World Vignettes

Dead drunk

WARRENTON: A man was sentenced to two years in prison for faking his death three times to beat drunken driving charges. Peter C Gentry, a 41-year-old financial planner, got caught after a police officer who had made one of the drunken driving charges against him earlier spotted him running a stop sign. This happened after Gentry had supposedly died.

Gentry was sentenced on Wednesday. He was first charged in 1991, but anofficial-looking death certificate sent to authorities said he had died in a Los Angeles auto crash, and the case was dismissed. In 1994, he was charged again and he sent in another death certificate. A year later, Gentry was again charged and supposedly died this time of 8220;denzor hemorrhagic fever8221; in Africa. It didn8217;t take much time to figure out that there is no such disease.

11, going on 17

FIGUERAS, SPAIN: A teen-aged offender, accused of more than 50 thefts and armed robberies in Spain, was free only hours after being arrested here, because although he is in fact 17, official records show his age as 11. The boy was born in 1981, but his parents registered his birth only in September 1986. Attempts to rectify the error have come to nothing.

El Chupete8217;, as the boy is called, was detained on Tuesday but police were forced to release him under a Spanish law which bars detaining someone aged less than 12 years.