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Illinois bank robber, 82, gets jail, home confinement
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uBENTON, Ill. (AP) — An 82-year-old man who says he was desperate when he robbed an Illinois bank has been sentenced to 10 weekends in jail.

Federal Judge Phil Gilbert told Arthur Bays that he’s never seen a criminal as old as him. He says he struggled with a sentence Thursday.

Bays had a toy gun in his waistband when he demanded money from a teller at State Bank of Whittington in Benton last July. He got $12,500.

Bays told the judge that he was talked into buying a new car after learning that it would cost $2,000 to fix the air conditioning on his vehicle. After five payments, he says he was broke.

The Southern Illinoisan reports that the prosecutor sought a prison term. Besides weekends in jail, Bays will spend six months on home confinement.


u450 COCAINE BRICKS WORTH $38M FOUND AT PHILADELPHIA PORT: PHILADELPHIA (AP) — U.S. customs officials say drug dogs sniffed out 450 bricks of cocaine in Philadelphia, the city’s largest seizure of the drug in more than two decades.

Local, state and federal law enforcement officials said Thursday the cocaine was found inside 13 duffel bags in a shipping container. Customs and Border Protection’s Area Port Director for Philadelphia Joseph Martella says Tuesday’s seizure amounted to more than 1,185 pounds (538 kilograms) of cocaine worth about $38 million.


uKNITTING WITH A REPURPOSE: WOMAN MAKES SUIT OF PLASTIC BAGS: GREECE, N.Y. (AP) — Rosa Ferrigno’s new suit takes recycling to an extreme — she knitted it from more than 300 plastic grocery bags.

The 75-year-old woman from Greece in western New York whiled away the winter knitting a skirt and jacket from filmy brown bags scissored into thin strips that were tied together to make yarn. She lined it with cotton fabric.

The finished garment is quite chic, with a tweedy look from green printing on the brown bags.

Her daughter, Fran Bertalli, tells the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle that Ferrigno has been knitting and sewing since her childhood in Sicily.

Last summer, Ferrigno saw someone’s purse made from repurposed plastic bags and started her own bag projects, making two purses before the suit.

She says she does it just for fun.


uTEEN PLEADS GUILTY TO DENVER ART MUSEUM DAMAGE: DENVER (AP) — A teenager has pleaded guilty to criminal mischief for damaging nearly $100,000 worth of art at the Denver Art Museum.

The district attorney’s office says Jake Siebenlist, of Monument, will repay the museum for the destroyed and damaged artwork as part of the plea agreement he reached with prosecutors Thursday.

The Denver Post reports that Siebenlist also will be banned from the museum until he finishes his probation on March 17, 2022.

Last December, the 18-year-old Siebenlist damaged and destroyed several centuries-old pieces of artwork from China and Mayan civilization. He threw several sculptures and attempted to deface paintings before he was stopped.

 

uMAN SENTENCED FOR MURDER IN SHOOTING, MUTILATION OF FRIEND: MOUNT CLEMENS, Mich. (AP) — A 21-year-old man will spend 50 to 70 years in prison for the shooting death and mutilation of his childhood friend in a field north of Detroit.

Andrew Fiacco was sentenced Thursday. A jury convicted him last month of second-degree murder, using a firearm during a felony, dismemberment and lying to a police officer.

Prosecutors said Fiacco shot 19-year-old Stephen McAfee twice in the head in a remote Bruce Township field in March 2016 then dismembered his body and buried some remains on family property.


u$625M JACKPOT AT STAKE IN UPCOMING POWERBALL DRAWING: DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Lottery officials say the Powerball jackpot has climbed to an estimated $625 million.

The jackpot on Saturday would be the seventh-largest in U.S. history, with an estimated lump sum payout of $380.6 million before taxes.

The odds of winning are extremely long, at 1 in 292.2 million, but they do get beaten.

The buyers of three tickets shared the country’s largest jackpot: a nearly $1.59 billion Powerball prize drawn on Jan. 13, 2016. A South Carolina purchaser won a $1.54 billion Mega Millions jackpot, which marked the nation’s second-largest lottery prize ever.


uTRANS TEEN SAYS GEORGIA SCHOOL TOOK HIM OFF PROM KING BALLOT: GAINESVILLE, Ga. (AP) — A transgender student says his Georgia high school removed him from this year’s prom king ballot.

The Gainesville Times quotes Johnson High School senior Dex Frier as saying he was nominated by the student body as one of six candidates for prom king, but was later informed by school officials that he could only be on the prom queen ballot.

Hall County Schools Superintendent Will Schofield says the district has never removed students from prom and he doesn’t want to put the district “in the middle of a national social, societal and legal issue.”

A petition calling for Frier’s return to the ballot has amassed more than 10,700 signatures in less than a week. Two competing petitions affirming Frier’s exclusion have fewer than 100 signatures.


uINSTA-GRAM: TEEN ACCUSED OF USING PLATFORM TO ADVERTISE WEED: DURHAM, N.C. (AP) — A North Carolina teen who went by “itslilhotgirl” on Instagram is accused of using the social media platform to sell marijuana.

Citing a Durham County Sheriff’s Office warrant, The Herald-Sun reports 18-year-old Hannah Lyne Peters posed online with what appeared to be a pound of marijuana and a pink-and-black semi-automatic rifle and would post stories advertising her wares.

An informant twice bought from Peters and a deputy found marijuana in a car she was in March 5. She was released pending cooperation, but a March 13 Instagram story appeared to show around an ounce of marijuana. She was charged Tuesday.