Welcome to another edition of “Weird and Wacky Wednesdays”. Cellphones, hate them or love them, they’re here to stay. This week, we spotlight stories of cellphones being unexpected downfall for some and we end with what appears to be a new, strange trend in porch pirating.
Find My Criminal
In Lakeland, Florida, 38-year-old Joshua Garrett thought he could evade the law by hiding in the ceiling of his workplace. Deputies searching for Garrett, who was wanted for violating his probation, were initially stumped.
However, their search took a turn when Garrett’s cellphone rang, giving away his hiding spot. Deputies quickly located him above the ceiling tiles and arrested him. Garrett now faces additional charges, including resisting arrest and felony criminal mischief for the $1,000 worth of damage he caused to the ceiling. As one deputy remarked, “Sometimes, all it takes is a little ring-a-ding to bring a criminal down.”
Would You Like to Enable iCloud and Sync Your Data?
After a cellphone betrays Garrett in Florida, a cellphone betrays an unfaithful husband in the UK. A man known only as Richard is suing Apple for £5 million after his iPhone synced incriminating messages with the family iMac, exposing his infidelity to his wife.
Richard had been messaging sex workers for years, meticulously deleting the messages from his phone but unaware that they were still visible on other devices linked to the same account. His wife discovered the messages and promptly divorced him, walking away with over $6.3 million. Now, Richard is blaming Apple for his ruined marriage and hefty divorce settlement, claiming that the company should have made it clearer that messages deleted on one device could still be accessed on others. He is seeking a class-action lawsuit and hoping other wronged users will join his crusade against the tech giant.
One can imagine this has been an issue for many people. Whether they want to sign on to a class-action lawsuit and face that notoriety is entirely another question.
Porch Phone Pirates
In Reading, Pennsylvania, a security camera captured the chaotic scene of two porch pirates racing to steal a package just seconds after it was delivered. The package, containing expensive AT&T cell phones, had barely touched the ground when two men jumped out of separate cars and sprinted towards it. In a scene reminiscent of a comedy sketch, the two thieves wrestled and fought over the box, with one brandishing a knife to secure his prize.
The victorious thief fled with the package while the other resorted to throwing a flowerpot in frustration. The stunned FedEx driver could only watch as the bizarre brawl unfolded on the front lawn. Homeowner Kevin Lara, who posted the video online, expressed his disbelief at the lengths people would go to for a few cell phones, pondering what the world has come to.
