 Scripps Howard News Service May 17, 2005
As sheriff's and animal control officers entered the 10-acre farm, 30 people fled to surrounding hills, and one man threw $4,000 in cash to the ground and was among those arrested on suspicion of viewing a cockfight, Undersheriff Karl Knobelauch said. Some of the 22 also were arrested on suspicion of possession of fighting cocks and possession of cockfighting implements. Knobelauch said 58 cocks were found with metal slashers on their ankles, and officials confiscated six guns and several thousand dollars in cash. The farm owner and operator, Richard Warren Bohn, 53, was arrested on suspicion of animal cruelty, possession of fighting cocks and training fighting cocks. "The only activity was to raise roosters out there," Knobelauch said. "It's not unlawful to raise the roosters. Everyone knows where they are going. It's not going to Chicken McNuggets or anything." - Sacramento Bee PITTSBURGH - A state trooper thwarted a young woman's suicide attempt, catching her by the forearm as she tried to jump from a downtown bridge. A Port Authority police officer spotted the trooper holding the 20-year-old woman as she dangled over a railing, trying to break free of his grip. He rushed over and helped the trooper haul the woman up onto the sidewalk. City police took the woman, whose name was not released, to Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic. "It was the most heroic and unbelievable thing I've ever seen in my entire life," said Patrick Meighen, 34, a mortgage broker who witnessed the rescue from a Port Authority bus on the bridge. "I hope I never see anything like that again." Trooper James H. Boyd, 39, said he was driving across the bridge when he saw a woman sitting on the railing. A petite female friend was standing on the sidewalk, holding the apparently suicidal woman by the leg. As Boyd exited his vehicle and walked toward her, the woman swung one leg and then the other over the railing. She stood outside the railing facing inward. "That's when I started to run toward her and that's when she jumped. I was able to lunge out and grab her arm as she was going down," he said. - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette SAN FRANCISCO - Rohnert Park police are seeking criminal charges against as many as 10 people following a bloody melee over the weekend at a girls rugby tournament during which two coaches and a referee were beaten so badly that one was knocked unconscious in fighting that spread from adults to the teenage players. Police say they will forward the case to the Sonoma County district attorney, recommending felony charges as serious as assault with a deadly weapon against at least one individual who repeatedly kicked a coach in the head. The violence broke out Saturday during a daylong championship tournament involving the Alameda High School "Riptide" club rugby team and the Rohnert Park Girls Rugby Club team at Rancho Cotate High School in Rohnert Park. "I've never seen anything like that in any of my years coaching," said Craig Stewart, 55, the coach of the Alameda team who was recovering at home on Sunday, a day after he was knocked unconscious and rushed by ambulance to Kaiser Medical Center in Santa Rosa with gashes to his face that he said required seven stitches. - San Francisco Chronicle DENVER - Angel is in need of one more angel. Angel is a stray cat found last week with no fewer than three needle-sharp blow darts lodged in her body - one below her left eye, one in her rear, and one in her side. The dart close to her eye barely missed puncturing her brain. Remarkably, after being brought to the Dumb Friends League by the person who found her, Angel is doing OK. She appears to have at least six lives left. Once the investigation into the attack on Angel is completed, she'll be up for adoption and in need of a new owner with whom to share those remaining lives. "It looks like she's going to be fine," said Kristina Vourax, spokeswoman for the Dumb Friends League. "She's doing very well. She's actually a very nice cat, very sociable with people." That's amazing, really, considering the shape in which she was found. "It's unbelievable that anybody could commit this kind of egregious act toward an animal," Vourax said. - Rocky Mountain News
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