(NEWSER) – A vulgar priest and a vulgar parrot factor into the craziest crime stories of the week:
- Family says parrot Is key witness in man's murder: Can a foul-mouthed parrot act as a witness to a murder? That's the question Martin Duram's family wants answered after Duram was killed in his Michigan home in May 2015. Weeks after the murder, Duram's African grey parrot, Bud, could be heard repeating a phrase, and Duram's family want police to listen to what the parrot has to say.
- Drunk priest attacks cop, paramedic: A British priest pleaded guilty last Friday to drunkenly assaulting a police officer and paramedic ... while claiming diplomatic immunity from the Vatican ... except he's not Roman Catholic. Media reports say a paramedic found 36-year-old Gareth Jones, vicar at London's St. Mary and the Virgin, passed out in the street in his clerical garb. He had consumed "three bottles of wine, several pints of beer, a number of gin and tonics, and vodka." When the paramedic tried to wake Jones up, things allegedly got violent — and vulgar.
- Thieves dressed as employees terrorize NYC Apple stores: Thieves have stolen more than $55,000 worth of iPhones from New York City Apple Stores over the past four months by dressing as employees. In one instance, in March, a man dressed as an employee grabbed 59 iPhones out of a drawer at the Genius Bar and had a female accomplice transfer them to a duffel bag in the bathroom while a male accomplice acted as a lookout. The problem might be a new Apple Store uniform.
- Unlucky robbers hit wrong McDonald's: There's having bad luck, and then there's having whatever the two men who allegedly tried to rob a McDonald's last Sunday in France have. It turned out — unaware to the robbers — that 11 of the 40 or so diners in the McDonald's were off-duty members of a French special forces unit described as "among the most effective anti-terror forces in Europe." Here's how they reacted after authorities say one of the robbers fired a shotgun into the air.
- Woman gets in police chase in stolen ambulance, cops say: Paramedics leaving a San Francisco apartment building with their patient Tuesday morning were shocked to find their ambulance missing. They had left it running when they went inside. Police used a tracking device inside the ambulance to catch up with it a short time later, but they didn't exactly get it back in a usable fashion.
For more weird crimes, visit Newser, a USA TODAY content partner providing general news, commentary and coverage from around the Web. Its content is produced independently of USA TODAY.
