Too Darn Hot

There sure have been a lot of people getting set on fire lately. You'd think with the weather being as hot as it was last week that a nice roaring fire would be the last thing on anyone's mind, but maybe that was the point. The latest incident occurred at about 5 a.m. on Sunday, June 12, when a 78-year-old Queens man with a walker hobbled out into his front yard, doused himself with gasoline, called 911 to report a fire, then started one. By the time cops and firefighters arrived, the man-who didn't survive, needless to say-was roasting in the middle of the road.

It's a terrible and sad story, but if you think about it, it was awfully polite of him to step outside first, so as to avoid burning the whole house down.

It all sounds pretty hinky to us, but here's how it was being reported:

At about 8 a.m. Tuesday, a veteran NYPD officer named Christopher Wiesneski was on scooter patrol in Queens when he allegedly spotted a man smoking a blunt near a baseball diamond in Cambria Heights. Officer Wiesneski approached the man, pointed out the illegality of smoking a blunt in public, and told him to hand over the pot. That's when he allegedly noticed that the suspect had a gun shoved in his pants. Wiesneski allegedly drew his own service revolver and demanded the man discard the weapon. Instead of handing over the weed or drawing his own gun, the suspect is said to have snatched Wiesneski's 9mm Glock and shot him in the leg. The suspect then ran away, according to Wiesneski, "tossing off pieces of clothing as he ran."

There were apparently no other witnesses to any of this, but there sure was a big manhunt for a black man in his early 20s, 5-foot-9 to 5-foot-11, 175 pounds. They're even offering a big reward! The officer's gun was found near the scene, but the suspect wasn't. There's no word if any of his discarded clothes were discovered, either.

Yes, well. Lucky for Wiesneski, the bullet passed cleanly through his leg, and he'll make a full recovery.

Wang Ming, a 43-year-old restaurant owner from Trenton, was doing his darndest to enjoy a pleasant meal at Chinatown's Yung Sun Seafood Restaurant early Wednesday evening. A pleasant meal wasn't in the stars for him, though. First, although he arrived with a couple, they got up and left the restaurant-quite possibly in a huff-before even ordering. This left him the unpleasant task of trying to enjoy his meal all by himself. Things started looking up briefly a few minutes later when a third man-described by witnesses as "Asian"-entered the restaurant and approached Mr. Ming's table. But any flicker of hope soon vanished when the merciless fellow turned out to be a competing Jersey restaurateur with whom Ming was feuding. The man produced a gun and shot poor, lonely, hungry Mr. Ming a whole bunch of times. He was pronounced dead not long afterward.