BOY, 4, ACCIDENTALLY KILLS TENN. DEPUTY'S WIFE: NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Authorities say a 4-year-old boy grabbed a loaded gun at a family cookout and accidentally shot and killed the wife of a Tennessee sheriff's deputy.
Investigators say Wilson County Deputy Daniel Fanning on Saturday was showing his weapons to a relative in a bedroom of his Lebanon home when the toddler came in and picked up a gun off the bed. Sheriff Robert Bryan says the weapon discharged, hitting 48-year-old Josephine Fanning.
She was pronounced dead at the scene. The child is not related to her or her husband.
Bryan says the shooting was a terrible accident and that within seconds of Fanning placing the gun on the bed, the toddler picked it up.
The gun was not Fanning's service weapon and the sheriff says the deputy's weapons are normally stored in a safe.
MAN DRESSED AS COOKIE MONSTER ARRESTED IN NY: NEW YORK (AP) — A man dressed as the Cookie Monster has been accused of shoving a 2-year-old in New York's Times Square and has been charged with endangering the welfare of a child.
Queens resident Osvaldo Quiroz-Lopez was arrested Sunday afternoon. He was arraigned Monday on charges including aggressive begging. He didn't enter a plea.
A Connecticut family posed for a photo with the man dressed as the "Sesame Street" character. Police say he demanded $2 but the family refused to pay. A criminal complaint says the man shoved the toddler and yelled obscenities at the family.
Quiroz-Lopez has no prior arrests. His lawyer hasn't returned a message seeking comment.
MONTANA PET OWNER TO FEDS: THE DOG ATE MY MONEY: HELENA, Mont. (AP) — A Montana man whose 12-year-old golden retriever ate five $100 bills hopes to be reimbursed by the federal government.
Wayne Klinkel tells the Independent Record that his dog Sundance ate the bills while he and his wife were on a road trip to visit their daughter.
Klinkel says he carefully picked through the dog's droppings, and his daughter recovered more when snow melted.
He says he washed the remnants of the bills and taped them together and sent them to the Treasury Department's Bureau of Engraving and Printing with an explanation of what happened.
The bureau's website says an "experienced mutilated currency examiner" will determine if at least 51 percent of a bill is present and eligible for reimbursement. The process can take up to two years.
IND. MAN CALLS 911, REPORTS HE'S DRIVING DRUNK : ROSELAWN, Ind. (AP) — A northern Indiana man who called 911 and told dispatchers he was driving drunk and needed to be taken off the road got his wish when a sheriff's deputy arrived.
State Police say 24-year-old Matthew Devore of Logansport was arrested early Monday along Interstate 65 in Jasper County. Police said Devore had a blood-alcohol level of .09, just over Indiana's legal limit for driving. He was being held at the Jasper County Jail on a driving while intoxicated charge.
State Police say Devore lost control of his car early Monday and it ended up in a grassy median with a flat tire.
Police say Devore then called 911, saying he was a drunk and needed to be taken off the road. A sheriff's deputy was then dispatched to the scene.
NC POLICE: ATM PICKED UP BY EXCAVATOR, STOLEN: WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. (AP) — Police in North Carolina are searching for a man who stole an excavator from a construction site and used it to make off with a 2,000-pound automated teller machine.
According to Winston-Salem police, someone stole the excavator Monday morning and drove it about 200 yards to the ATM. They said the suspect used the claw from the excavator to knock over the ATM kiosk at a credit union, then picked up the machine and lifted it into a pickup truck. It's believed a second car was involved in the theft.
PETA APOLOGIZES TO IDITAROD MUSHER FROM ALASKA: ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals has apologized to an Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race musher whose dog died at a checkpoint.
PETA last month accused Fairbanks musher Paige Drobny of leaving her dog unattended and said she should be criminally prosecuted.
Drobny dropped a dog at a race checkpoint, where it was cared for by race officials. But snow from a storm covered the dog and it died of asphyxiation.
Drobny's attorney threatened to sue if PETA didn't retract its original accusation and KTUU-TV reports the organization did so Friday.
A PETA statement says Drobny couldn't have known a storm was heading to the checkpoint and that she's not culpable for the dog's death. The organization apologized for suggesting she was.
Drobny called the apology "weak."
DENVER DEPUTY ARRESTED IN JAIL INMATE'S ESCAPE: DENVER (AP) — The sheriff's department in Denver says a deputy has been arrested on suspicion that he helped a fugitive who left the county jail wearing a deputy's uniform.
Matthew Andrews is a two-year veteran of the department. He's accused of assisting the escape, a class-three felony. The 36-year-old was arrested Monday at Denver police headquarters.
Sheriff's officials say 24-year-old Felix Trujillo was being held in connection with an aggravated robbery when he escaped Sunday night.
HIKER: 4 DAYS MISSING FELT LIKE A DREAM: ORANGE (AP) — One of two hikers who got lost in a Southern California mountain wilderness says she remembers nothing but hallucinations between the night she disappeared and her rescue four days later.
At a news conference Monday after she was released from the hospital, Kyndall Jack said that for most of the ordeal, she didn't realize she was missing, or that she had been hiking with her friend Nicolas Cendoya.
Jack said she began hallucinating the night she went missing in Orange County's Cleveland National Forest on March 31. The 18-year-old said the last thing she remembered was fighting off animals with Cendoya, and believes that actually happened, but couldn't be certain.
In the following days, she hallucinated she was being eaten by a python, and tried to eat rocks and dirt.
