oddly enough

oddly enough

Child’s tale about growing ‘special’ plants ends in pot bust

WHITE RIVER JUNCTION, Vt.

Authorities say a second-grader’s story about helping a farmer grow “special medicine” plants led to a big marijuana bust in Vermont.

The Times-Argus reports Windsor Detective Jennifer Frank said in an affidavit that the 8-year-old told school officials and police that he got to help his mother’s boyfriend grow “special medicine that can cure anything at all.”

Frank says the boy told her that people came to the Windsor house frequently.

Fifty-four-year-old Steven Mann pleaded not guilty last week in a White River Junction court to a felony count of cultivating more than 25 marijuana plants. A woman who answered a phone listing for a Steven Mann in Windsor County said it was the wrong number.

Police say they found two “grow rooms” next to the child’s bedroom.

Last dry county in Alabama legalizes alcohol sales

ASHLAND, Ala.

Alabama’s last totally dry county is going wet.

Residents in the Clay County cities of Ashland and Lineville voted Tuesday to legalize alcohol sales.

Alcohol sales still will be illegal outside the cities. But the vote means alcohol now can be sold legally in at least part of each of Alabama’s 67 counties.

Opponents argued against legalizing alcohol sales on moral and public-safety grounds. But supporters say allowing the sale of alcoholic beverages will help stimulate business in the rural, east Alabama county.

Bootleggers have operated in Clay County for years, and possession of small amounts of alcohol in the county has been legal.

The issue last came up for a countywide vote in 1986, when church opposition killed a proposal to go wet.

Woman brings live tank shell into Austrian police station

VIENNA

One Austrian police station has dodged an explosive situation.

The police station in Eisenstadt, east of Vienna, was evacuated Tuesday after a woman walked in with a live tank shell in her hand.

A police statement Wednesday says the shell was exploded without incident after experts transported it to a nearby sandpit. But they have issued a warning to all not to touch or pick up anything that could be ordnance left over from World War II.

The statement says the woman who brought in the shell told police her son had found it more than six months ago – and they had been storing it in their garage ever since.

Associated Press