ODDLY ENOUGH

ODDLY ENOUGH

Woman charged with running crack-delivery service from truck

SPRINGFIELD, Mass.

With her four adult children watching, a Massachusetts woman has pleaded not guilty to running a crack-cocaine-delivery service from her pickup truck.

Sixty-year-old Donna McLeod entered the plea May 5 on the trafficking-cocaine charge at her arraignment in Springfield District Court. She was ordered held on $10,000 bail.

Prosecutors say police raided her apartment and seized about 1.6 ounces of packaged crack cocaine. They also found $407 in cash, several cellphones and two bullets. Prosecutors say McLeod drove around the city making crack deliveries.

The Republican reported that McLeod’s lawyer asked for lower bail, saying her client isn’t a flight risk and cares for her disabled sister.

McLeod denied possessing ammunition without a license. Her lawyer says the bullets were keepsakes from a military funeral.

Koala pays late-night visit to Australian hospital

SYDNEY

Staffers at an Australian hospital’s emergency department received a rather unusual late-night visitor — a koala.

The marsupial casually strolled through the automatic doors of Hamilton Base Hospital in Victoria state at 3:30 a.m. April 20, said Brigid Kelly, spokeswoman for the Western District Health Service.

Surprised staff, not wanting to put any pressure on the animal, watched from a distance as it wandered around the emergency department’s waiting room for about three minutes before showing itself back out.

The koala’s visit was captured by security cameras, and the footage released by the Western District Health Service recently.

“He was quite relaxed, just sort of checking everything out, and then he sort of came back past the doors, and they opened and he went on out again,” Kelly said. “He wasn’t stressed at all. It was nice to just watch him poke around there for a little while.”

The Health Service’s CEO nicknamed the creature “Blinky Bill,” after a fictional koala first popularized in a series of children’s books.

Although Australia’s famously unique fauna occasionally ends up in odd places – a crocodile wandered into a Northern Territory bar a few years ago, for example – Kelly says the hospital has never had a koala visitor before.

“This is a first for us,” she said.

Associated Press