Mom gets revenge on nosy neighbors using ‘drug-addled whores and drunks'
She made dummies out of them.
A Michigan mom got the ultimate revenge on her nosy, spying neighbors — by adorning her garden with maniacal mannequins dressed as “drug-addled whores, drunks and accident victims” to give prying eyes something to stare it. Photos of her dummy security system are currently going viral as fans praise her ingenious method of exacting vengeance.
“I just set up the poses and laugh,” Flint native Tammy Zuniga told Kennedy News of her hilarious hobby.
Indeed, the 45-year-old nurse's lawn is littered with passed-out drunkards — festooned with empty beer bottles — and scantily clad “dirty hoes” posing next to signs warning people not to feed them drugs and other lewd messages.
In one humorous scene, a ladder accident victim is sprawled atop her roof beside a star-spangled cowboy hat like something out of a bizarro nuclear test town.
The mother-of-two started erecting the purposefully profane displays two years ago as a “diversion.” She wanted to stop being “irritated with her nosy neighbors,” who allegedly spied on her while she was working.
“I paint garden art out in my garage, I'll make hundreds of statues. It's my hobby,” explained the artist. “I'd be out in my garden working on art projects and I would see blinds moving in windows. There would be pictures being taken.”
Along with snapping photos, the intrusive snoops would also tell Zuniga to paint with her door closed — a request the artist deemed ridiculous as she'd be unable to breathe.
That's when she decided to turn her artistic talents to trolling her tormenters with riff-raff facsimiles.
“The first one I did, I set up a mannequin out on the porch wearing a sweater,” described the gleeful prankster. “The neighbours were so intrigued. I heard noise outside and looked out my window. Sure enough, they were all out there staring.”
Next up, Zuniga hung a dummy from her garage for a whole month, Kennedy reported. She said the mannequin was so realistic that people would stop their cars on her block “because they thought somebody needed help.”
“I try to keep a straight face through it all,” mused Zuniga. “I figure that if the neighbors think I'm crazy, they'll stop bothering me.”
It appears her neighbor-dissuading dummies are paying dividends. “It's worked for the most part,” she said. “Neighbors don't really talk to me much anymore, which is kind of nice. They probably think I'm the weird mannequin lady now.”
The mannequin maven, for one, says she's having a blast with the gag, describing: “What's really bad is that I now seize every opportunity. Whenever I see them outside, I feel the need to set up the mannequins. I get excited to see them now, it's not even normal.”
The sight of her spying neighbors used to make her blood boil. However, now the giddy gal says she's “looking out my window to see their reactions to my mannequins,” adding, “I'm having so much fun with this.”
“Now, I can't even be mad at them, because they've got to put up with me!” added Zuniga, who says the only problem is freaking out the repair people.
“The hardest part was whenever I had someone come over to install a water softener or whatever,” she explained of the doll-lateral damage. “I'd forget to tell them that I had mannequins and not to be alarmed.”
The jokester added, “They'd show up and they'd be like ‘Oh my god! I didn't know what to think, I thought I'd have to save somebody!'”
And Zuniga isn't stopping her antics anytime soon, most recently putting up two ladies of the evening in spangly miniskirts and gaudy cutoff tops that display their midriffs. The inventive artist even posted signs that read “A dirty hoe is a happy hoe” and “Please do not feed the whores drugs.”
The latest display will reportedly be up and trolling neighbors until winter. “Initially when I set them up, I thought they were going to be my last display,” said Zuniga. “But I don't know anymore — I really had fun with it.”
Despite her dedication to her doll-arama, the trickster says her goal isn't to ruin her neighbor's lives.
She explained, “There could be way worse neighbors. Mine are just really incredibly nosy. I'm just trying to entertain them.”
10-year-old kidnapped after baseball practice punches man to escape
When an Oklahoma mom arrived at the baseball fields to pick up her 10-year-old son after practice, she reported he was nowhere to be found.
Other parents and players were already looking for him, she told authorities when calling for help.
Oklahoma City police officers were responding to the missing child call at PCAA Fields when they learned the child had since been found. He and his family were waiting for police by the time officers arrived shortly after 9:30 a.m. Wednesday, Aug. 3.
As his parents tried to comfort him, the 10-year-old boy was “crying and shaken up” while reporting what happened, according to a police report.
He says he had been sitting by himself on the upper left side of the ball field bleachers after baseball practice — waiting for his mom — when a man carrying a “briefcase” grabbed him and forced him away by holding his chest, authorities said.
After he was taken at least 200 yards away, behind a nearby building, the boy reported he “was able to punch (the man) and break free.” He then frantically ran back to the bleachers looking for help. As the suspect was moving quickly back toward him, the boy told the officer he decided to hide.
The man ran away, police said, and the boy was able to reunite with his family.
Meanwhile, authorities say a groundskeeper on a John Deer Gator had followed the suspect out of the ball park. He “provided a grainy cell pic of the (suspect), who appeared to be wearing black colored clothing and carrying a handbag or briefcase type bag.”
Responding officers found a man matching the description, police said, and the boy then identified him as the same man he punched and escaped from.
The man, later identified as 39-year-old Ryan Wayne Miller, was arrested on a kidnapping charge, according to jail records. He is being held on a $50,000 bond.
The boy says the man did not “make any statements to him” or assault him, according to the police report.
Kidnapped girl's escape leads to discovery of two bodies in Alabama
A young girl chewed through restraints to escape a rural Alabama home where investigators later found two decomposing bodies, authorities said.
José Paulino Pascual-Reyes, 37, is facing kidnapping charges and multiple counts of capital murder in connection to the bodies found at the home after a 12-year-old girl was discovered walking along a roadside early Monday in Dadeville.
Tallapoosa County Sheriff Jimmy Abbett told reporters at a press conference that a driver picked up the girl and called 911 — setting off an investigation that led to Pascual-Reyes' arrest and the gruesome discovery, AL.com reported.
Pascual-Reyes, who remains jailed pending a bond hearing, was arrested in Auburn. The bodies were found in his Dadeville home, not far from where the girl was discovered wandering alone.
The decomposing remains have been sent to the Alabama Department of Forensic Sciences to be identified, Abbett said, adding it's unclear how long they had been there.
“It's a fluid investigation,” the sheriff told reporters. “Things are changing, and I don't want to jeopardize the identification of our juvenile.”
Court filings obtained by WSFA show the girl had been tied to bedposts for nearly a week. She was assaulted and plied with alcohol, but managed to escape by chewing through her restraints, the documents show.
Authorities did not indicate whether the girl knew Pascual-Reyes, AL.com reported.
“I would say she's a hero,” Abbett said. “It's one of those things we won't get into until later. We gave her medical attention. She is safe now. We want to keep her that way.”
911 call reveals doomed North Carolina pilot jumped before emergency landing
A 911 call released Tuesday revealed that the co-pilot who mysteriously vanished midair in North Carolina had “jumped” out of the aircraft.
Two Federal Aviation Administration employees could be heard saying that Charles Hew Crooks' co-pilot reported that he leaped out of the damaged plane before it made an emergency landing at Raleigh Durham International Airport on Friday, WRAL reported.
“This is from Raleigh Airport,” an FAA air traffic controller said on the recording. “We have a pilot who was inbound to the field. His co-pilot jumped out of the aircraft. He made impact to the ground and here are the coordinates.”
The 23-year-old Bucknell University graduate's body was later discovered in the backyard of a home in Fuquay-Varina, North Carolina, about 30 miles south of the airport.
In the 13-minute call, an FAA employee said Crooks' co-pilot had reported he “jumped out without the parachute, so he might have impact to the ground.”
“I am sure the pilot is going to be shaken up,” one FAA employee said. “I have no idea. He literally just said, ‘My pilot just jumped out.'”
“Once the aircraft had landed, it was reconfirmed based on a report the pilot said the person in the aircraft had exited the aircraft prior to landing,” Wake County Emergency Management chief of operations Darshan Patel told the station.
Crooks' co-pilot, whose identity hasn't been released, was taken to a hospital for minor injuries during the landing. He was discharged later that day.
UK prison guards given ‘banter lessons' so they don't offend inmates
There's no poking fun in this pokey!
British prison guards were sent to classes for “banter lessons” to avoid hurting jailbirds' feelings with good-natured ribbing, according to a report.
Sixteen officers at the Moorland Prison in Doncaster, England attended the workshop to avoid bruising the egos of inmates — after prisoners filed 51 complaints about “offensive language” over the past year, according to the The Sun.
“There are all sorts of initiatives and workshops these days to ensure prison officers don't breach equality rules — but a banter workshop is a new one on me,” a former prison staffer told the outlet.
He said sensitivity training about someone's race or disability is fine, but that classes advising guards not to make playful wisecracks is over the top.
“You can hardly even take the mick out of the football team someone supports,” he said.
At least 49 officers at the 1,000-capacity clink also attended an online workshop that teaches diversity training over the past year, officials said.
“The prison has online equality and diversity training for staff, with 49 staff completing this within the past year,” according to a report from the prison's Independent Monitoring Board. “During the year, 16 staff attended ‘banter' workshops.”
French sailor survives 16 hours under capsized boat in the Atlantic Ocean
A 62-year-old French sailor survived for 16 hours in the Atlantic Ocean after his boat capsized — by using an air bubble inside the overturned vessel.
The brave seaman was eventually rescued from the rough waters by Spanish coast guard divers in what they described as an operation “verging on the impossible.”
The 40-foot boat, called the Jeanne SOLO Sailor, sent out a distress signal at 11:23 p.m. local time on Monday 14 miles from the Sisargas Islands off Spain's northwestern Galicia region, the coast guard said.
Tracking data show it had set sail from the Portuguese capital of Lisbon on Sunday morning.
As a coast guard ship carrying five divers embarked on the rescue mission, one of three helicopters sent to aid the search tracked down the capsized boat at sunset.
A diver was hoisted onto the ship's hull to seek signs of life and the sailor inside, who has not been named, responded to his banging on the hull by knocking from inside.
With the sea too rough to attempt a rescue, they attached buoyancy balloons to the ship's hull to prevent it from sinking further and waited until the morning, with the Frenchman still trapped underneath.
Two divers swam under the boat to help the sailor, whom they found wearing a neoprene survival suit and submerged in water up to his knees.
“Each life saved is our greatest reward,” Spain's Maritime Safety and Rescue Society said in a tweet.
Vicente Cobelo, a member of the coast guard's special operations team, told a local station the man voluntarily jumped into the freezing water and swam under the boat to reach the sea's surface.
“Of his own initiative, he got into the water and freedived out, helped by the divers who had to pull him through because it was difficult for him to get out in his suit,” he said.
He was airlifted to safety and taken to a hospital but discharged a short time later with a clean bill of health.
Chinese man Mao Sheng struggles to find a job with baby-faced looks
For this guy, the fountain of youth doesn't have any coins in it.
A 27-year-old Chinese man says he is struggling to find a job because he looks like a 12-year-old boy, according to a report.
Mao Sheng believes that he is being turned down for employment because companies fear he is an agent the Chinese government sent to expose violations of child labor laws, the news outlet NextShark reported.
Sheng persisted in job searching because he was the only person able to financially support his father, who had recently suffered from a stroke.
He received several rejections from companies, even when he showed proof that he was born in 1995.
A frustrated Sheng explained his struggles dealing with a baby face on TikTok, known in China as Douyin.
The youthful-looking man shared an experience when he and a friend applied for the same factory job, but only his friend received an offer.
In a follow-up video, Sheng, a Guangdong province resident, let followers know he has finally accepted a job offer.
Although he's gotten a job, Sheng says he's is looking into the dating world, which could be another significant struggle for the baby face man.
