oddly enough

August 19, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

oddly enough

Big splinter pierces Md. boy’s abdomen

ROCKY RIDGE, Md.

Firefighters say an 8-year-old boy has been hospitalized after a nearly foot-long splinter pierced his lower abdomen as he went headfirst down a wooden slide at a Maryland park.

The accident happened on a 40-foot slide built in 1950 that is a local attraction at Mount Tabor Park in Rocky Ridge.

Second Assistant Fire Chief Luke Humerick Jr. said Wednesday he used a utility knife to cut the splinter from the board on which the boy was pinned, halfway down the slide.

Humerick says the boy was in good spirits when he was taken Tuesday to a Washington hospital with the splinter still inside him. His condition wasn’t immediately available.

Man lived in NJ library for nearly 2 weeks

OCEAN TOWNSHIP, N.J.

Police say a homeless man lived unnoticed in the basement of a New Jersey library for nearly two weeks.

Police say a custodian saw Charles Jones Jr. peeking out a basement window of the Ocean Township library in Monmouth County on Friday night.

Neptune police Detective Lt. Steven Peters says Jones told officers he had been living in the building. Police discovered several books in the basement and found the 26-year-old had taken food from the employee break room.

Jones was released on a criminal summons. He’s charged with burglary and theft.

Pa. Beatle fan gets McCartney signature

WEST CHESTER, Pa.

Call it a signature in very, very permanent ink.

A Pennsylvania woman has had Paul McCartney’s signature permanently etched onto her body by a tattoo artist after the musical icon answered her pleas to sign her back.

Rose Ann Belluso took a sign to McCartney’s show Sunday in Philadelphia requesting he sign her back with a marker she’d brought along. When McCartney called her up on stage and obliged, the Downingtown woman decided to make it last forever.

A tattoo artist at Extreme Ink Tattoo Parlor in West Chester went over the signature Monday.

Belluso says the painful procedure was a no-brainer after McCartney answered her request.

Mail-collection box stolen in Phoenix

PHOENIX

Maybe the check really was in the mail.

The U.S. Postal Inspection Service is offering a reward of up to $10,000 for help in finding out who stole one of those iconic blue mail-collection boxes late Monday or early Tuesday in north Phoenix.

It was recovered — empty — early Tuesday near Interstate 17.

Associated Press