Lead Stories
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On November 2 at Vandenberg Air Force Base, just north of Lompoc, California, skydiver Ron Sirull (1,000 career jumps) performed at a military air show with his four-year-old dachshund, Brutus the Skydiving Dog (100 career jumps). Animal-rights activists protested, but Sirull claims skydiving “turns [Brutus] on” and says that both his vet and the Arizona Humane Society deem the jumps safe; the dog wears goggles and rides in a pouch strapped to Sirull’s chest.
In August in Pennsylvania, Vernon Coleman, 32, and Dane Coleman, 28 (no relation), were arraigned on charges of stealing thousands of dollars in cash out of letters to a fund benefiting Afghan children displaced by the war. Also in August, New York City landlord Denise M. Lyman refused to allow the family of Danielle Kousoulis, who was killed in the September 11 attacks, access to Kousoulis’s apartment (they hoped to find a hairbrush, so that DNA in the hair could be used to identify her remains). Lyman claimed Kousoulis had breached her lease, signed on September 1, by failing to give three months’ notice before abandoning the apartment.
In October in St. Bernard Parish, Louisiana, Herbert Toney, 36, and Latisha Washington, 29, were arrested on several charges, including deserting their eight-year-old son. Police claim the couple instructed him to steal groceries and beer from a Winn-Dixie supermarket while they waited outside; when a security guard stopped the boy, he pointed out his parents, but Toney and Washington denied knowing him and walked away. Deputies brought the couple in later, and though at first Washington would only say that maybe she’d seen the boy around the neighborhood, she finally admitted he was her son. (He’s now in his grandmother’s custody.)
In the Last Month
