ANIMAL ATTRACTION

Good fortune quickly turned to horror for a man in Allyn, Washington, who scored some raccoon roadkill to use as crab-trap bait on June 25. As the unidentifified man walked toward home dragging the carcass behind him on a 15-foot rope (so he couldn't smell it), two different vehicles stopped, and their occupants, mistakenly thinking he was dragging a dead dog, began berating the would-be fifisherman. As the dispute heated up, someone produced a gun, shooting the man twice in the leg before he was struck by one of the vehicles as the assailants fled.

BRIGHT IDEAS

In New Hampshire on June 29, a state police offificer stopped the 57-year-old driver of a Honda Odyssey minivan who had piled a Beverly Hillbillies-esque stack of belongings on top of his car. The collection, which was about as tall as the minivan, included a wooden chest, a bike, a flfloor lamp, a rake, a snow shovel, a moving dolly and a folding ladder, along with blankets and towels and a shopping cart full of items hanging off the back. Police cited the driver for negligent driving, and the car was towed away.

LEAST COMPETENT CRIMINALS

Six suspects in a June 25 Denver mugging counted among their spoils the victim's brandnew iPhone. After using Ryan Coupens' credit cards at a nearby Walgreens, the thieves used the phone to post a Snapchat story about their shenanigans to Coupens' account, where his friends — and police — could clearly see some of their faces.

A repeat offender came to the end of his career when he and an accomplice tried to burglarize a home in East Macon, Georgia, on June 19. As James Robert Young, 41, a 35-time resident in the Bibb County jail, and another man zeroed in on her television, the homeowner woke up and heard them. "When she yelled, the men ran out," said Sheriff David Davis, and that was when the other suspect turned around and fifired his weapon, striking Young in the head, killing him. The accomplice is still at large

FAMILY VALUES

Flower girls at weddings often steal the show, and Georgiana Arlt of Chaska, Minnesota, was no exception as she walked down the aisle on July 1. The 92-year-old grandmother of the bride, Abby Arlt, told her granddaughter the only other wedding she had been in was her own, when she was 20 years old. Abby had hoped to have her grandfather as the ring bearer, but he passed away last year.

OOPS!

What seemed like the best hide-and-seek idea ever took a frightening turn on July 6 in Colonial Heights, Virginia, when a 12-year-old girl became stuck in a sleeper sofa. Another child called 911 when she couldn't free her friend. "I've never seen anything like it," said fifire chief A.G. Moore. "When she got out, she was fifine."

In Green Bay, Wisconsin, a driver crossing the Walnut Street Bridge on June 22 disregarded the traffific arm and drove around it onto the drawbridge as it was opening. His van ascended the opening span, but then rolled back down into the gap between the stationary bridge and the moveable span. Green Bay Metro fifirefifighters, concerned that the van might slip through the gap, cut a hole in its roof to rescue the driver.

SUSPICIONS CONFIRMED

Karen Leclair, 51, of Albion, Pennsylvania, was reported missing on June 11 by her commercial fifisherman husband, Christopher, 48, after she went over the side of his boat on Lake Erie. Christopher told police he hadn't been watching when his wife fell overboard. When her body washed ashore on July 4 in upstate New York, however, she had a gunshot wound in her head, and she was bound by nylon fifishing rope and weighted with an anchor. Christopher was charged with her murder after the gun used to shoot Karen was found under a bed in their home.

WHO YOU GONNA CALL? 

 Villagers in the eastern Thailand province of Amnat Charoen have called in the Royal Thai Police Force to help rid them of an evil female spirit, "phi pob," they accuse of killing four cows and sickening four border police offificers, reported the BBC in June. In Thai folklore, phi pob can possess people and sow chaos, including a 2016 incident in which neighbors were forced to strip naked at gunpoint by three reportedly possessed individuals. Adul Chaitprasithkul, the local police chief, noted, "More people believe in phi pob than those who don't." Read more weird news at W