We had a bumper crop of stupid criminals last week – each doing their part to give pot smokers a really, really bad name.
First, from Humble, Texas, comes the sick and sad story of three teens arrested and charged with misdemeanor abuse of a corpse for allegedly digging up a grave and stealing a skull in order to make a bong. I wish I were kidding. (You think normal bong water tastes and smells bad – can you even imagine? Ick. Ick. Ick.) Seems 17-year-old Kevin Jones was being interviewed by police about the use of a stolen debit card when the teen (who faces charges as an adult) spilled the beans about digging up a grave with two buddies, including 17-year-old Matthew Gonzalez (also charged as an adult). (The third teen is still legally a juvenile, so police have not released his identity.) Gonzalez apparently confirmed the tale, though police are still investigating, reports the Associated Press. The grave was in a 19th-century veterans cemetery, the AP reports, and the skull appears to have come from an 11-year-old that died in 1921.
Why would Jones confess to such a thing? “We can only speculate and guess to what goes on in the criminal mind,” Humble Police Sgt. John Chomiack said.
Closer to home, a Pflugerville teen, 17-year-old Heather McCurry, was arrested and charged with second-degree felony delivery of marijuana to a child for selling pot brownies at school. According to an arrest affidavit filed by Travis Co. Sheriff’s Office Deputy Lewis Porter, he was called to Connally High School after a school nurse reported that another student had been taken to the hospital after coming to the nurse’s office complaining of a rapid heart beat. The teen said she’d eaten “some brownies” she’d got from McCurry; a school official called McCurry to her office and asked if she was carrying anything illegal. It seems McCurry had hatched a plan to buy a new laptop with cash she earned from her own personal bake sale. She’d brought five individually-wrapped brownies to school, which she was selling for $4 each. (Let the jokes begin!)
Maybe McCurry can take up crochet in jail and earn that laptop by selling ponchos.
This article appears in May 9 • 2008.