Free Republic

ANDERSON — A local woman who accepted the challenge when friends dared her to shatter the glass at the Madison County Sheriff’s Department is now facing criminal charges. Billie Jo Goodnight, 42, 1300 block of Pearl Street, is charged with Level 6 felony charges of intimidation and criminal mischief. During her initial court appearance on Monday Goodnight was granted a pretrial release by Criminal Magistrate Kevin Eads. “Somebody had me thrown into jail,” she said. According to a press release, Goodnight approached the administration offices of the Sheriff’s Department with a baseball bat about 6:20 p.m. Saturday. She proceeded...

A scantily clad, 32-year-old man was found dead early Monday in a pool of blood in an owl cage at the Moscow Zoo. A bird keeper at the zoo found the man, Alexander Luparev at about 10 a.m., lying in the cage, which is home to a Siberina long-tailed tawny owl. Luparev, who fixed gas pipes for a living, was wearing only boxer shorts. Vladimir Zdorenko, deputy prosecutor at the Presnenskaya interdistrict prosecutor's office, said it was not clear what killed the man --‑blood loss from a blow to the head, or freezing to death. Luparev's clothes were strewn across...

Kiev, Ukraine: A drunk who broke into a zoo cage was seriously injured when two black bears housed there attacked him as he tried to make them perform circus tricks, according to a Sehodnia newspaper report yesterday. The incident took place at the municipal zoo in Ukraine's central provincial capital of Cherkassy. The man, described in the report as "Konstantin, aged 22", succeeded in getting over an iron fence, a three-metre rock wall and a water-filled moat to reach the bears. According to eyewitness reports, Konstantin hit the male bear with a steel bar after it ignored his orders to...

Some Russians found it really hard to indulge in the joint celebrations of Russian Easter and the 1st of May holiday. Some people had to face the dire consequences. A woman showed up at a hospital's emergency room in the city of Perm, in the eastern European part of the Russian Federation, seeking medical attention. The doctors examined the 30-year-old woman and found a "foreign body" i.e. a shish kebab skewer sticking out of her head. She also had an open cranial injury on her head. After the woman was treated for injuries, she told the doctors that an incident...