QUIRKY WORLD ... Spelling mistake catches wife with poison in mind

ENGLAND: A British woman who tried to kill her husband by poisoning his Christmas drink with anti-freeze was jailed for 15 years after being undone by a spelling mistake and a trail of text messages.

Following family arguments, Jacqueline Patrick, aged 55, twice tried to kill her husband Douglas, 70, in October and on Christmas Day 2013, by spiking his cherry Lambrini.

“Perhaps most shocking of all was the note she gave to the London Ambulance Service purporting to be from her husband, stating that he did not wish to be resuscitated,” said Detective Inspector Tracey Miller, of London’s Metropolitan Police.

The forged note showed a misspelling of the word ‘dignity’ as ‘dignerty’. When police later asked her to write the word, she made the same mistake.

The couple’s daughter Katherine, 21, was sentenced to three years in jail after admitting to inciting her mother to poison her father, while her mother pleaded guilty to two counts of attempted murder at the family’s south London home.

Douglas Patrick was rushed to hospital fighting for his life, and tests revealed he was suffering from anti-freeze poisoning.

“His wife was informed who then told doctors she thought Mr Patrick may have drunk a blue liquid by mistake. The hospital, finding it strange that she hadn’t volunteered this information earlier, called police,” said the police statement.

Mother and daughter’s mobile phones were seized and revealed a series of incriminating exchanges, including: “I got the stuff I will give him some later delete txt tell no one ok.”

Food for thought

USA:

A former University of Connecticut student who went on a drunken, obscene tirade about jalapeno-bacon macaroni and cheese has applied for probation.

Luke Gatti filed the application for accelerated rehabilitation at Rockville Superior Court, the Hartford Courant reported. The charges against him — misdemeanour breach of peace and criminal trespassing — will be dropped if he is accepted into the programme for first-time offenders.

The 19-year-old ranted at and shoved a university food service supervisor for refusing to sell him the macaroni and cheese. The altercation was caught on a video and has been widely viewed online.

He has since apologised.

Rich rapper

USA:

Rapper Fetty Wap gave delighted fans a run for his money, tossing wads of cash over a balcony at a New Jersey mall.

Videos posted to social media show the Paterson native throwing money as he walked through the Garden State Plaza mall in Paramus.

The ‘Trap Queen’ rapper posted on Twitter that he was so happy to be shopping with his daughter that he threw $2,000 to fans. He tweeted: “Never no who needed it.”

Bombshell

USA:

The National Weather Service says an instrument that fell from the sky, prompting a Philadelphia bomb squad response, weighed about 45g and had been launched with a weather balloon about 265km away.

Mitchell Gaines, of the weather service in Mount Holly, New Jersey, says the instrument, called a radiosonde, took off from the agency’s office in Sterling, Virginia. High winds carried it to Philadelphia.

Radiosondes are sent up by balloons, taking and transmitting measurements to their home stations as they ascend.

When the balloon reaches a certain altitude it pops, and the instrument floats to the ground. It has a postage-paid mailbag inside so finders can return it.

Philly.com reports a bomb squad responded when the radiosonde fell from the sky in northeast Philadelphia and struck a vehicle.