SANTA ANA — Orange County sheriff’s deputies today were investigating the suicide of a man who triggered an alarm when he went through an emergency exit at the Santa Ana courthouse and jumped to his death from the 11th floor of the high-rise.

Two years ago, a convicted child molester went through another emergency door and jumped to his death from the ninth floor of the same building.

The man who killed himself Friday, identified as 48-year-old Gilbert Castro Ruiz, had a criminal history but had no pending cases against him, the Orange County Register reported. He apparently had no reason to be in the courthouse other than to commit suicide, police said. Ruiz set off an emergency door exit alarm when he went on the 11th-floor balcony at 700 W. Civic Center Drive about 12:50 p.m., according to Santa Ana police Cpl. Anthony Bertagna.

Orange County sheriff’s deputies rushed to the balcony and saw Ruiz preparing to jump. They tried to talk him down and at one point managed to get close enough to grab him, but he broke free and flung himself over the railing, Bertagna said.

Two deputies suffered minor injuries in the scuffle and went to a hospital to be checked out, Bertagna said.

On March 4, 2008, 52-year-old Carlos Eduardo Tello leaped to his death from a ninth-floor balcony several hours after he was convicted of felony child molestation. He had threatened suicide when the case against him was filed in 2006, court officials said.

Like Ruiz did Friday, Tello went through a door with an alarm on it, and he told a bailiff who responded he could not stop him from jumping. A suicide note was found on Tello’s body.

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A popular teacher and assistant coach at Arleta High School collapsed and died during an afternoon track meet Friday.
Its always a tragedy when a good teacher that is involved with education goes down in the line of duty. I feel sorry for his family and the students that looked up to Mr. Mendias.

Mike Mendias was pronounced dead shortly after arriving at Kaiser Permanente Panorama City, said his wife, Dolores Mendias.

Mendias, 60, was sitting at a tent during a track meet between Arleta and San Fernando high schools when he turned to a colleague and said he felt like he was going to faint, witnesses said.

Mendias collapsed and was unresponsive. Paramedics attempted to revive him while transporting him to the hospital.

Mendias was a history teacher at Arleta since the school opened in 2006. He was an assistant junior varsity football coach for the past three years.

Before turning to teaching, he worked at Lockheed in Palmdale. “Teaching was his love,” Dolores Mendias said. “He always talked about the love he had for his students. I want him to be remembered as someone who was about his students first.”

Mendias is survived by his wife, Dolores; his mother, Tilli Dominguez; a nephew, Tony; and great-nephew, Riley.

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I see its business as usual in Los Angeles. Sheriff’s detectives today sought a gunman who shot a man in the head on a Metro bus in Hollywood and wounded a second man in a leg before running off.

The shooting on Metro Bus No. 4 on Santa Monica Boulevard, near Wilton Place, occurred about 8 p.m. Friday, according to a deputy with the sheriff’s transit unit, which investigates crimes on buses and trains.

Two men were arguing in the front section of an “articulated” bus, Luis Inzunza of the Metropolitan Transit Authority said. One of them pulled a gun, shot one man in the head and shot another man in the leg, he said.

The man with the head wound was taken to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in critical condition. His name and hospital condition were unavailable early today, but a sheriff’s deputy said he was still alive several hours after the shooting.

The man who was shot in the leg was taken to Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center, Inzunza said.

The gunman was believed to be in his 50s. A better description was unavailable.

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MALIBU, Calif. — Authorities say a man tried to sexually assault a Southern California

Composite sketch of Malibu attacker

Los Angeles County sheriff’s Sgt. Derek Sabatini says the woman was taken to a hospital Friday with cuts and bruises from the fall in Malibu.

She told deputies she had finished a run at about noon at Point Dume State Beach and was standing at the edge of a cliff when she was grabbed from behind. She says she and the man struggled for several minutes before she was able to break away. That’s when the woman ran and jumped off the cliff.

Authorities have released a composite sketch of a man who savagely attacked the woman who was jogging in Zuma Canyon and stole her vehicle.

Deputies say the suspect then escaped in the woman’s Toyota Land Cruiser.

Officials say the stolen Land Cruiser has California “Yosemite” plates, with license plate number 6CHF554.

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Here is a great story about Jason Botos, who showed up at his hearing to be sentenced for drunk driving, and he was too drunk to be sentenced. He had to be helped out of the car by his father to get into the court house. What a drunk. JD

PAPILLION, Neb. –Authorities said a drunken driver showed up for his sentencing hearing drunk again.

Jason Botos, 30, was driven to court by his father and investigators said he was so drunk that he had to be helped inside and wasn’t able to make his court appearance.

“He was unable to get himself out of the vehicle, he was so intoxicated,” said deputy Sarpy County attorney Ben Perlman.

Investigators said Botos’ father asked deputies to help carry his son inside the courthouse.

Botos was scheduled to be sentenced for a drunken driving offense in September 2009. He was driving near Highway 75 and Cornhusker Road when his car jumped a curb and smashed into five other vehicles, critically injuring three people.

“Because he failed to appear for his court appearance, a warrant was issued,” said Perlman.

Deputies arrested Botos in the parking lot.

“He was kind of slumped over. Two deputies assisted him,” said Sarpy County Sheriff’s Deputy Tina Anderson. “He could not walk on his own.”

Inside the jail, Anderson put Botos through a breath test.

“The test showed he was at a 0.43,” she said, a level that is more than five times the legal limit.

Deputies sent him to a hospital to get checked out and then brought him back to a cell.

“He was coughing and curled up in a ball,” Anderson said.

Botos now faces a new charge and more jail time in a case that has authorities shaking their heads.

“This is a pretty rare case, and extreme case,” said Capt. Monty Daganaar of the Sarpy County Sheriff’s Office.

Botos will be sentenced on Tuesday. Between the new charge of failure to appear and the drunken driving conviction, he could get 18 months in jail.

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Hunters were combing the snowy brush around Chignik Lake, Alaska, on Friday in an attempt to hunt down up to four wolves that killed a 32-year-old special education teacher in the first known fatal wolf attack in the U.S. in modern times.

But the wolves were elusive, and villagers were hoping that state game officials would send in a helicopter to help track the animals, Village Council President Johnny Lind said.

“They’ve been looking and scouting around, and the wolves are definitely still around, but they’re smart, and they take off before you can get close to them,” Lind said.

Candice Berner, a special education teacher who traveled among several rural schools on the Alaska Peninsula, 475 miles southwest of Anchorage, was attacked while jogging and listening to her iPod Monday evening on the deserted, 3-mile-long road that leads out from the village to its small airstrip.

A native of Slippery Rock, Pa., she had been working in Alaska only since August. Her body was found by snowmobilers a short time after the attack. It had been dragged off the road and partially eaten, and was surrounded by wolf prints.

“Our investigation points to wolves being the most likely culprit. It is the only predatory animal that is active in the area that we’re aware of, and we also believe the wolves have been increasingly threatening to people in the area,” said Megan Peters, spokeswoman for the Alaska State Troopers. “They’ve been getting too close, circling, making people fearful for their safety.”

Christi Aleck, another resident of the village, said that while there are always wolves in the area, three to four have been lingering unusually close over the past week or so and have been sighted again since the attack.

“They come in at nighttime, not very far from the village, and they’re just kind of watching,” she said. “They’re waiting for somebody else to go out again, I guess.”

She said villagers are driving their children to school and keeping them indoors during recess.

“People are scared. Oh yeah, they’re scared,” she said. “Nobody’s walking around anywhere. I mean, wolves have always hung around in the wintertime, but they’ve never attacked anyone.”

The only known previous fatal wolf attack in North America over the last 100 years occurred in 2005, when a young geology student was attacked and partially eaten by a pack of wolves in northern Saskatchewan.

In at least two other cases, there were attacks — in Alaska and again in Saskatchewan — that were halted by rescuers before they became fatal.

“What the research shows is that in the last 10 or 20 years, as wolves have kind of re-colonized areas where they were extirpated around the turn of the 20th century, and as people have also developed more habits of going out into national parks and wilderness areas, we’ve had more aggressive encounters,” said Mark McNay, a retired Alaskan wildlife biologist who has studied wolf attacks.

Wildlife attacks in Alaska are relatively common. “Certainly we have bear maulings, we have people bitten by wolves, we have people that are stomped by moose,” Peters said. “Having an incident where a human and animal cross paths and it doesn’t end well, that’s normal. But we don’t have any other case on hand that we’re aware of where someone was actually killed by a wolf.”

Peters said state troopers had ruled out the possibility that Berner had died from any other cause and was later dragged away by wolves.

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JACKSON, Miss. – A lesbian student who wanted to take her girlfriend to her senior prom is asking a federal judge to force her Mississippi school district to reinstate the dance it canceled.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Mississippi on Thursday filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Oxford on behalf of 18-year-old Constance McMillen, who said she faced some unhappy classmates after the Itawamba County School District said it wouldn’t host the April 2 prom.

“Somebody said, ‘Thanks for ruining my senior year,’” McMillen said of her reluctant return Thursday to Itawamba Agricultural High School in Fulton.

The lawsuit seeks a court order for the school to hold the prom. It also asks that McMillen be allowed to escort her girlfriend, who is a fellow student, and wear a tuxedo, which the school said also violated policy.

The district’s decision Wednesday came after the ACLU demanded that officials change a policy banning same-sex prom dates because it said it violated students’ rights. The ACLU said the district violated McMillen’s free expression rights by not letting her wear a tux.

McMillen said she never expected the district to respond the way it did.

“A lot of people said that was going to happen, but I said, they had already spent too much money on the prom” to cancel it, she said.

McMillen said she didn’t want to go back to the high school in Fulton the morning after the decision, but her father told her she needed to face her classmates.

“My daddy told me that I needed to show them that I’m still proud of who I am,” McMillen told The Associated Press in a telephone interview. “The fact that this will help people later on, that’s what’s helping me to go on.”

The school board statement said it wouldn’t host the event “due to the distractions to the educational process caused by recent events” but didn’t mention McMillen. District officials didn’t return calls seeking comment Thursday.

At least one supporter has offered to help McMillen and her classmates hold an alternate prom.

New Orleans hotel owner Sean Cummings told The Clarion-Ledger of Jackson he was so disappointed with the school board’s decision he offered to transport the students in buses to the city and host a free prom at one of his properties.

“New Orleans, we’re a joyful culture and a creative culture here and, if the school doesn’t change its mind, we’d be delighted to offer them a prom in New Orleans,” he told the newspaper. “Concluding your high school experience should be a joyful one. One shouldn’t conclude that experience with all their friends on a negative note.”

Same-sex prom dates and cross-dressing are new issues for many high schools around the country, said Daryl Presgraves, a spokesman for GLSEN: Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, a Washington-based advocacy group.

“A lot of schools actually react rather than do the research and find out what the rights of these students are,” said Presgraves.

McMillen says she hopes her fight will make it easier for gay students at other schools facing discrimination.

“I want other kids to know that’s it not right for schools to do that,” she said on CBS’s “The Early Show.”

In 2002, a gay student sued his school district in Toronto to allow him to attend a prom with his boyfriend. A judge later forced the district to allow the couple to attend and stopped the district from canceling the prom.

U.S. Rep. Jared Polis, D-Colo., said a bill he’s introduced in Congress would make it illegal to discriminate against gay and lesbian school students. He said at least 10 states have such laws, and his bill is modeled after those.

“This situation with the prom is a perfect example of why we need to protect students from discrimination. In this case it’s a prom. It other cases, it’s getting beaten up or killed,” Polis said.

The school district had said it hoped a privately sponsored prom could be held.

Southside Baptist Church Pastor Bobby Crenshaw said he’s seen the South portrayed as “backwards” on Web sites discussing the issue, “but a lot more people here have biblically based values.”

Itawamba County is a rural area of about 23,000 people in north Mississippi near the Alabama state line. It’s near Pontotoc County, Miss., where more than a decade ago school officials were sued in federal court over their practice of student-led intercom prayer and Bible classes.

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A 24-year-old woman was in critical condition after being pulled from the murky water of the Los Angeles River, where witnesses say her vehicle plunged some 40 feet off a northbound Long Beach Freeway bridge Thursday.

Lizeth Pimentel was in “very critical condition,” unconscious and on a ventilator, hospital officials said.

“She’s very sick. The next 72 hours are critical,” said Andrew Reno, director of emergency trauma services at St.Mary Medical Center.

Pimentel was the only person in the vehicle, and the cause of crash is still under investigation, said Lisa Massacani, Long Beach Police Department spokeswoman.

Witnesses reported the crash off the Seventh Street bridge about 7:30 a.m. Thursday, said Joshua Johnson, Long Beach Fire Department spokesman.

According to witnesses, the woman’s SUV hit the guardrail and plunged face first into the water below.

“I was facing the other way and I heard a bang, I looked over and the next thing I saw was a truck headed face first into the water,” said Andrew Stone, who lives nearby. “It sank in about three minutes and nobody got out. I saw air bubbles and that was it.”

Six rescue divers searched by feel in about 15 feet of water with literally no visibility.

“You can’t even see your hand in front of your face,” Johnson said.

Divers found the vehicle sitting on the bottom of the river on its wheels with the rear hatch facing east.
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Forcible entry was required to enter certain areas of the vehicle, officials said.

An infant car seat, which was found during the search, had led rescuers to think that there might be others in the vehicle. It was later confirmed by family, identified through the vehicle’s license plate, that the victim was the only one in the car, Johnson said.

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A savage thug followed a nurse into a Hell’s Kitchen bar bathroom early yesterday and brutally beat her in a stall after she rejected his advances on the dance floor, authorities said.

The 29-year-old victim, whose name is being withheld by The Post, suffered fractures to her eye socket, skull and nose, and needed surgery and 50 stitches to close deep gashes to her face, police said.

The vicious assault occurred at around 2:15 a.m. in the basement bathroom of Social, a sprawling, three-story Irish pub on Eighth Avenue near 48th Street.

“He wanted to dance with her and she rebuffed him,” a source said.
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So the creep followed her to the bathroom and barged into the stall.

“She starts pulling her pants up and she fights him off, but it was a brutal physical assault on her,” the source said.

“She was seriously beaten.”

The victim, a registered pediatric nurse who lives on the Upper East Side, kicked and bit the man, but he pummeled her unconscious.

Investigators suspect the man may have slammed her head against the sink or toilet bowl.

Surveillance video taken from a police camera outside the bar captured the suspect — who cops described as a Hispanic man in his mid-20s — casually walking out, then looking at and shaking his right hand. Moments later, he appears on the video surveillance of a convenience store 200 feet away.

He remains at large.

When the woman didn’t return from the bathroom, a friend, who is also a nurse, went to look for her.

“She goes and finds her sprawled on the floor,” said Police Commissioner Ray Kelly.

Not realizing her friend had been assaulted, she called 911 and said the woman had passed out and hit her head.

An ambulance, but no police car, was dispatched.

“The friend did not report it as a crime,” a source said.

The woman was taken to Weill Cornell Medical Center, and when she came to several hours later, she told staffers there that she had been attacked and police were finally called.

The woman, who was found with her pants partially down, said she did not think she had been raped. A rape kit taken at the hospital later came back negative, sources said.

But cops “believe that there was an attempted sexual assault,” according to NYPD spokesman Paul Browne.

The victim, who is originally from Connecticut, underwent surgery and was in stable condition in a VIP wing of the hospital with her family by her side, sources said.

Police combed the bar, which is popular with the after-work crowd, for evidence yesterday. A manager there called the assault “horrible.”

“We’re cooperating with the police right now,” he said. “It can happen anywhere.”

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A woman dropped her gym bag on the tracks of a crowded Upper East Side subway station yesterday — then made the fatal decision to jump after it as screaming straphangers watched in horror.

The 48-year-old victim, identified as Rose Mankos, was crushed by a northbound No. 6 train barreling into the 77th Street Station below Lexington Avenue as she tried desperately to claw her way back to the platform.

“She had one choice to make and seconds to make it,” said Alfonso McGruder, 55, of The Bronx, who witnessed the tragedy. “She didn’t make the one that would have saved her life.

Chad Rachman/N.Y.PostThe woman who was fatally struck by a northbound 6 train yesterday dropped this bag on the tracks and attempted to retrieve it before she was killed.

The woman who was fatally struck by a northbound 6 train yesterday dropped this bag on the tracks and attempted to retrieve it before she was killed.

“She tried to go under the platform because the train was bearing down on her. Then she tried to climb onto the platform, but she couldn’t do that. Then she just froze.”

Mankos lost her life trying to retrieve a nylon LeSportsac bag filled with exercise clothes, toiletries and her cellphone, sources said.

“People were yelling at the lady on the tracks when they saw the train coming,” said Hakeem Nhl, 53, a vendor on the opposite platform. “People were screaming, ‘Oh, my, God! Oh, my God!’ ”

Witnesses reported that the train operator sounded his horn eight times and attempted to brake.

“I think she just went into shock knowing that the train was seconds from hitting her. It looked like she just gave up,” McGruder said.

Mankos died as soon as she was struck at around 3:45 p.m.

“You could see some woman with her head stuck in between the train [and the platform] and her arms sticking out,” recalled witness Andrew Pistella, 30. “Some guy was screaming, ‘Is this real? Is this real?’ It looked like a mannequin.”

It was bedlam on the platform, with children, teenagers and old ladies shrieking hysterically, witnesses said.

“Who drops their [bag] down there, then jumps down there to get it?” Pistella asked.

Onlookers shouted for Mankos to lie down between the tracks or under the platform — perhaps thinking of “Subway Superman” Wesley Autrey, who saved a fallen passenger by climbing atop him in the trough between the tracks as a train rolled over them in 2007.

“I felt the thud when the train hit the body,” said Glenda Farr, 52, who was on the train. “I didn’t know it was a body. I lived upstate. You ever hit a deer or something? It was like that.”

A neighbor said Mankos lived alone in her Stuyvesant Town apartment.

NYC Transit spokesman Paul Fleuranges said, “The message to our customers is clear: If you drop something on the tracks, do not attempt to retrieve it. Alert a transit employee or a police officer.”

Meanwhile, cops were investigating a separate incident in which a 50 year-old man was struck and killed by an eastbound No. 3 train at the Utica Avenue station in Brooklyn.

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LAKESIDE, Calif. — A woman who “had the best of intentions” was in custody Wednesday after animal control officers seized 60 dogs in crates inside her small two-bedroom home east of San Diego.

Alice Via, 65, was arrested for investigation of animal cruelty and neglect. She ran what she called the San Diego Boxer Rescue and kept mostly boxers and Chihuahuas.

The dogs were confined in dirty cages stacked two high throughout the 750-square-foot home, said San Diego County spokesman Dan DeSousa. Most of the dogs had injuries to their feet and noses from trying to escape and some had skin and respiratory problems, he added.

“These dogs were kept in crates, from what we’re being told, up to 23 hours a day,” DeSousa said. Calling it appalling, he added, “It’s not the life for an animal.”

Via did not have a kennel license, DeSousa said, so she was limited to six dogs.

Via’s Web site, with a St. Patrick’s Day theme, featured mug shots of 45 dogs, including four that said they had been placed. The site also said 15 dogs were rescued in January and February and that the Web site had been updated on Monday.

Editors note: Here is a link to the website that was omitted from this article.

Via had good intentions, DeSousa said, and the animals were well fed, although many had no water in their cages.

“She got way in over her head. She had nobody to help her,” he said.

Authorities were called by a person who went to the home to check on a dog several days ago and was alarmed by the “overpowering” smell and unsanitary conditions, DeSousa said.

Via’s Web site said she was a member of the Rescue Alliance of Hairless & Other Breeds Inc., a nationwide 501c3 nonprofit animal rescue organization.

That group did not immediately respond to an e-mail asking about the affiliation.

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Nancy Pelosi shows off her new eye surgery paid for by Obamacare

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s aides knew about concerns over ex-Rep. Eric Massa’s behavior as far back as October, Fox News has learned, raising the possibility that the scandal could dog Democratic leaders even though Massa is now out of office.

On top of that, a slew of outrageous reports and first-hand accounts of Massa’s sexual conduct dating back to his Navy days have emerged since his resignation Monday.

Though Massa pledged Tuesday on Fox News to “go away,” stories about him “groping” everyone from his Navy buddies to his staff members ensure the New York Democrat’s exploits will become the stuff of lore, and countless hours of cable talk, while his fellow party members are trying to concentrate on health care.

Pelosi, in an interview on PBS’ “The Charlie Rose Show” Wednesday, shook her head at the situation, saying “poor baby, poor baby” in response to Massa’s wavering allegation that he was forced out so health care reform could pass.

“This is a very sick person. He has been diagnosed with cancer — perhaps his judgment is impaired because of of his — the ethical issues that have as arisen, and he is no longer in the Congress,” Pelosi said.

Despite a report that the House ethics committee is ending its investigation into Massa, the panel has not yet formally announced the inquiry is over and a senior source told Fox News the probe remains open for the time being.

Though Massa resigned, the committee potentially could continue poking around if there are suspicions that Pelosi and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer could have handled the situation better — the panel similarly investigated GOP leaders in the wake of the scandal over ex-Rep. Mark Foley’s lurid text messages to male pages.

Republicans are still weighing whether to bring up a measure calling on the ethics committee to keep its inquiry going. Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., said Thursday that the matter deserves to be investigated further.

Fox News has learned that Pelosi’s aides learned last October that Massa was living with male staffers and asked Massa’s office to change that. According to The Wall Street Journal, Massa’s former chief of staff also told Pelosi’s staff that Massa’s language and conduct made some aides uncomfortable.

Pelosi’s aides learned about allegations of groping around the same time Hoyer and his staff learned in early February, sources say. Hoyer’s office claims it urged Massa’s office to refer complaints to the ethics committee.

Pelosi has said she did not personally learn about the allegations of misconduct until March 3.

But the allegations and bizarre anecdotes certainly didn’t end with the off-color remark — “What I really ought to be doing is fracking you” — which Massa admitted to making to a staffer at a wedding reception on New Year’s Eve. He originally described that comment as the lone offending incident that was exploited by his enemies to bring him down — but aides apparently complained about others and several of Massa’s former Navy shipmates have gone on record detailing a pattern of inappropriate behavior.

One shipmate told The Atlantic that Massa was known for giving “Massa Massages” to the other men on board.

The shipmate also said Massa once climbed up to his roommate’s top bunk to attempt to execute a sexual maneuver known as snorkeling — for more information go to UrbanDictionary.com.

“He wakes up to Massa undoing his pants trying to snorkel him,” the shipmate told The Atlantic.

On Fox News, Massa also said that he groped a male aide, but described it as playful and not sexual.

“Not only did I grope him, I tickled him until he couldn’t breathe and then four guys jumped on top of me,” he said. “It was my 50th birthday. It was ‘kill the old guy.’ You can take anything out of context,” Massa said.

The play was too much for his Chief of Staff Joe Racalto, who apparently was present among the bachelors who worked for and lived with Massa at a Washington, D.C., pad, where the guys participated in the rough play.

“My chief of staff had a conniption and said: ‘You can’t live there; It’s not congressional,’” Massa said.

Racalto is the one who reportedly went to Pelosi’s staff.

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The thing that no one seems to mention is that most of the country of Chile is located in the Andes Mountains. These mountains were formed by earthquakes.

Two strong earthquakes shook Chile Thursday as Sebastian Pinera prepared to take office as the country’s new president.

The U.S. Geological Survey measured a 7.2 magnitude quake in Chile’s Libertador O’Higgins region, about 124 kilometers from the capital Santiago. It followed a magnitude 5.1 quake centered in the Arucania, Chile region, about 555 kilometers south of the capital.

There were no immediate reports of damage or injuries from the new quakes. A major 8.8-magnitude earthquake in February killed hundreds of people.

The new quakes came as dignitaries gathered in the capital to witness Mr. Pinera succeed Chile’s first female president, socialist Michelle Bachelet, who is barred from a second consecutive term.

Mr. Pinera, a Harvard-educated economist, is expected to steer the Chilean economy toward more free market policies.

The inauguration marks the first time a conservative has led the country since democracy was reinstated in 1990.

Ms. Bachelet leaves office with high public approval ratings – despite criticism over the government’s initial response to the 8.8 magnitude quake that rocked the South American country February 27.

Wednesday, the head of Chile’s emergency management agency resigned in the fallout over the failure to issue a clear warning about the tsunami that followed the quake.

The Chilean government has said reconstruction will cost about $30 billion and that it will take about three or four years to rebuild the country.

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Pro Football Hall of Famer Merlin Olsen has died at 69 after a bout with cancer. Olsen was a Pro Bowler 14 times in a 15-year career.

The Rams announced the sad news on Twitter. Olsen had been fighting mesothelioma.

Olsen was a member of the Rams’ “Fearsome Foursome” with Deacon Jones, Roosevelt Grier and Lamar Lundy. Olsen was a defensive tackle who allowed his fellow defenders to pressure quarterbacks.

Merlin Olsen was a marauder on the field by a nice, gentle man off the field.

Olsen had a second career on TV. He was an actor who appeared on Little House on the Prairie and was the lead in Father Murphy. He also was an analyst on NFL games for NBC.

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Maybe he should have thrown in Park Place, too.    We here at the BrokenCountry don’t get it.  Politicians spend our money like its Monopoly money all day long.  Perhaps this guy intended to run for office.

A man discovered bleeding from the head at a routine traffic stop in Witchita, Kansas, told police he was the victim of an angry drug dealer – upset that he paid for a hundred dollars worth of crack cocaine using Monopoly money weeks before, St. Louis‘ KSDK NewsChannel 5 reported.

“The man from whom he had bought the drugs was upset and invited him over to his house, and upon arrival struck him in the head several times with a handgun, and other people jumped into the fray,” Gordon Bassham, a spokesman for the police department, told NBC.

The man’s injuries were not life-threatening, and he has since stopped cooperating, but Witchita police are still determined to find the dealer and put him in the big house – without passing go and collecting $200.

“That was not a get out-of-jail-free card,” Bassham told NBC.

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