A long time ago, just before I graduated from high school, my dad, our next door neighbor and I were sitting out on the back porch. The local Police helicopter was circling around the neighborhood and my dad casually mentioned that he could take it out. Over the next few minutes, the neighbor called bullshit and they argued. My dad then went into the house and retrieved a weird variation of an M-16 that he evidently brought back from Viet Nam and proceeded to shoot the helicopter down. About 10 minutes later, our house was Police central. All the local news was there, but curiously, no news helicopters.
The last time I saw my dad was when I testified at the trial. He is still alive and out of prison, but won’t speak to any of us.
Known several pilots that made the news. For good & bad reasons.
Known a lot of drunks who got clean & went back out and made the papers big time.
I was at an aircraft crash site and the reporter was asking me questions. I made sure, because I watched him write it down that he spelled several things correctly.
When the paper came out, not one thing was spelled right, not even the names and the whole article was 100% wrong. And I saw him write it down correctly. You can tell by the fact that the reporter was writing things down that this was a while ago.
To this day, any paper story that I was actually there & involved has been over 50% incorrect.
I think all media is constitutionally incapable of even trying to get things correct.
My ex wife of a few years was in a position of public trust and got charged with felonies numbering in the dozens and ultimately convicted of a fraction of them. Her mugshot was horrible and it was on the locals new.
Don was friend of my younger brother, whom I had always known to be wild, but likeable, and he had settled down and married.
About 10 years ago, he was on the local news as a cuckold who was holding his wife hostage and in a standoff with the police.
Reading this thread makes me grateful that I have led such a boring life…
I actually thought that nobody I knew had ever done something bad enough to make the news, and then I remembered this guy.
I used to help him with his computer issues. Who knew that his personality issues were the real problem…
I won’t link to a news page, but my sister’s stepdaughter got involved with a much older man who convinced her to help him in a home invasion robbery in which two people who knew her were shot. The two of them took off, but were tracked down. I have no idea what happened to him, but my step-niece is still in prison.
My great-great-grandfather and his brother murdered their brother-in-law. I know none of the details, but great-great-grandpa took off with his family from Tennessee to Arkansas and then Indian Territory, and was never arrested. His brother stayed behind and was arrested, but the charges were dropped.
My grandmother was the secretary and treasurer of her church, and held their checkbook. My cousin stole the checkbook and forged some checks to support his drug habit. He spent time in jail for it.
I spoke briefly a couple of times with John Hyde, who need up killing five people, including two cops. People who had more extensive dealings with him were shocked but not really surprised. 10 years on he is still not competent to stand trial.
About a year after we graduated high school, a former classmate got drunk and plowed his car into a herd of preschoolers at a park.
Not quite what the OP requested, but I have to share this one: Back in the late '80s or early '90s, my sisters used to like to walk along the Green River. One day they got home from one such walk, turned on the news only to see the place they’d just been. Turned out there was a body stashed in the bushes alongside the river. They recognized the spot right away but hadn’t noticed the body. Someone who came along just after them did, though.
The Green River Killer was still at large then, though if I recall correctly, wasn’t particularly active at the time. The police quickly deduced that this wasn’t his work and tracked down the real killers–Two guys who decided it would be fun to kill a prostitute (and probably hoped to get the blame pinned on the GRK.) One of the guys turned out to be the cousin of one of my sister’s co-workers.
Unfortunately I can’t help but think you are right. I have been involved in a number of things that have hit the news. The internet has pretty much killed local news. Either they just reprint press releases verbatim or they get a wildly inaccurate version of events. Even those few things that I have intimate knowledge of that made much wider news circulation have been no more than 50% accurate. I mean with concrete verifiable details. Makes me wonder about all the stories I read.
