It's the final Sh*t Happened before Christmas. So check out yesterday's bad memories, then leave them behind as you create great new memories with family and friends this weekend. Be safe, show some love, and don't end up in Monday's Sh*t Happened, OK?
The story broke yesterday about a Tampa Lyft driver who was basically kidnapped Tuesday night and forced at gunpoint to drive four men around the Bay area for 11 hours while they committed various crimes. According to reports, the kidnappers typed multiple locations into the driver's phone themselves, as well as using the driver's phone to take multiple photos of themselves acting all gangsta and shit, and then DIDN'T TAKE THE DRIVER'S PHONE? I'm not buying this completely just yet.
Some people who live near a Polk County composting facility are complaining about the smell. Which seems kind of like, well, derf, what the hell did you expect when this thing broke ground a year and a half ago, until you get to the part about the plant's "odor counteractive system" being on the fritz. OK, yeah, complaint valid. But to be fair, even the best of us experiences a breakdown of our odor counteractive systems every once in a while.
Also in Polk County: a two-month investigation culminated in a meth-ring bust that yielded six arrests, cash, firearms and nearly 7 pounds of meth. That might not sound like a lot of meth, until you consider that the average longtime meth user weighs about 70 pounds. They're 10 percent meth! (OK, not really.) BONUS: One of the men arrested was a Mexican national who entered the country illegally after serving jail time for cocaine trafficking and being deported in 2010. So it's OK to start blaming the meth epidemic on foreigners now, instead of psychotic rednecks in Arkansas and Kentucky and the Pacific Northwest who watched New Jack City one time too many.
And finally, a Delray Beach teen who was injured in an auto accident was arrested after one of the paramedics transporting him saw him text his mom and ask her to remove the suitcase full of Xanax from his car. I guess the silver lining is that now we know there's a chance 19-year-old Nicholas Hipp's mom might be a cool, hide-your-drug-business-for-you mom, and not some lame, let-you-learn-the-hard-way-that-running-a-pill-business-has-its-inherent-risks mom.
Photo by radspunk, used via GNU Free Documentation License.
This article appears in Dec 22-29, 2016.