By ,
Published January 13, 2015
Pam Pease's car turned out to be only temporarily stolen.
The 49-year-old Pensacola, Fla., woman, recently relocated from Missouri, was working at a Parade gas station in her new hometown last Tuesday evening when her car vanished from the parking lot.
Less than an hour later, the same blue '94 Ford Escort (search) wagon pulled up to the pumps — missing hubcap and Missouri plates intact.
"It just blew my mind, but there they were," Pease told the Pensacola News Journal. "Maybe they forgot where they stole it from. I'm glad it was low on gas."
Vince Nguyen, another gas station employee, recognized the two men in the car as the same pair who had earlier asked him in Spanish if he could give them a ride to Mississippi.
He asked them why they'd come back.
"They told him they needed gas," Pease told the newspaper.
Nguyen reached in and shut the car off, but the men fled into an alley, with Nguyen in hot pursuit.
Other employees called 911, alerting the same Escambia County sheriff's deputies who had responded to Pease's initial call and were busy entering the details into their squad car's computer.
With Nguyen, the two officers and the sheriff's department's K-9 officer, Oden, all on their tails, the culprits were quickly caught.
"Maybe they were lost," Sheriff's Sgt. Ted Roy later said. "Crimes like that are good for our job security."
— Thanks to Out There reader Doug M.
It's Not Bigamy If It's Trigamy
MONTEREY, Calif. (AP) — Bigamy charges were dropped against a former Naval Postgraduate School (search) administrator because of a loophole in Virginia marriage laws where he was indicted, prosecutors said.
Charles Edward Hicks, 61, was married to seven women over the last 40 years, including three weddings that took place while he was married to someone else, according to court records.
A Fairfax, Va., grand jury indicted Hicks in July on charges he married Sandra Phipps Hicks, 49, while still married to Julie Flint Hicks, 43.
But Virginia law said Charles Hicks could not have been legally married to Julie Hicks in Hollister in 1997 because he was still married at the time to his fifth wife, whom he later divorced.
Technically, he wasn't married to anybody when he married Sandra Hicks in the Bahamas in 2003.
Hicks, who currently lives in Virginia, worked from 1995 to 2000 as staff director and site manager of the Defense Acquisition University at the postgraduate school. He now works for the Army Publishing Directorate in Alexandria, Va.
— Thanks to Out There reader Warren J.
Only in America, or at Least Iowa
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — A man who immigrated from Kenya to the United States found prosperity beyond his expectations on the day he became a U.S. citizen.
Shortly after Moses Bittok, of West Des Moines, took the oath of citizenship on Friday, he discovered he had a $1.89 million winning ticket from the Iowa Lottery's Hot Lotto (search) game.
"It's almost like you adopted a country and then they netted you $1.8 million," Bittok said Monday as he cashed in his ticket. "It doesn't happen anywhere — I guess only in America."
Bittok said he took the citizenship oath at the federal building in Des Moines Friday then went shopping with his family. They stopped at a gas station to check his lottery ticket from the Sept. 21 drawing.
"For some reason, I'm calm," he said. His wife, Leonida, screamed.
Bittok, 40, an officer at the Iowa Correctional Institute for Women (search) in Mitchellville, said he doesn't know exactly what he will do with his winnings, but a college fund for the couples 4-year-old daughter, Mindy, is top priority.
Bittok chose to receive his winnings in 25 annual payments of about $52,920 after taxes.
He came to the U.S. to attend college in Minnesota, then moved to Iowa to take the job at the women's prison.
He had purchased the winning ticket at a West Des Moines grocery store, where he once worked part time.
Hot Lotto tickets are sold in Iowa, Minnesota, Montana, New Hampshire, South Dakota and West Virginia.
Airport Inspector Bitten by Piranha
MANILA, Philippines (AP) — A routine check of a shipment at Manila airport turned bloody when a piranha sprung up and bit one of the inspectors.
"I was checking one of the boxes when suddenly, something leaped out of it and bit me," fisheries quarantine inspector Mario Trio told the Philippine Daily Inquirer in a report published Tuesday.
The bite left a V-shaped wound on the inspector's finger, and the 34 piranhas in the consignment he was checking — falsely declared as "ornamental fish" from Peru — were confiscated over the weekend, but died two days later, the newspaper reported.
The Filipino consignee faces charges of illegally importing live piranhas, punishable by up to eight years in prison and a fine, quarantine chief Felipe Santamaria said.
Carjacker Has Trouble With Stick Shift
SHAWNEE, Kan. (AP) — A would-be carjacker got away with nothing more than the keys Monday after he apparently was thwarted by the vehicle's manual transmission.
The thief was armed with a shotgun when he ordered a 26-year-old man out of his Chevrolet Camaro (search) in a suburban Kansas City parking lot. The driver complied, but when the robber got into the car he was unable to manage the stick shift.
The robber fled the scene in a four-door car that someone else was driving.
Police are investigating whether the attempted theft is linked to four similar robberies in Johnson County during the past week.
Bovine Product Cements International Ties
SINGAPORE (AP) — Singapore said Tuesday that relations with the Chinese province of Shandong grew after it presented officials there with a "unique" gift: quality bull semen.
"Bilateral ties between Singapore and Shandong received another boost Monday, this time with Singapore presenting a unique gift of 200 straws of bull semen," International Enterprise Singapore said in a statement.
The gift of semen was part of a pact to help the eastern Chinese province "improve the quality of cattle breeding and dairy products," said IE Singapore, the external economic wing of the government.
The semen was pooled from dairy bull from the United States and Canada, the statement said.
Although Singapore is 1,500 miles from the Chinese mainland, three-quarters of its citizens are ethnically Chinese.
Compiled by FOXNews.com's Paul Wagenseil.
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