WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) - A New Zealand man who assaulted a teen by hitting him with a spine-covered hedgehog has been fined by a court and ordered to pay most of his fine to his victim.
Whakatane District Court was told Thursday that William Singalargh picked up the hedgehog, a small prickly-backed animal similar to the porcupine, and threw it several yards at a 15-year-old boy in the North Island east coast town of Whakatane on Feb. 9.
Police said the teen was hit in the leg, causing a large, red welt and several puncture marks. The injury did not require medical treatment.
Singalargh was convicted of common assault and offensive behavior following a defended hearing. He had pleaded innocent to the charges.
He was fined a total of $545, of which $389 were paid to his victim.
A more serious charge of assault with a weapon - the hedgehog - was dropped. The maximum penalty for that charge is five years in prison.
It was not known whether the hedgehog was dead or alive at the time of the attack, but Senior Sgt. Bruce Jenkins said earlier that it was dead when collected as evidence.
TOKYO (AFP) - A Japanese man puzzled by food mysteriously disappearing from his refrigerator got a shock when he found out a woman had been living in his home for months without permission, police said Friday.
The 57-year-old man living alone -- or so he thought -- in the western city of Fukuoka installed a security camera and called the police when he saw images of someone walking around his home while he was out.
"We searched the house in the man's presence. We found the woman in the closet," said a local police spokesman.
The woman, named as 58-year-old Tatsuko Horikawa, was found in a flat storage space only just big enough for a person to squeeze into lying down.
She had sneaked a mattress and several plastic bottles into the cubby hole, police said, adding that the women had been arrested.
"She told police that she had nowhere to live," the spokesman said. "She seems to have lived there for about a year, but not all the time."
It is unclear how she managed to enter the home undetected. Police suspect she might have been closet-hopping, moving from house to house.
