Chill, Dude
A commercial bus driver has been charged with 38 counts of reckless endangerment after blacking out behind the steering wheel while snacking on gummies he says he didn’t know were infused with THC.
Jinhuan Chen appeared one Tuesday in Bridgeport Superior Court after being arrested at his home in Boston.
Chen was driving 38 passengers from the Mohegan Sun Casino on March 13 when he stopped the bus on the side of Interstate 95 in Stratford. Police said they found Chen slumped unconscious in the driver’s seat, next to an open package of Smokies Edibles Cannabis Infused Fruit Chews.
Toxicology tests showed Chen had a high level of THC, the active ingredient in cannabis, in his bloodstream, prosecutors said.
Chen told Judge Ndidi Moses that he had no idea he had been snacking on anything but regular candy.
“I didn’t know it was marijuana,” Chen said through a Chinese interpreter, according to Hearst Connecticut Media. “I didn’t know.”
Moses ordered Chen held in lieu of $25,000 bond and set his next court date for August 25.
Victor Chen, the manager of Go Go Sun Tour, the bus company, told Hearst that Jinhuan Chen had been driving for the Boston-based company for 10 years and has an exemplary record.
“He doesn’t drink, he doesn’t smoke, but he has a sweet tooth and likes candy,” Victor Chen said.
“This would never have happened a couple of years ago. But now there’s marijuana everywhere, here,” he added. “Who ever gave him or sold him the gummies didn’t care how he was going to use them.” Or maybe they thought it would be funny, in a stoner-logic kind of way.
Reptile Roundup is On!
Flanked by a huge writhing snake, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis announced that the annual prize-winning hunt for invasive Burmese pythons in the Florida Everglades will begin Aug. 5, 2022.
People must register to participate and complete an online training course for the event, which typically draws hundreds from across the country. Last year’s “Python Challenge” involved more than 600 people from 25 states, DeSantis said at a news conference in the Everglades.
Behind the Republican governor, it took three people to hold a live, 10-foot female python as a demonstration. The snakes have virtually no natural enemies in the Everglades and have decimated native populations of mammals, birds and other reptiles.
“These pythons are a threat to the Everglades,” DeSantis said. “Let’s reel in some pythons!”
The hunt begins August 5 at 8 a.m. and ends August 14 at 5 p.m. Prizes include $2,500 for the most pythons captured and $1,500 for the longest snake. Last year, the first-prize winner captured 223 pythons, while the $1,500 winner bagged a snake that was more than 15 feet (4.5 meters) long. Snakes must be killed humanely.
DeSantis said this year’s state budget includes $3 million specifically for python removal in the Everglades, including technology such as infrared sensors to locate the hard-to-see snakes in the wild. A key point of the snake event, the governor said, is to raise awareness about the threat and enable people to take part.
“We view this as a challenge,” he said. “We really wanted to supercharge those efforts to save our Everglades for future generations.”
Bonus!
Vicky Umodu of Colton, California, was thrilled to find two free sofas and a matching chair on Craigslist for her new house. She was skeptical, but the owners explained that a family member had passed away, and they were liquidating the possessions, ABC7 News reported.
When she got the furniture home, she felt some kind of item in one of the cushions and thought it might be a heating pad, but upon further inspection, she found several envelopes filled with cash.
“I was just telling my son, ‘Come, come, come!’ I was screaming, ‘This is money! I need to call the guy!’ ” Umodu found a staggering $36,000 in total. She returned the cash to the family, who told her they had found other hidden stashes in the deceased man’s home, but not such large amounts.
As a gesture of thanks, they gave Umodu $2,200, money she needed for a refrigerator. “I was not expecting a dime from him – seriously, I was not,” she explained.
Keep Smilin’
A man seemingly disguised as an old woman in a wheelchair threw a piece of cake at the glass protecting the Mona Lisa at the Louvre Museum and shouted at people to think of planet Earth.
The Paris prosecutor’s office said one Monday that the 36-year-old man was detained following that Sunday’s incident and sent to a police psychiatric unit. An investigation has been opened into the damage of cultural artifacts.
Videos posted on social media showed a young man in a wig and lipstick who had arrived in a wheelchair. The man, whose identity was not revealed pending an investigation, was also seen throwing roses in the museum gallery to slack-jawed guests.
The cake attack left a conspicuous white creamy smear on the glass but the famous work by Leonardo da Vinci wasn’t damaged.
Security guards were filmed escorting the wig-wearing man away as he called out to the surprised visitors in the gallery: “Think of the Earth! There are people who are destroying the Earth! Think about it. Artists tell you: think of the Earth. That’s why I did this.”
Guards were then filmed cleaning the cake from the glass. A Louvre statement confirmed the attack on the artwork involving a “patisserie.”
The 16th-century Renaissance masterpiece has seen a lot in its over-500 years in existence. So this incident doesn’t even take the cake.