” during which the laser beam hit his eyes several...

STATESVILLE, NC (WBTV) - A man who was with about a dozen people who were looking for a legendary "ghost train" in Iredell County was hit by a locomotive and killed early Friday morning. The incident happened on a train trestle at 2:45 a.m. near the 900 block of Buffalo Shoals Road. Robin Chapman, a spokesperson for Norfolk-Southern Railroad, said the eastbound train consisted of three locomotives and no freight cars. The train was rounding a curve and approaching a trestle over Boston Creek just prior to Buffalo Shoals Road when it struck a man on the trestle, Chapman said.

BRUSSELS – The lead singer of a British pop trio climbed a telecommunications mast behind the main stage at a Belgian rock festival and leaped to his death in the parking lot below, police said Saturday. Twenty-two-year-old Charles Haddon of Ou Est Le Swimming Pool died late Friday during the Pukkelpop festival in Hasselt, a town in eastern Belgium. District attorney Marc Rubens said police were treating the death as a suicide.

KIRKLAND, Wash. - Homemade fireworks caused an explosion inside a vehicle on Interstate 405 in Kirkland on Saturday. The Washington State Patrol says a man filled some balloons with welding gas - a combination of oxygen and acetylene gas - which is normally stored in steel cylinders. They rubbed together, causing static electricity, and exploded. Troopers say the blast blew out the back window of the pickup truck. They say the man, woman and 3-year-old girl in the vehicle are lucky they were not injured or even killed in the blast.

Antoine Boutte used to keep a loaded gun at the bottom of his gas stove. That is, until he forgot it was there early Saturday and he and another man decided to cook some food, Fulton County police said Boutte fired up the stove at his College Park home around 3:30 a.m. Saturday -- heating up the .40 caliber Smith & Wesson along with it, a police report said. While the food was cooking, the weapon’s magazine started to melt in the gun well, the police report said. This caused the spring – and bullets – to come out of...

Man dies after jumping from Card Sound Bridge A Miami man is dead and another seriously injured after the two jumped off the Card Sound Bridge "just for fun," Thursday afternoon. Jorge Suarez-Taupier, 24, died from his injuries and his friend, 20-year-old Isaac Morejon, barely survivde the plunge. Card Sound Bridge is a toll bridge in Key Largo and is about 60 feet above the water. Authorities said the two men were drinking beer and fishing befor they made the decision to spice up their evening by jumping into the water.

Abby Sunderland, 16, who is attempting to become the youngest sailor ever to circumnavigate the globe, was feared lost at sea today after her crew lost contact with her boat. Jeff Casher, an engineer on Sunderland's support team, said two emergency beacons on her boat are now signaling she is in trouble. Abby's mother, MaryAnne Sunderland, told ABC News that Abby manually activated two beacons around 6 a.m. Pacific Time Thursday. A beacon designed to automatically go off when it contacts water had not been activated, she said. Abby was in 20-25 foot waves at the time of last contact,...

A man was seriously injured Monday morning after he was trapped in a burning car on the West Side, authorities said. Police said the man, 37, was driving a Cadillac Seville north on Loop 410 near Culebra Road around 8:30 a.m. when he lit a cigarette, igniting a gas can in the passenger seat. The man, who was not immediately identified, lost control of the two-door car, which was on fire, began driving backward and then crashed into another car, police said. The man was trapped inside until San Antonio firefighters arrived. It wasn't immediately clear whether firefighters extinguished the...

Vodka eyeballing. It’s the latest drinking fad on YouTube, and it could cause blindness. Hundreds of online videos that originated in the U.K. show teens pouring vodka directly into their eyes, straight from the bottle. The videos are getting hundreds of thousands of hits, MyFoxDC.com reported. Substance abuse expert Mike Gumbel claims kids aren’t eyeballing to get drunk faster, but do it when the effects of alcohol have already set in and impaired their judgment. Eyeballing is more of a prank than a way to become more intoxicated. “They’re not doing it to get more drunk, they’re doing it as...

<p>Authorities have identified a 47-year-old woman who drowned as her car sunk into a retention pond Friday night after she unsuccessfully tried to save the vehicle from rising water.</p> <p>Cassandra Bryant, of the 1400 block of Blue Bell in north Harris County, was southbound on the North Freeway service road around 10 p.m. when rising water prompted her to maneuver the car inadvertently into the pond.</p>

The use of the drug LSD, or commonly referred to as “acid,” appears to be increasing especially among young adults in Arcata, according to an Arcata Police Department press release issued yesterday. On April 18, officers responded to a residence to assist the Arcata Mad River Ambulance with a 31-year-old male subject who had just castrated himself. Medical personnel and officers were unable to locate the subject’s testicles. He later told officers that he flushed them down the toilet as he feared they contained “monsters.” The victim, who police say had a Tennessee address, was with several friends when he...

The use of the drug LSD, or commonly referred to as “acid,” appears to be increasing especially among young adults in Arcata, according to an Arcata Police Department press release issued yesterday. On April 18, officers responded to a residence to assist the Arcata Mad River Ambulance with a 31-year-old male subject who had just castrated himself. Medical personnel and officers were unable to locate the subject’s testicles. He later told officers that he flushed them down the toilet as he feared they contained “monsters.”

A proposal to grant medals for "courageous restraint" to troops in Afghanistan who avoid deadly force at a risk to themselves has generated concern among U.S. soldiers and experts who worry it could embolden enemy fighters and confuse friendly forces.

In what may be one of the most shocking stories of the year, a man in China died after having an eel inserted into his rectum. Doctors who treated the victim in the Sichuan Province, did not know how the man met his demise until they performed an autopsy and discovered an Asian swamp eel up his backside.

A handyman who was injured in a "Laurel and Hardy moment" after propping his ladder against the tree branch he then sawed off is suing his employers. Peter Aspinall, 64, had been asked to prune a sycamore tree in the grounds of a hotel, but instead of leaning his ladder against the trunk he placed it against the branch he was hacking down. When the branch fell it took Mr Aspinall with it, 14ft to the ground below. He broke his heel, damaged his ligaments and had to spend ten days in hospital recovering from surgery on his injuries. Now...