Stephen Matthew Smith, 20, of 5110 Old Calhoun Road, was being held on burglary charges Friday, pending $7,250 bail. Police said Smith kicked in the back door of a residence on Blanche Street and took a television, DVD player, bed set, video game player, games, CDs and a woman’s wallet. He was reportedly seen by neighbors and left his own wallet in the house.

Police in Springfield, Oregon, suspected a dolt of robbing a diner on January 23, returning for seconds on January 25, and he ended up shooting himself in the foot.

The cops say they busted 23-year-old Clayton Everett Teman, who was taken to the hospital because a bullet had passed through his foot.

Detective Tom Rappe of the Springfield PD, said that the robber had faced the same clerk in both holdups, coming back for more the second time.

According to Detective Rappe, “He was a little upset due to the amount of money he got the first time, so he went back hoping to get more.”

As stated by police, as the dolt left the diner, he ran through a parking lot firing several bullets from a handgun, hitting himself with one of them.

Police were stumped as to why he fired the gun, but they speculated that he was on speed.

An inmate in Olympia, Washington, escaped from the Thurston County jail, but he was soon screaming for help and was back in the slammer.

Police heard the calls for help from 20-year-old Lance H. Gauthun, and an officer rescued him after Gauthun had either run or fallen down a sharp embankment behind the lockup late January 24 and got stuck at the bottom with temperatures hovering in the low 30s, according to sheriff’s deputy Daniel D. Kimball.

“They actually rescued the escapee from himself,” Kimball said January 25.

According to Kimball, the knothead had already served more than half of a 20-day sentence for stealing approximately $150 in copper tubing. He reportedly sneaked out a fire exit in a minimum security jail wing at about 10:45 on the night of January 24. This part of the jail houses inmates who participate in work-release programs.

Corrections Captain Todd Thoma cited tensions between Gauthun and other jailbirds as the motive for the brief getaway.

The knothead has been re-booked on suspicion of second-degree escape, which carries a minimum sentence of one month and a maximum sentence of three months of incarceration.

“He’s in the big boys’ jail now,” Kimball added.

A crack cocaine dealer in Leavenworth, Kansas, had business cards printed up to advertise his crack trade, but instead of getting a response from potential buyers, he got a visit from the police.

On January 23, police arrested 21-year-old Sylvester J. Williams, a resident of Leavenworth, charging him with crack possession with intent to sell, said Major Patrick Kitchens of the Leavenworth PD.

According to Kitchens, Williams is being held on $75,000 bail.

Kitchens said that the cops had heard for quite a while that the blockhead had been selling drugs in the neighborhood. The cop said, “Then we heard that he was handing out business cards. In the course of our investigation we were fortunate to come up with one, and we gave him a call.”

The business card was said to have had a picture of what looked like an alarm clock being hit with a boxing glove. The officer said, “For a quick hit on time call the boss.”

The blockhead answered, and the police arrived posing as potential buyers before arresting him on January 20.

Kitchens was quoted as saying, “It makes our job considerably easier when they advertise and let us know where to get ahold of them.”

A scatterbrain spending the weekend at a Best Western in Fort Bragg, California, was busted after police suspected him of burglarizing said motel and leaving a note telling where he could be found.

The cops arrested 37-year old Enrique Rodriguez Vasquez, suspecting him of burglary and meth possession after they encountered him at the motel room he had referred to in the note.

The police discovered a satellite TV box, a computer tower, and $200 that had been reported as stolen from the hotel. The value of the appropriated apparatus was estimated to be $1,500.

The scatterbrain’s note, filled with spelling and grammatical errors, scolded the manager of the motel for not being in the office.

In a nutshell, the note stated: “There was no one here to attend us guest in rm427. You even left the office unattended. You could have been burglurized (sic) … Your lucky I didn’t steele (sic).”

Vasquez had a companion, 41-year-old Dana Lynn Jensen, who was oblivious to the theft until after the fact. However, she did confess to owning half of the speed, and there, in her suitcase, were the greenbacks that had been lifted from the motel. Police arrested her, suspecting her of possession of stolen property and of a controlled substance.

A thief in Hillsborough thought he had a big idea Saturday on how to steal an ATM using a backhoe and a pickup truck. But he found he needed a bigger truck. About 5 a.m., a silent alarm alerted authorities that someone was tampering with a SunTrust ATM near the North Hills Shopping Center on U.S. 70 near N.C.
86, said Hillsborough Police Chief Clarence Birkhead.

When police arrived, they discovered the ATM, backhoe and small-bodied pickup in a telltale formation.

It appeared someone had mounted the unattended backhoe, left at a nearby construction project, and drove it to the ATM, Birkhead said. The culprit had also positioned a stolen Chevrolet S10 truck nearby, Birkhead said. Using the heavy equipment, the backhoe operator pried the ATM from its foundation.

But when he tried to load the ATM into the bed of the truck, the vehicle, and likely the thief’s heart, sank.

The overwhelming weight of the cash machine — at least several hundred pounds — was too much for the small vehicle, Birkhead said. The truck collapsed on its haunches, stubborn and stuck.

When police arrived, they found only evidence of the attempted theft and no clues of who had engineered it, Birkhead said.

“Someone drove the backhoe, and someone drove the truck, so it was likely a two-person job,” Birkhead said. “Or it could have been one very motivated, energetic person.”

There were no surveillance cameras around to catch the act, he said.

Anyone with information on the incident is asked to call Hillsborough police at 732-9381.

Staff writer Samiha Khanna can be reached at 956-2468 or
.

A Randolph County, Indiana, husband and wife made two huge mistakes Thursday night, authorities say.

Linda E. and Donald R. Ballenger Jr. got their car stuck in the mud in a driveway at 4441 W. 650 South in Winchester. The two hapless burglars became stuck while they were burglarizing the home, police said.

A neighbor called the cops at 10:21 p.m. to report the burglary at the home of Rick L. and Mona Thornbro. The neighbor then walked to the Thornbro house and asked the two simpletons what they were up to.

They admitted they were taking things from the house, to which Linda Ballenger said “‘We better take it back inside the house so we won’t be charged with theft’,” said Randolph County Sheriff Jay Harris.

Sheriff’s deputies arrived moments later and arrested the Ballengers.

“It was not very bright,” Harris said. “What gets me is it was a husband-and-wife team,” he said.

The Ballengers, who live at 4489 South 100 East near Winchester, are preliminarily charged with residential entry, a class B felony, and burglary and theft, both class D felonies.

They were in the Randolph County Jail on Friday night with bail set at $25,000 for each of them.