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A pistol-packing TV-popper, Canada's first drunk driver with a lifetime prison sentence and a pigeon that failed to fly a cellphone into a Brazilian prison are among this year's odd, sometimes chilling crime-related tales.
But not everything in my annual roundup is about wrongdoers -- read about a couple who couldn't avoid crashing into a wandering pachyderm.
SURE, BUDDY, AN ELEPHANT ON THE ROAD!
Farmer Bill Carpenter was driving home from church with his wife near Enid, Okla., in November when a 2,400-kg behemoth blocked their SUV's path.
With time only to yelp "elephant," he sideswiped the circus escapee, injuring a leg and breaking a tusk.
The couple, who told police the 2.7-metre tall Asian female blended into the grey asphalt, was unhurt but likely had trouble getting friends to accept their explanation.
POLICE NAB THIEF - VIA WALLET
A burglar burrowed through drywall into a Toronto hairdo palace in August, snatched money and smokes, took a few puffs and a bathroom break, then smashed open the cash register in an adjacent salon and fled with $200.
But the clever guy left behind his wallet which contained, in addition to ID, his parole card, satisfied cops said after making a quick arrest.
TRUCKER FACED ENDLESS YOKE, CHICKEN PUNS
A trucker rang in the New Year with egg on his face, er, all over a freeway, after falling asleep.
State troopers and road crews using front-end loaders near Detroit were left scrambling after his tractor-trailer crashed and spilled its load of eggs, which quickly froze. Interstate 94 was reopened around 1 a.m. last Jan. 1 after a six-hour cleanup of the sticky 100-metre long mess. The red-faced driver was ticketed.
ACCUSED DRUNK DRIVER WAS CLOWNING: COPS
After a Vancouver cruiser was slightly damaged by an oncoming car Oct. 25, police were confronted by an unusual drunk driving suspect -- a man wearing a clown costume after a Halloween party.
They weren't amused by the yellow-wigged driver with big clown shoes and no driver's license. He was charged with impaired driving and refusing to give a breath sample in what understating Const. Jeff Palmer called "a rather unusual" case.
CRAZY DRIVERS KEEP ON GOING, AND GOING, AND ...
Crazy driving kept on making the news across Canada -- with a 7-year-old filmed by his encouraging dad, and a man whose focus on a skin flick led to what might be called an Ontario Porn Patrol arrest.
On July 18, an OPP officer pulled over a speeder on Hwy. 401 near Port Hope after spotting him watching an adult film on a CD player in the passenger seat.
In early August, a driver charged with travelling 135 km/h on Hwy. 401 near Port Hope was pulled over a second time by OPP Const. Bettina Schwarze after she spotted a one-fingered salute as the motorist drove off. She then charged him with making an improper hand signal, a $110 fine.
But the winner of weird excuses was the dad in Quebec whose video of his youngster driving up to 40 km/h on a deserted road, with his wife and other children cheering, was posted on YouTube. As police launched an investigation in August, daddy dearest blamed the nasty press for exaggerating the danger.
FRENCH-FRIED STREAKER
A Wendy's staffer was passing a meal to a customer in Langley, B.C., on June 22 when a naked man ran between them at the takeout window and vanished with her fries, police said.
HE JUST WOULDN'T QUIT
Crown prosecutors cheered a precedent when Roger Walsh became the first perpetual Canadian drunk driver to be sentenced to life in prison.
Quebec Justice Michel Mercier's ruling Sept. 9 in Salaberry-de-Valleyfield, came nine months after the 57-year-old "incorrigible" 19-times convicted drunk driver and veteran thief pleaded guilty to drunkenly slamming into wheelchair-bound Anee Khudaverdian on her 47th birthday.
... IN CASE YOU THINK THE STREAK WAS UNIQUE
Police weren't fast enough to catch a naked mini-van driver at a Tim Hortons drive-through in Saint John, N.B., on April 2.
By the time they responded to a startled caller, the coffee buff had driven off. Officers weren't certain if he'd been served.
WEEDMAN TURNED OFF TV WITH GUN
Todd Francis Jollimore, 43, couldn't be bothered flicking the switch on his television.
After admitting to police he turned off his TV in late July by firing his .45-calibre handgun the day his uncle died, the French River, P.E.I. resident was placed on probation for careless use of a firearm, fined $1,000 for growing marijuana and ordered into counselling.
ROBBER GAVE TO CHARITY, WENT TO JAIL
As later-admitted robber Henry Homer Gibson left an Ottawa bank June 11 with $265 in loot, he stuffed some cash into a charity piggy bank.
Ontario Court Justice Lise Maisonneuve may have thought kindly of Gibson's generosity, but three months later ordered the downtown street regular to get alcohol treatment and slapped him with an 18-month sentence.
CELLPHONE SMUGGLING TO CELL FOILED BY POOPED PIGEON
A plot to smuggle a phone into a Brazil prison inmate's cell was foiled in July when a pigeon became too pooped to participate.
Guards at the Danilo Pinheiro prison near the city of Sorocaba spotted the exhausted bird outside the wall, wearing a cellphone in a tiny backpack. At another prison last spring, plans were interrupted for a phone to be delivered via a remote-controlled model helicopter.
A Sao Paulo prison official said cellphone smuggling to inmates "is becoming almost commonplace," as gangsters plot to co-ordinate criminal activity on both sides of their walls. Gang bosses used cellphones in 2006 to co-ordinate attacks from prisons on police, banks and buses in 2006, which killed more than 200 people.
DIAL "S" FOR STUPID
Thieves made off with lightweight, gutless replica cellphones from a store display in Morelia, Mexico in July. They left the look-alike real ones behind.
SNITCHER BABE NOT LIKELY POT-TRAINED
An 11-month-old whose dad gave him a cordless phone to play with had the RCMP kicking down their unanswered door seeking someone in peril after the boy dialled 911 and hung up last January.
His dad -- arrested for having 500 pot plants in their White Rock, B.C. home -- insisted the lad was too young to make such a call, until officers spotted him happily punching buttons.
SO WHERE DID INMATE HIDE GUN?
Two Houston, Tex., jail guards were suspended two weeks without pay after a .25-calibre semi-automatic handgun was found Nov. 9 under a new 16-year-old inmate's mattress -- despite three searches and walking through a metal detector.
Harris County Juvenile Detention Center staff had unplugged the device, used to monitor up to 35 youths entering daily, after it became faulty, possibly several weeks earlier, an official said.
A probe of the embarrassing incident failed to reveal where the teen, arrested for having pot, hid the smuggled pistol.
GO GRANNY, GO
A purse snatcher picked on the wrong senior in Buerstadt, Germany this summer.
The 80-year-old woman kept riding her bicycle and alerted a passing driver, who helped nab the thief.
WIDOWER CUDDLED DEAD WIFE FIVE YEARS
A Vietnamese man dug up his wife in 2004, applied clay to fill out her body, then dressed the corpse and placed it in their bed "to sleep with her," the Vietnamnet.vn website reported last month.
Le Van admitted sleeping 20 months on the grave but worried about her decomposing and missed cuddling, admitting "I'm not like normal people."
ACCUSED SHOE THIEF PUT WORST FOOT FORWARD
A one-legged Russian asylum-seeker was arrested in Belgium after one shoe was stolen from a store.
Shopkeepers in Maldegem gave police a description of an amputee in October and he was located, with the missing shoe.
PAROLEE PREFERS PRISON TO NAGGING WIFE
Fed up with his wife's complaining, a builder in Villabate, Sicily, begged officials in October to re- admit him to prison instead of finishing his sentence under house arrest for dumping hazardous waste. Police instead ordered Santo Gambino, 30, to return home and make up with his angry spouse.
DID ANYONE GET THE NUMBER OF THAT TRAIN THAT RAN OVER ME?
A drunken teen avoided death Sept. 12 when the high-speed Quipmer-Paris train ran over him as he slept on a track bed near Saint Nolff in southern Brittany, police in France said. The 19-year-old suffered only a few grease stains on the back of his jacket.
SHOT DOG WINS BY A NOSE
A pooch shot in Germany in June by a drunk got his revenge. The Bernse mountain dog bit off the tip of the snooping thief's nose in a brief but bloody encounter behind his master's home in Stadtlauringen in northern Bavaria.
BURN ALL CROOKS: TOP COP
Capt. Moussa Tiegboro Camara, appointed by a military junta to quash crime in Guinea, offered a solution in June to anyone fed up with armed robbers and overflowing prisons.
"I'm asking you to burn all armed bandits who are caught red-handed committing an armed robbery," he said.
ian.robertson@sunmedia.ca