A Stranger's London
'Lover' hit by mistake
Angry Robert Hammell was furious to find a naked man in his flat when he returned from the pub. He thought the 60-year-old man was up to no good with his young live-in girlfriend so he punched him in the face and smashed a chair over his head, knocking him out and breaking his arm.Hammell then suddenly realised he was in the wrong flat.
Hammell, 36, of Chatham, Kent was given a conditional discharge by Medway magistrates and ordered to pay £150 compensation.
"Stripper" rescued
A girl tourist stripped off her red T-shirt last week to attract attention when she was trapped on cliffs.The American girl tried waving her green jacket, but no one noticed. Then she stripped off her T-shirt... and was spotted almost immediately.
An RAF helicopter picked her off the cliff at Foreland Point, near Lynton, North Devon. One of the crew said, "We heard she was waving her T-shirt but by the time we got there she had put it back on". The American, 24-year-old Laura Barry, was taken back to her hotel in Lynton.
Blind rapist freed
A blind rapist has walked free from a court after a judge was told that he would never live through a jail sentence.Lennox Andrew raped a mother of two because he felt "left out" when she had men friends to stay, the Old Bailey was told. He was given a two-year suspended sentence.
Later his defence said: "If he'd gone to jail he could have been so victimised he'd never have survived".
Andrew, 33, of Tottenham, North London attacked his victim, who lived in the same building after asking her to help him trace a gas leak.
Killed over a pair of shoes
A shop assistant was stabbed to death by a customer who complained that the shoes he had bought made his feet cold.US Army veteran, John Wooder, wanted £74 refund from London's exclusive Mayfair shop.
He decided assistant manager Stephen Hinley was not being sympathetic enough. So he pulled a dagger from a paper bag and stabbed him in the neck, severing his jugular vein. Stephen, 22 died soon afterwards.
At the Old Bailey, Wooder, 36 was sent to Broadmoor Hospital. His plea of not guilty to murder but to manslaughter because of diminished responsibility was accepted.
Four doctors said he is a paranoid schizophrenic.
Wooder told police. "I felt a refund was reasonable. The individual was unresponsive, and unfeeling. I decided to attack the individual when he showed complete disregard for my feelings".
Hitch-hike bride
A bride had to hitch-hike to church after her wedding car broke down three miles from the ceremony.Gillian Wilson 22, hoisted up her wedding gown to grab a motorist's attention and hitched a ride to the church in Keighley, West Yorkshire.
Her saviour was a mystery woman who at first thought she'd been the victim of a Game For a Laugh (a television comedy) stunt. The marriage to 23-year-old soldier Gary Marks went ahead on time following Gillian's high speed dash.
Gillian's bridesmaid sister Debbie, 22, said: "It was a miracle she got there at all. We were riding in front of her car and when she didn't show we wondered what on earth happened". The couple are now on honeymoon ... motoring in Cornwall.
Methodists come out against boxing
Boxing is based on causing deliberate physical damage to an opponent and should be discouraged, according to a report to be submitted to the Methodists Conference, next month.The report is based on one from the Churches' Council on Health and Healing, which set up a working party to examine the medical and social evidence for and against boxing. The resolution to the conference states that "the case against boxing is stronger than the case for it".
The working party concluded that boxing could be distinguished from other sports because harm was deliberately inflicted on boxers.
"It is the will of God that a man may be made whole," it states. "Tha wholeness includes the body. Can a sport which runs counter to this theme of health, which results in physical damage, mental and psychological bea contribution to wholeness.
It however finds three grounds for supporting boxing that young men from underprivileged backgrounds to gain self-respect, that it provided a controlled outlet for aggression, and that it was better to have it regulated than driven underground. It recognised that boxing was said to have a place in character development.
A gentleman breaks in...
A burglar cleaned up a flat he had broken into and left an apology note when he realised his victim was a pensioner.The thief turned soft-hearted when he saw family photos and sentimental nick-nacks around the 90-year-old woman's home.
So he got a broom and swept up the glass from a window he had smashed breaking into the flat in Clapham, South London.
Then he found a pen and paper and wrote: "Sorry, when I broke in I didn't realise you were elderly, I'm sorry about the broken window".
Then the raider left empty handed. A detective said: "I've never known anything like it in 16 years in the force. Burglars usually clean out their victims, not clean up for them".
A friend of the victim who is crippled with arthritis said: "He must have been a gentleman".
Warning on pain killer
A coroner has given a warning against paracetamol. "Every hour after taking the danger of the pain killing drug paracetamol could be another nearer to the death knell," Sir Montague Levine the coroner said."The public does not realize that paracetamol is a far more sinister drug than aspirin," he added after returning a verdict of suicide on Alexander Symon who died on April 29, "It is a particularly insidious drug because perhaps a person would repent of taking it but the result could still be irreversible",
The court heard that Symon, aged 45 of the Aylesbury Estate Walworth who had been drinking had taken an unknown quantity of paracetamol.
