Ratted Out! – Redneck Headlines

A Missouri doctor tested the patience of his town's cops by leading them on a high-speed chase while armed and clad only in his skivvies – before abandoning his car for a second bizarre chase on foot.

Dr. Robert C. Johnson attracted the attention of police by blowing through several stop signs at a high rate of speed, waving at a patrol car as he went by. He stopped briefly, but took off again and led a high speed chase right to his own home – where he left his pickup truck carrying an American flag and a novelty horn, which he honked at deputies as he marched up and down his driveway.

After they cuffed the good doctor, cops decided to search the truck, where they found a loaded handgun, a machete and a little over an ounce of marijuana. Allen had been practicing medicine on probation, following two previous booze-related arrests. (Johnson City Press)

A California town put a unique spin on a buyback program designed to get guns off the street – by limiting it to toy guns from the collections of elementary school children.

The school's principal said that he concocted Strobridge Elementary Safety Day because he thinks playing with toy guns may make children more likely to use real firearms – a notion that resonated with parents who turned in dozens of high-caliber playthings, but not with a local conservative group, which said he was missing the point.

Kids turning in toy guns were offered books in return as well as tickets to a raffle for a new bicycle. (UPI)

A lot of criminals are done in by talkative rats, but a Florida crook got busted because of an imaginary one – which he used in an attempt to steal a cooler full of beer from a convenience store.

Ray Stoup brought two cases of beer to the Circle K cashier's station from the store's walk-in refrigerator and told an employee that there was a dead rat lying in the middle of the floor. She walked over to look for the croaked critter, but found nothing – and when she turned around, she saw Stoup scurrying towards the door carrying the brewskis.

A passing cop saw the man running down the street and smelled a rat – so he followed Stoup home, arriving at the thirsty thief's doorstep right around the time the call about the theft came in. (TC Palm)