Oh man this is ironic!

In January, a news crew for the Milwaukee station WDJT-TV, which was reporting a story on the danger of thin ice covering Big Muskego Lake, watched as their van’s driver mistakenly drove onto the lake and broke through the ice, ruining the expensive, high-tech vehicle.

How Romantic?

Mario Sims, 21, had his bail revoked, for a second time, by a judge in Racine, Wis., in March, after he cut off his electronic monitoring device and hopped into a limousine to be driven to Chicago to be a guest on “The Jerry Springer Show,” where he announced that he will marry his soon-to-arrive baby’s mother, who is Sims’ half-sister. Sims was also a guest on the show last year, defending his affair with the woman.

What would you do if you couldn’t drive and you had pets but wanted to move to an area far far away? Why you’d take a cab wouldn’t you?

That’s what Betty and Bob Matas, neither of whom drive, did when they wanted to spare their cats an airplane trip as they moved from New York to a retirement home 90 miles north of Phoenix.

They left their Queen’s New York neighborhood on April 10th in a canary yellow ford SUV cab and traveled about 10 hours a day for a flat rate of $3000 plus gas, meals and lodging. Luckily the SUV was a hybrid-electric vehicle and that lessened the cost of buying gas.

“It was pretty tiring, for my wife especially,” said Bob Matas, 72, a former audio and video engineer for advertising agencies. “We’re happy where we are. We’re happy and that’s it.”

Matas said he was “flabbergasted” by the attention surrounding the couple’s trip. Passers-by recognized them when they saw the New York cab, he said.

“Every state that we hit, people would say, ‘Are you the ones?’ and we would say, ‘Yes, we are the ones,’” Matas said.

The Mayor of Sedona welcomed them as they arrived with a noontime ceremony a couple of weeks ago. They were presented with a bag of Sedona souvenirs. Their real estate agent met them at the ceremony and gave them the keys to their new Village of Oak Creek home.

The couple stayed in a hotel for a few days while their belongings were moved into their new house. Their belongings were transported by a friend in a rental truck who drove behind the cab on the long journey.

I often write dumb criminal stories here but I think this is the first case of a dumb car jacker. Claude King, 31, apparently carjacked an SUV, crashed it twice and end up getting lost as he escaped the crime scene. He then proceeded to call the police from a Palm Springs Florida pay phone, confessing that he stole the GMC Envoy last Tuesday night.

“Um, I committed a crime,” he told the police dispatcher. “I stole a vehicle.”

He was unable to tell the dispatcher where he and the vehicle was located when he asked for officers to respond to his location. He told the dispatcher “I couldn’t even tell you,” he said. “I don’t even know where I’m at.”

The Boca Raton police eventually found King waiting on a curb. He’s now being held without bail in the Palm Beach County Jail.