HOW TO FIND A MISSING PERSON

A student who was feared murdered after she disappeared seven years ago has been found alive and working under her own name as a manager at a cash-and-carry store. Brandi Stahr, then aged 20, vanished from the campus of Texas A&M University in 1998 after an argument with her family over poor grades and a $25,000 (£13,700) credit-card bill. She left with just an overnight bag and had had no contact with her family since.

When she did not return home, police launched a huge search, spending hundreds of hours combing local woodland with tracker dogs, interviewing boyfriends and publishing her details in prison newsletters in the hope of throwing up clues.....

Ms Stahr appears to have turned her life around. She is now the manager of Sam’s Club, a cash-and-carry store in Florence, Kentucky, 900 miles from her family home in Moody, Texas, and has invested in a pension plan and owns share options.

She never changed her name and continued to use her social security number — yet police failed to trace her. They said that they did not have access to such records because of privacy laws. An anonymous call to a missing persons helpline led police to her.

More here




DRUNKENNESS REWARDED

Another crazy case from Australia's California

Peter MacKenzie admits getting drunk, and letting his drunk mate ride his unregistered Harley-Davidson. However, a court ruled yesterday that he was entitled to compensation of almost $1 million - because he didn't know what he was doing. The Gilgandra man was left a quadriplegic when the motorcycle ran off the Newell Highway with him as a pillion passenger in December 2000. He sued the Nominal Defendant - a division of the Motor Accidents Authority which handles claims when a vehicle is unregistered - and they agreed his claim was worth $4.75 million.

However, the trial judge took the rare step of finding Mr Mackenzie 100 per cent responsible for the accident - a decision the Court of Appeal said yesterday was unfair. Justice Roger Giles said Mr Mackenzie had had no intention of driving or riding when he started drinking and that an 80 per cent reduction was more "equitable". "Deliberate drinking to the point of severe intoxication exposed him to acting impulsively and without full consideration of what might occur …The departure from the standard of care of the reasonable man at this point cannot be ignored in putting Mr Brown in the driver's seat," Justice Giles said.

He sent the case back to the District Court, where Mr Mackenzie will be entitled to a $950,000 payout on his recommendation. However, Matthew Seisen of the authority's legal firm, Dibbs Barker Gosling, said his client was expected to launch a defence of "circuity of action". This could return any money awarded on the basis that Mr Mackenzie had let Aaron Brown drive his Harley.

Mr Mackenzie, then 34, had known Mr Brown, 27, had no licence and had rejected his earlier pleas during their drinking session that they should "get the hog". Mr MacKenzie's blood alcohol level at the time of the accident was estimated at 0.25 per cent and Mr Brown's at 0.19. Judge Harvey Cooper decided Mr Mackenzie had still known what he was doing, was "the driving force behind the journey" and that it was a worst-case situation of contributory negligence. But Justice Giles said Judge Cooper was wrong "to have regarded [Mr Mackenzie] as having engaged in a deliberate act of negligence".

Original report here


(And don't forget your ration of Wicked Thoughts for today)