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On Thika Road near Nairobi, Kenya, in February, villagers brawled over meat from a road-killed baby hippopotamus weighing about 1,700 pounds; amidst the kicking and punching, two people were stabbed. Also in February 6,000 shoppers stampeded, then rioted, at the opening of a new Ikea in a north London suburb. The event, scheduled to last 24 hours, was called off after 40 minutes of frenzied, often violent bargain hunting, and at least 20 participants were taken to the hospital. One customer described “people tugging at two different sides of the same sofa and shouting ‘mine, mine.’” About a week later 35 Greenpeace activists tried to use loud noises to disrupt proceedings at London’s International Petroleum Exchange, but angry traders allegedly began hitting and kicking them, driving them off the trading floor and into the lobby. The one-sided beating reportedly continued until the protesters were forced out of the building; two wound up in the hospital.
Education in Florida
Matthew Porter, 25, and another man, 24, were arrested on drug-related charges at the Bear Creek Park Frisbee Golf Course in suburban Dallas in February. A police officer had stopped them, saying he smelled marijuana; while he was checking for outstanding warrants against them, Porter’s Labrador retriever, J.D., emerged from a nearby pond and ran up to Porter carrying a plastic bag containing about four grams.
Another fan sued a baseball team after being hit by a foul ball that he’d tried to catch (this time it was dentist Neil Pakett of Elkins Park, Pennsylvania, who in February appealed the dismissal of his suit against the Philadelphia Phillies). And the U.S. Forest Service again exercised its right to recover firefighting costs from a person who started a forest fire (this time it was Jason Hoskey, 26, who last fall pleaded no contest to leaving a campfire unattended in California’s Mendocino National Forest in 2003 and who was ordered in February to pay restitution of $18.2 million).
