Husband and wife team steals 1,000 bags

by Tom Johansmeyer on

If you were to steal 1,000 pieces of luggage, where would you keep it all? Wherever they shoved the bags, Keith Wilson King and Stacy Lynne Legg-King saw the police pull them out of their house one-by-one and stack them in the yard. The duo had been pinching luggage from the baggage carousels at the Phoenix airport, amassing an impressive collection of stolen goods … so big the police couldn’t provide an exact number.

Phoenix Detective James Holiday called what the Kings did “a livelihood,” rather than the pieces of luggage picked up a bit at a time or only as a one-shot deal.

Keith King was originally arrested three weeks ago for misdemeanor theft. The police kept an eye on him, though. When he went back to the airport again, the police followed him home (on Monday). The next day, they searched the King home and found many, many more. Both King and his wife were arrested, with the latter also picked up on charges of tampering with evidence.

The moral of the story? Be careful what you check!

[Photo by sun dazed via Flickr]

AeroMexico plane hijacking resolved peacefully

by Katie Hammel on

Shortly after taking off from Cancun on Wednesday, the pilots of AeroMexico flight 737 radioed the control tower to say the plane had been hijacked. The hijacker had showed off a bomb (later found to be fake) and demanded to speak to Mexican President Felipe Calderon. He threatened to blow up the plane, which was carrying over 100 people, and said he needed to warn the President of an impending earthquake.

The hijacker was unable to get into the cockpit, and the plane landed safely in Mexico City, its intended destination. After the plane landed and taxied to a part of the runway designated for emergencies, passengers deplaned, and security forces boarded. They quickly apprehended who they thought were the nine hijackers, but it later became clear that there was only one, Bolivian-born Jose Flores, 44, who told police he was a Protestant Minister and that “it was a divine revelation that made him carry out his actions.” The other suspects, innocent passengers caught up in the confusion, were released.

Most of the passengers had no idea that the hijacking was even taking place until it was over, and no one was injured in the incident. This was Mexico‘s first major hijacking situation since 1972.

[via Washington Post]

Hotel guests in New Zealand wake up with drunk Aussie in their bed

by Katie Hammel on

In more naked news, a couple vacationing in a New Zealand resort town woke up to find an uninvited guest in their room. A 29-year old Australian had wandered in, climbed into their bed, and fallen asleep.

The Aussie had been out drinking with a woman and gone back with her to her hotel room. At some point in the night, he got out of bed – naked – and began wandering the halls until he found an unlocked room. When the couple woke up and discovered the unintentional threesome, the woman ran to the bathroom to hide while her husband called the hotel concierge.

By the time the police got involved, the hotel had given the man a robe and escorted him to the lobby. Since he couldn’t remember which room he’d originally been in and didn’t know the name of the woman he’d been with, the police kindly offered him a ride home. The couple who’d been disturbed opted not to press charges, and no doubt learned a valuable lesson about always locking their hotel room door.

[via Herald Sun]

Mexican resort beach shut down, accused of stealing sand

by Katie Hammel on

Visitors to a Cancun beach found themselves restricted by yellow crime-scene tape yesterday, when Mexican police cordoned off the beach under accusations that the sand was stolen.

According to the AP release, after Hurricane Wilma washed away much of the resort area’s beach in 2005, Mexico spent $19 million replacing it with sand pumped from the sea floor. That sand has been slowly eroding, prompting some resorts to build breakwaters, which keep their beaches nice and sandy, but result in more sand loss for the surrounding beach areas.

The Mexican police are claiming that the resorts who’ve built these breakwaters are, in effect, stealing the beach from others. They’ve also detained five people they believe were using pumps to bring up more sand from the ocean floor. Mexico’s Attorney General for environmental protection said the beach at the Gran Caribe Real Hotel was made of “ill-gotten, illegally accumulated sand” and decided to shut it down.

Many tourists and hotel guests gathered around the “stolen” beach area and complained about the closure. There was no indication of when the beach would reopen and at the time of writing, the resort’s webcam was not active on its website.

Terrorist bomb blast in Spanish tourist town

by Sean McLachlan on

The northern Spanish town of Burgos, a popular destination for holidaymakers, was rocked by a car bomb early this morning. According to the BBC the bomb targeted a high-rise residential building of the Guardia Civil, injuring 46 people, many of whom are women and children.

Officials are blaming ETA, a terrorist group that seeks an independent Basque nation in Spain’s northern region. Unlike many ETA bombings, this one was not preceded by a telephone warning and seems to have been intended to cause maximum possible injury.

ETA, which stands for Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (“Basque Homeland and Freedom”), has been waging a terrorist campaign since 1968, using bombings, assassination, and extortion. The group has killed more than 800 people. The Guardia Civil, who are sort of a mix between the FBI and the National Guard, are one of ETA’s favorite targets. ETA has set off bombs in other big cities and in a parking garage in Madrid’s Barajas airport in 2006, pictured here. The airport bombing killed two Ecuadorian immigrants and came just nine months after the group declared a permanent ceasefire.

ETA has targeted tourist destinations in the past and the choice of Burgos may be part of an ongoing attempt to disrupt Spain’s profitable tourist industry.