Mid-Daily Items: "Don't Taser Me Dude"

May 09, 2008 10:52 am

— Sometimes, it’s just single word - or perhaps a single word repeated three times - that can spark immobilizing fear.
A Salt Lake City police officer couldn't catch up to a 32-year-old man until he yelled, "Taser, Taser, Taser."
Police say the suspect suddenly threw himself on the ground and surrendered Wednesday.
The pursuit began when curious detectives watching a house noticed the man coming from another house. His parole officer was working on an arrest warrant at the time.
Tasers use compressed nitrogen to fire two barbed darts that immobilize people with a 50,000-volt shock.

- An investigation into possible drug activity in an Alexandria, Louisiana neighborhood led city police to an abandoned car with 53 marijuana plants growing in it. Maybe the car acts like a little greenhouse.
Sgt. Newmon Bobb said the plants, which would have an estimated value of $53,000 when fully grown, were seized, and two people were arrested.
Jerome Thompson, 23, and Mahogany Morris, 23, both of Alexandria, were booked with possession of marijuana in a school zone and cultivation of marijuana, police said.
Thompson was also booked with resisting arrest by false information, probation violation and failure to pay a fine, authorities reported.

- Twenty-two years after graduating from high school, Angie Collins is now her former English teacher's favorite student.
Collins, 40, donated her kidney this week to Darren Paquin, who teaches English at Elwood Community High School in Elwood, Indiana, where she graduated in 1986.
Collins' husband, Dean, said she offered Paquin one of her kidneys after she learned that he was experiencing kidney failure.
"She knew she wanted to do it and she knew she was supposed to," he said.
Collins, a mother of three, and Paquin underwent the transplant surgery Tuesday at Methodist Hospital in Indianapolis. Collins is scheduled to head home on Sunday.
Collins said she thought and prayed for about two months over whether she would offer to donate one of her kidneys to Paquin, who was her high school instructor in speech and composition.
"I wanted to make the decision to donate first, before I ever found out if I would be a match," she said. "Then, when I made the decision to donate, I knew I was a match. I knew it in my heart."