Oct 17, 2005, 09:37 AM EDT - Stolen Mortar At Nauticus
A man who lives next to Battleship Wisconsin in downtown Norfolk told us he saw four people steal an inactive mortar from the ship early Monday morning.
NewsChannel three's Priscilla Monti spoke exclusively with the eyewitness who asked that his name not be released to the public. He said he was looking out from his balcony in Harbour Place Condominiums at 5:40 in the morning. At first he saw two silhouettes moving on the ship.
They were walking toward the bridge to Nauticus. As they rounded the bow he noticed two more people. One was carrying a large "dummy" shell. The man says he yelled to them, "Hey I saw you take that. I'm calling the police!"
He said a woman yelled something back to him. Then the four ran off the ship and toward downtown Norfolk. He said it looked like three men and one woman. They were all dressed in black.
By the time police arrived there was no sign of the four culprits. Detectives said they will look at surveillance video to see if the crime was captured on tape. The six-foot-mortar shell is inactive.
Thanks, all4one. I wonder, if they're describing the "mortar" shell as six feet tall, don't they mean one of the shells for the 16" guns? This sounds more like a prank, since they'd have to know it was a dummy round, and there's no way to fire that thing without a honkin' big barrel.
I worry more about the fact that these clowns got access to the Mo' without anyone stopping them.
The Associated Press - Published: Oct 17, 2005
FREDERICK, Md. (AP) - Fighter jets forced a private airplane to make an unscheduled landing at an airport after the plane violated restricted airspace around Camp David, the Secret Service said.
F-16s intercepted the single-engine Firefly about 9:30 a.m. Sunday and forced the landing at Frederick Municipal Airport, authorities said. Maryland State Police held the pilot until Secret Service agents arrived.
"We interviewed the pilot and he was unaware that he had wandered into restricted airspace," Secret Service spokesman Eric Zahren said. The pilot wasn't charged.
Zahren refused to release the pilot's name because he wasn't charged. The plane, which was painted to resemble a vintage Army aircraft, is registered to Gregory Curtis of Raleigh, N.C., The Frederick News-Post reported Monday...
9 Cases of Brain-Wasting Disease in Idaho (10/17/05)
Oct 17 11:56 AM US/Eastern - By REBECCA BOONE
BOISE, Idaho - From the moment Joan Kingsford first saw her husband stagger in his welding shop, she wanted two things: His recovery and to know what made him sick.
She got neither. Alvin Kingsford, 72, died recently of suspected sporadic Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, the fatal brain-wasting illness. The disease can be conclusively diagnosed only with an autopsy, which did not take place.
State and federal health officials are trying to get to the bottom of nine reported cases of suspected sporadic CJD in Idaho this year. Sporadic, or naturally occurring, CJD differs from the permutation dubbed variant CJD, which is caused by eating mad-cow-tainted beef and has killed at least 180 people in the United Kingdom and continental Europe since the 1990s....