Torn from yesterday's headlines

“Mostly what I do is I seek out discrepancies in the property appraisal versus the claimant’s estimate of worth and then I…then I defer outpays…with…oh, God…,” Pettlebaum said as shadows of unspeakable self-realization flickered across his increasingly desperate eyes. “Wait, no, that can’t be right. I don’t…do I?”

Jason Rodríguez, 40, is the engineer accused of fatally shooting one employee, Otis Beckford, 26, and wounding five others, all of whom are expected to survive, at Reynolds, Smith and Hills, the firm where he once worked as an entry-level engineer for 11 months, before being fired in June of 2007. Mr. Beckford is survived by a young daughter and his fiancée.

Employees recognised their former co-worker when he drew a handgun from a holster under his shirt, police said, and killed Mr. Beckford next to a receptionist’s desk in an office at a downtown Orlando tower. He then walked into the common working area and opened fire, wounding five other employees of the firm he had been fired from two years ago.

Hours after the shootings, police tracked Mr. Rodríguez to his mother’s home and ordered him to come out. He surrendered peacefully, apologising as officers handcuffed him. His mother apologised Saturday, saying, “so sorry for everything that has happened. Sorry for the families involved. I’m really very sorry, it is very hurtful.”

Mr. Rodríguez told detectives he blamed the firm for recent trouble he had receiving unemployment benefits. A reporter asked why he had attacked his former colleagues. “Because they left me to rot,” said Mr. Rodríguez, who worked on drawings in the firm’s transportation group. His supervisors said his performance was not up to their standards, and when he did not improve, he was sacked, after which the firm did not hear from him again. “This is really a mystery to us,” said Ken Jacobson, the firm’s general legal counsel and chief financial officer. “There was nothing to indicate any hard feelings.”

Contrary to Mr. Jacobson, Mr. Rodríguez said that the company had fired him without cause and made him look incompetent.

At a recent bankruptcy hearing, Mr. Rodríguez told a judge he was making less than $30,000 a year at a Subway sandwich shop, after being unemployed for 1½ years, and had debts of nearly $90,000. He explained that the shop could not give him enough working hours, and thus filed for unemployment. When a cheque did not arrive, he blamed Reynolds, Smith and Hills, believing they had harmed his effort to qualify for benefits.

Les Winograd, a spokesman for Subway, said that Mr. Rodríguez had worked for one of the sandwich shops in the Orlando area until six weeks ago. He would not say whether Mr. Rodríguez was sacked.

His bankruptcy attorney, Charles Price, said that he had not seen Mr. Rodríguez since the summer.

Mr. Rodríguez’s former mother-in-law, America Holloway, gave an interview to the Associated Press. During the interview, Mrs. Holloway said that her daughter, Neshby, had been married to Jason Rodríguez for 6½ years, before divorcing several years ago, and that the family had lived with her in Orlando for several years. Mrs. Holloway accused Mr. Rodríguez of abusing her daughter, once throwing all of her clothing into the street. The Rodríguez family have an eight-year-old son, who he has seldom seen.

Last week, Mr. Rodríguez telephoned Mrs. Holloway’s home, speaking to his son, who asked why he would not come join them. He replied, “Because I don’t have any money. I don’t have a job. I don’t have anything to eat. When things get better, I’ll come see you.”

“I used to tell my daughter he was crazy,” Mrs. Holloway said.

Bride giving interview to news paper makes me sceptical. Quotation from interview, “I’m not going to play with toys any more — I have a new toy now.” makes me wish we could spray Ortho-Novum from planes.

“Customs agents in Los Angeles got a surprise last month when they opened a shipping container headed for the Netherlands: a restored 1965 Volkswagen van reported stolen in Spokane more than 35 years ago.”

The agents came across the van 19 October, in a shipping container at the Los Angeles/Long Beach seaport complex. When they ran the vehicle identification number they discovered it was still listed as stolen.

Michael Maleta, an auto theft investigator with the California Highway Patrol, said that federal officials at the border check vehicles against the National Insurance Crime Bureau database, which includes all old stolen-car cases. Most police databases remove stolen cars from “active” status after five years — after which stolen cars may be sold and resold to buyers who can register the vehicles with state agencies.

The legal owner of the van is Allstate Insurance, which paid off the owner back in 1974, and the highway patrol turned over the van to the company this week. Megan Brunet, a spokeswoman for Allstate, said the company has been digging through old records trying to find the original policy and theft claim. “We’ve been looking through our files to find the original policy. Trying to find paper files from that far back can be pretty challenging.”

Whereas were she a Bostonian, she would have had her driving licence on her 1^st try in 2005.

Don’t use PowerPoint. Try writing an actual outline of what you want to say instead.

Well-a-day, that was easy!

Please, just tell me it’s a lie. I don’t care how valid it is. Just tell me it’s a lie.