In April, William Bethel Jr. confessed to police during a traffic stop that the station wagon he was driving was mainly used for transporting corpses for his friend's mortuary service but that he was using it just then to deliver pizzas for Domino's ofFeasterville, Pa. (Bethel quickly resigned.) [Bucks County Courier Times, 4-26-06]
Recurring themes: People hit by "flying" cows (that fall out of livestock trailers on highways and overpasses), with the latest occurring near Seguin , Texas , in March, when a cow flew out onto Interstate 10, causing collisions of two police cars that soon caught on fire. [WOAI-TV (San Antonio ), 3-17-06]
Near Tampa, Fla., in May, Robin Key, 44, survived a .38-caliber gunshot through the windshield of her minivan when the bullet came to rest in her lap after being slowed by hitting her shoulder belt and bra strap. [St. Petersburg Times, 5-16-06]
Jason Lyon, 28, a National Guardsman from Buffalo, N.Y., who hurt his ankle jumping from a Humvee in Baghdad in 2004, was cleared, after treatment, to return to combat. After his tour ended, he applied to the U.S. Postal Service to be a letter carrier but was turned down because of his ankle injury (though he is free to apply for less-strenuous positions). In March, after publicity about the case, the Postal Service said it would seek a second medical opinion on the ankle, and a decision was pending at press time. [Buffalo News, 3-30-06]
In April in Wausau, Wis., Thomas Vogedes, 58, was sentenced to six months' probation for incidents in which he hung dozens of bras and panties (new and used) from car mirrors and videotaped them. [KTBS-TV (Shreveport), 5-22-06] [Wausau Daily Herald, 4- 5-06]
No "Oversies": Sarah Zabolotny, 29, who was in the courthouse in Buckhannon, W. Va., in March to deal with a speeding ticket, was later charged with petty larceny after she was seen on surveillance video folding up an eight-foot rug in the building and walking out the door. When a court clerk tracked her down, Zabolotny asked if she could just give it back and forget the whole thing, but the clerk said no. [Herald-Dispatch ( Huntington , W. Va. )-AP, 3-11-06]
Robert E. Mays, 64, an associate dean at the University of Southern Illinois, agreed to plead guilty in June to biting a man on the leg when he had stopped to help Mays after a March traffic accident. [CBS News-AP, 5-26-06]
