НАУКА - Unit 12. Stories for Reading

1. BANK ROBBERS 1.1. Klaus Schmidt, 41, burst into a bank in Berlin, Germany, waved a pistol and screamed: "Hand over the money!" The staff asked if he wanted a bag to which he replied: "Damn right, it's a real gun!" Guessing Schmidt was deaf, the manager set off the alarm saying later: "It was ridiculously loud, but he didn't seem to notice". After five minutes, punctuated by Schmidt's occasionally shouting: "I am a trained killer!" the police arrived and arrested him. Schmidt then sued the bank accusing them of exploiting his disability. 1.2. Five armed raiders burst into a bank in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan. Their demands for money were foiled when the staff calmly opened up the safes to reveal rows of empty shelves. Unfortunately, robbers were let down by their ignorance of the republic's finances. No money had been delivered to any of the banks in Baku for the previous two months. 1.3. John Nashid from New York held up a bank in Bronx and got away with $17,000. He then led the police on a five-mile car chase through back streets, throwing fistfuls of dollars out of the window in an attempt to hold up pursuit To a certain extent it may have worked, as $6,300 of his haul wasn't recovered; but it also left a trail for the 12 cop cars chasing him to follow. Eventually Nashid ran from his car, dived through the window of a nearby nursing home, and was finally captured near a garbage can at the rear of the building. He had entered the bank draped in a sheetwith holes cut out for his eyes, and was immediately nicknamed "Casper the Ghost" by police. 1.4. Scottish bank robber Derek Macfadden was caught because he was too law-abiding. Gun in hand, he held up a bank at Giffnock, near Glasgow, and then raced off in his getaway car with Ј4,000. Despite being pursued by police, he halted at a red traffic light, where he was promptly arrested. 1.5. A man arrived at a bank in East Hartford, Connecticut. He was wearing a blue bandanna across his face and brandishing a pistol as he yanked at the door, only to find it was locked. The bank had actually closed at 3:00. After staring at the door for a few seconds, the man ran off into a small black car. Staff still inside the bank called the police, but no arrest was made. Perhaps even later in arriving was the gang who spent the night cutting their way into a Lloyds bank in Hampshire, England. They cut bars with a hydraulic saw, wrenched out a security grille, and punched a hole through a wall. The only problem was that the bank was closed down four years earlier, and the building was empty. 1.6. From Florence, Italy, a tale is in which the guards got it wrong: security men were all too eager to help a man with his foot in a cast as he hobbled into a bank on metal crutches. Ignoring the alarm from the metal detector at the bank's entrance, they guided the apparently disabled man to a cashiers register. There he dropped his crutches, pulled a gun and grabbed $40,000 before sprinting away. 1.7. Michael Norton stole two security cameras from the lobby of a bank. The cops were sure it was Norton, one of the neigbourghood characters, because the last pictures the cameras took showed him unscrewing them from the wall mountings Detective Thomas Hickey set off to cruise the streets and evenioally found Norton. "Hey", called Hickey. "Could you explain to me how comes the bank has your picture?" "I didn't rob the bank", Norton protested. "I just took the camera" ... 2. MUGGERS 2.1 . After he had been robbed of $20 in Winnipeg, Canada, Rogir Morse asked for his wallet back. The mugger agreed, handed over his own wallet by mistake, and fled- leaving Roger $250 better off. 2.2. Camden, New Jersey, Clarence Gland and Kin Williams were taking a late-night stroll when a car pulled up and two men got out. One of them produced a long black snake and shoved it toward Gland's face, and while the couple stood rigid, his associate made off with cash, a personal stereo and a wristwatch. A snake expert later identified the reptile from its description as acompletely harmless rat snake . In other words, it was not loaded. 2.3. A gun-toting mugger made a bad mistake when he held up a man who was walking home through an alley in West Virginia. Finding his victim was carrying only $13, he demanded a check for $300. The man wrote out the check, and the thief was caught the next day when he tried to cash it. As the cops said afterward: "The crook wasn't very bright". 2.4. An Italian who turned to snatching handbags to finance his drug addiction came unstuck, when he robbed his own mother by mistake. The woman was walking along the street when her son, who didn't see her face until it was too late, spend past on a motorcycle and snatched her bag. Recognising him, his mother was so angry she reported him to the police. 2.5. Belgian police quickly solved two Brussels street robberies when they heard the victims' description of the culprit: he was wearing a bright-yellow jacket and had a cast on one leg. The man was caught within 15 minutes of his second robbery. 2.6. Purse snatcher Daniel Pauchin ended up in the hospital, when he tried to rob two women in a street in Nice, France. The victims were burly transvestites who beat him up and left him with broken ribs. 2.7. Mandy Hammond from Arnold, England, went out with two friends. As they waited for a taxi, a man walked up to them and demanded Mandy's lipstick and eyeshadow. The group thought he was joking, but he then pulled a gun, held it to her friend Paul Upton's head and announced, "Don't laugh. I've got a gun, and I'll shoot if you haven't got any lipstick" . Lipstick was promptly produced, and the man strolled off. In the same month a gunman struck in Scarborough, England. Wearing a hood and dark glasses, he forced a pharmacist assistant, at gunpoint, to fill a bag with pimple cream. Police were said to be "puzzled". 3. THIEVES 3.1. Edward Williams of Houston, Texas, was fined $10,000 and put on 10 years' probation. He had formerly been a storeroom supervisor at Houston's Jefferson Davis Hospital, and he had been convicted of stealing 79,680 rolls of toilet paper. No one knew for sure what he'd done with the purloined paper. 3.2. Car thief in Holloway, north of London, got away with something special. Tucked away in the trunk of his car was a box containing 120 plastic earholes. They were plastic molds made for the Royal National Throat, Nose and Ear Hospital, to allow hearing aids to be tailor-made for patients. One can only imagine the thief trying to sell them on the open market: "Ere, buddy — wanna buy some plastic ear'oles?" 3.3. The day after winning $640,000 in Italy's national lottery, Flavio Maestrini was arrested for stealing $400 from a shop. Appearing in court, he explained that he didn't enjoy spending money unless it was stolen. 3.4. A Russian man arrived at his country retreat near Arkhangelsk, Russia, on the White Sea and found the entire house stolen, complete with outhouses and fences, leaving just a vegetable patch. 3.5. Members of a British Rail cricket team turned up for the first match of the season at their field near Kidderminster, England. The pavilion had disappeared. How one steals an eight-room building without anyone noticing remains a mystery. 3.6. Alan Omonde appeared in court in Uganda on the charge of stealing an old man's big edible rat. Omonde was given 12 strokes of the cane for stealing John Onyait's smoked rat, while Onyait lamented that he'd been deprived of his favourite dish. Omonde was also ordered to hunt down and trap five more edible rats as a fine payable to his elderly victim. 4. ESCAPE ARTISTS 4.1. Two prisoners tried to escape from an appearance at a court in Watford, England. Forgetting that they were handcuffed together, they ran on either side of a lamppost. Having hurtled into one another, the stunned pair was grabbed by the guard and bundled into a waiting prison van. 4.2. Relatives bribed a prison guard to smuggle a bunch of bananas to an inmate at Pecs, Hungary. Unfortunately the guard ran into the prison commander, and apparently unaware that there might be anything wrong with them, offered him his choice of the fruit. Needless to say, the commander chose the wrong banana, bit into the metal file contained within, and had the guard up on charges. 4.3. A certain Mr. Jorgen appeared on a Danish TV quiz show and easily outclassed his opponents. He was just about to take off with nearly $700 and a vacation for two in Marbella, Spain, when the producer took him aside: it seemed security wanted a word. Jorgen had been on the run for the previous 18 months, and his TV-addict prison officer had recognised him. 4.4. Double murderer David Graham was only too obliging when prison officers in Florida asked him to try to escape, so they could test a new tracking dog. They even gave him a 30-minute start. Graham did his part perfectly, but the dog didn't. Local police were called into join the search, but Graham was long gone. A much better sniffer dog was employed at a jail in Mexico City, Mexico. It found Barren Brown hiding in a laundry van — which probably saved Brown a great deal of disappointment, as the laundry van's immediate destination was another prison. 4.5. Three imprisoned robbers broke out of a new jail in Aixen-Provence, France by climbing ladders left behind by workmen. The workers had been erecting wires intended to deter helicopter-aided escapes from the prison yard, but in preventing the high-tech breakouts, they seem to have forgotten all about the low-tech ones. 4.6. An unnamed man reportedly climbed the wall of Chelmsford jail, in Essex, England, from the outside. He was carrying a rope with which he intended to haul his brother out. The fellow lost his balance, fell into the jail, and was arrested as he staggered around the prison yard, dazed but unhurt. 5. SHOP-LIFTERS 5.1. Steven Kemble was arrested in St. George, Utah, when he tried to flee after shoplifting a CD. After being briefly detained by a store clerk, he broke free, dashed out the door, and rain into a pillar in front of the shop, knocking himself unconscious. 5.2 . Roy Philips Downfall was a colour fellow . Appearing in court on shoplifting charges, he wore a yellow parka, yellow shirt, yellow pants, and a yellow tie. It was a similar dress that drew him to the attention of the store detective at a supermarket in Oldham, England, where everything he was after had a yellow connection: jellies, mustard, cheese, three pairs of socks, and two pairs of underpants. He was given a one-month suspended sentence. 5.3. In Johannesburg, South Africa, a shoplifter with a passion for cheese was caught for the sixth time after stealing gouda and cheddar. Cleopas Ntima told police he paid for his other groceries, but said "voices" told him to take the cheese. 6. ROBBERS 6.1. Mr. Wazir Jiwi was the only clerk in a late night shop in Houston, Texas, when he found himself looking at two pistols. "You don't need two", he told the bandit. "Why don't you sell me one of them?" The gunman named his price at $100; Jiwi handed over the cash and was given the gun. As he placed it under the counter, he pushed the button that locked the shop door. They then agreed on the price for the other gun. The outlaw grabbed the second bundle of cash, put his other pistol on the counter and tried to leave. When he found he could not get out, Jiwi told him to bring the money back and he would let him go. And he did let him go, presumably guessing that anyone that stupid would get arrested soon enough anyway. 6.2. An armed man in Groiningen, northern Holland, handed a shopkeeper a note demanding money. The man behind the counter took one look and then wrote his own terse reply: "Bug off"' (or the nearest Dutch equivalent). And the gunman did too fleeing empty-handed. 6.3. When John Gregory came to trial, the tale that came out was one ofthigh farce rather than high drama. Gregory and an accomplice had attempted to rob a videos-shop in Feltham, England, but unfortunately they were so dense, they thought the shop's type-writer was, the cash register and ordered the manager, at gunpoint, to open it up. Even after they'd spotted their mistake, they still managed to grab only five pounds before; their shotgun went off accidentally which scared them so much they fled, dropping the cash in the shop's doorway. The net return for the robbery was no money and 4 years' youth custody. 6.4. A robber armed with a sausage raided a shop in Graz, Austria, and escaped with 1,600 shillings. Storekeeper Rudy Buckmeister was hit over the head with the ten-pound sausage. "It felt like a baseball bat", he said. 7. MANSLAUGHTER In 1981 Marianne Bachmeir, from Lubeck, West Germany, was in court watching the trial of Klaus Grabowski, who had murdered her 7 year-old daughter. Grabowski had a history of attacking children. During the trial, Frau Bachmeir pulled a Beretta 22 pistol from her handbag and fired eights bullets, six of which hit Grabowski, killing him. The defence said she had bought the pistol with the intention of committing suicide, but when she saw Grabowski in court she drew the pistol and pulled the trigger. She was found not guilty of murder, but was given six years imprisonment for manslaughter. West German newspapers reflected the opinion of millions of Germans that; she should have been freed, calling her "the avenging mother". 8. CRIME OF PASSION Bernard Lewis, a thirty-six-old man, while preparing dinner became involved in an argument with his drunken wife. In a fit of a rage Lewis, using the kitchen knife with which he had been preparing the meal, stabbed and killed his wife. He immediately called for assistance and readily confessed when the first patrolman appeared on the scene with the ambulance attendant. He pleaded guilty to manslaughter. The probation departments investigation indicated that Lewis was a rigid individual who never drank, worked regularly, and had no previous criminal record. His thirty-yeat-old deceased wife, and mother of three children, was a "fine girl" when sober, but was frequently drunk and on a number of occasions when intoxicated, had left their small children unattended. After due consideration of the background of the offence and especially of the plight of the three motherless youngsters, the judge placed Lewis oh probation so that he could work, support and take care of the children. On probation Lewis adjusted well, worked regularly, appeared to be devoted to the children, and a few years later was discharged as "improved" from probation. 9. MURDER In 1952 two youths in Mitcham, London, decided to rob a dairy. They were Christopher Craig, aged 16, and Derek William Bentley, 19. During the robbery they were disturbed by Sydney Miles, a policeman. Craig produced a gun and killed the policeman. At that time Britain still had the death penalty for certain types of murder, including murder during a robbery. Because Craig was under 18, he was sentenced to life imprisonment. Bently who had never touched the gun, was over 18. He was hanged in 1953. The case was quoted by opponents of capital punishment, which was abolished in 1965. 10. ASSAULT In 1976 a drunk walked into a supermarket. When the manager asked him to leave, the drunk assaulted him, knocking out a tooth. A policeman who arrived and tried to stop the fight had his jaw broken. The drunk was fined 10 pounds. 11. SHOP-LIFTING In June 1980 Lady Isabel Barnett, a well-known TV personality was convicted of stealing a tin of tuna fish and a carton of cream, total value 87p, from a small shop. The case was given enormous publicity. She was fined 75 pounds and had to pay 200 pounds towards the cost of the case. A few days later she killed herself. 12. FRAUD This is an example of a civil case rather than a criminal one. A man had taken put an insurance policy of 100,000 pounds on his life. The policy was due to expire at 3 o'clock on a certain day. The man was in serious financial difficulties, and at 2.30 on the expire day he consulted his solicitor. He then wen out and called a taxi. He asked the driver to make a note of the time, 2.50. Then he then shot himself. Suicide used not to cancel an insurance policy automatically. (It does nowadays.) The company refused to pay the man's wife, and the courts supported them. Discussion

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Суббота, 20.04.2024, 14:02