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Accused of holding up a bank in Lowell, Massachusetts, 22-year-old Andre Guthrie argued in June that the charge of armed robbery while masked (which carries a five-year minimum sentence) didn’t apply in his case. According to his affidavit, he was wearing women’s clothing, a wig, and makeup that day not to disguise himself but because he dresses as a woman (and uses the name Andrea Guthrie) “as much as possible.” Guthrie’s lawyer said it was “narrow-minded, provincial and puritanical of the commonwealth to assume that just because he was dressed as his female persona, he was hiding his true identity.”
Maureen Faibish, 39, of San Francisco was charged in June with felony child endangerment after her two pit bulls attacked and killed her 12-year-old son, Nicholas. Faibish–who before going out had ordered Nicholas to stay in the basement, then propped a shovel against the basement door to keep the dogs out–told the San Francisco Chronicle that it had been “Nicky’s time to go. When you’re born, you’re destined to go, and this was his time.”
In June an unlicensed 20-year-old man who had apparently been drinking beer allegedly stole a Cessna in Danbury, Connecticut, and landed it in White Plains, New York, after a three-hour joyride. Also in June, a 14-year-old boy allegedly stole a Cessna in Fort Payne, Alabama, took it up, touched down, then took off again before landing hard on a road near the airport. Police said the boy, who spent about 30 minutes in the air, had never flown a plane before.
According to police in Shreveport, Louisiana, 24-year-old Jared Gipson attempted a holdup at Blalock’s Beauty College in June; school manager Diane Mitchell, 53, tripped him on his way out, however, and roughly 20 students and employees then beat him with curling irons, chairs, a table leg, and their fists until police arrived.
