Mummified body found with TV on Hampton Bays, N.Y.

The partially mummified body of a man dead for more than a year has been found in a chair in front of his television, which was still on, authorities said.

Vincenzo Ricardo, 70, apparently died of natural causes, said Dr. Stuart Dawson, Suffolk County’s deputy chief medical examiner.

Police found Ricardo’s body last week when they investigated a report of burst pipes.

The home’s dry air had preserved his features, morgue assistant Jeff Bacchus said.

Ricardo’s wife died years ago, and he lived alone, Dawson said.

Neighbors said they had thought Ricardo was in a hospital or nursing home.

Study: College students more narcissistic

Today’s college students are more narcissistic and self-centered than their predecessors, according to a comprehensive new study by five psychologists who worry that the trend could be harmful to personal relationships and American society.

“We need to stop endlessly repeating ‘You’re special’ and having children repeat that back,” said the study’s lead author, Professor Jean Twenge of San Diego State University. “Kids are self-centered enough already.”

Twenge and her colleagues, in findings to be presented at a workshop Tuesday in San Diego on the generation gap, examined the responses of 16,475 college students nationwide who completed an evaluation called the Narcissistic Personality Inventory between 1982 and 2006.

The standardized inventory, known as the NPI, asks for responses to such statements as “If I ruled the world, it would be a better place,” “I think I am a special person” and “I can live my life any way I want to.”

The researchers describe their study as the largest ever of its type and say students’ NPI scores have risen steadily since the current test was introduced in 1982. By 2006, they said, two-thirds of the students had above-average scores, 30 percent more than in 1982.

Narcissism can have benefits, said study co-author W. Keith Campbell of the University of Georgia, suggesting it could be useful in meeting new people “or auditioning on ‘American Idol.’”

“Unfortunately, narcissism can also have very negative consequences for society, including the breakdown of close relationships with others,” he said.

The study asserts that narcissists “are more likely to have romantic relationships that are short-lived, at risk for infidelity, lack emotional warmth, and to exhibit game-playing, dishonesty, and over-controlling and violent behaviors.”

Twenge, the author of “Generation Me: Why Today’s Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled — and More Miserable Than Ever Before,” said narcissists tend to lack empathy, react aggressively to criticism and favor self-promotion over helping others.

The researchers traced the phenomenon back to what they called the “self-esteem movement” that emerged in the 1980s, asserting that the effort to build self-confidence had gone too far.

As an example, Twenge cited a song commonly sung to the tune of “Frere Jacques” in preschool: “I am special, I am special. Look at me.”

“Current technology fuels the increase in narcissism,” Twenge said. “By its very name, MySpace encourages attention-seeking, as does YouTube.”

Some analysts have commended today’s young people for increased commitment to volunteer work. But Twenge viewed even this phenomenon skeptically, noting that many high schools require community service and many youths feel pressure to list such endeavors on college applications.

Campbell said the narcissism upsurge seemed so pronounced that he was unsure if there were obvious remedies.

“Permissiveness seems to be a component,” he said. “A potential antidote would be more authoritative parenting. Less indulgence might be called for.”

The new report follows a study released by UCLA last month which found that nearly three-quarters of the freshmen it surveyed thought it was important to be “very well-off financially.” That compared with 62.5 percent who said the same in 1980 and 42 percent in 1966.

Yet students, while acknowledging some legitimacy to such findings, don’t necessarily accept negative generalizations about their generation.

Hanady Kader, a University of Washington senior, said she worked unpaid last summer helping resettle refugees and considers many of her peers to be civic-minded. But she is dismayed by the competitiveness of some students who seem prematurely focused on career status.

“We’re encouraged a lot to be individuals and go out there and do what you want, and nobody should stand in your way,” Kader said. “I can see goals and ambitions getting in the way of other things like relationships.”

Kari Dalane, a University of Vermont sophomore, says most of her contemporaries are politically active and not overly self-centered.

“People are worried about themselves — but in the sense of where are they’re going to find a place in the world,” she said. “People want to look their best, have a good time, but it doesn’t mean they’re not concerned about the rest of the world.”

Besides, some of the responses on the narcissism test might not be worrisome, Dalane said. “It would be more depressing if people answered, ‘No, I’m not special.’”

Killer Kites

LAHORE, Pakistan, It’s Sunday, Feb. 25, and just a few miles away, Pakistan’s President General Pervez Musharraf is said to be flying a kite. Today is Basant, an ancient festival in which Pakistan’s people welcome spring’s arrival. The most important Basant celebration is held here in Lahore, a city of 10 million in the Punjab region near the India-Pakistan border.

For as long as anyone can remember, Basant has been celebrated with kites.

But not just any kites. Using glass-encrusted string, kite flyers battle each other high above the city streets. As they say, what goes up must come down, each year, dozens are killed by the falling string or celebratory gunfire shot into the air. For safety’s sake, Pakistan¹s Supreme Court imposed a nationwide ban on all kite flying in 2005. But like most Pakistanis, Musharaf is an avid kite flyer. At his request, the local Punjabi government lifted the ban but only for this weekend. At least 11 people died and 100 were hurt during the two celebrations, according to the Associated Press.

Swiss troops invade Liechtenstein

ZURICH, Switzerland - What began as a routine training exercise almost ended in an embarrassing diplomatic incident after a company of Swiss soldiers got lost at night and marched into neighboring Liechtenstein.

According to Swiss daily Blick, the 170 infantry soldiers from the neutral country wandered more than a mile across an unmarked border into the tiny principality early Thursday before realizing their mistake and turning back.

A spokesman for the Swiss army confirmed the story, but said that there were unlikely to be any serious repercussions for the mistaken invasion.

“We’ve spoken to the authorities in Liechtenstein and it’s not a problem,”

Officials in Liechtenstein also played down the incident.

Interior Ministry spokesman Markus Amman said nobody in Liechtenstein had even noticed the soldiers, who were carrying assault rifles but no ammunition. “It’s not like they stormed over here with attack helicopters or something,” he said.

Liechtenstein, which has about 34,000 inhabitants and is slightly smaller than Washington, D.C., does not have an army.

Man, 91, challenges Jack LaLanne, 92

All of that Florida sun must be getting to Maine snowbird Roland Fortin. The 91-year-old has laid down a challenge to box fitness guru Jack LaLanne, who’s 92. Fortin, former “cut man” for retired boxing champ Joey Gamache, said the idea for the four-round bout was hatched at the Tropical Gym in Pompano Beach, where Fortin works out during the winter in Florida.

The South Florida Sun-Sentinel in Fort Lauderdale ran the challenge in a half-page ad that gym owner Troy Eckonen took out for Super Bowl Sunday. The purpose, he said, was to let seniors know it’s not too late to get in great shape like Fortin.

“Florida is like the waiting room to the casket,” Ecknonen said.

So far, the publicity stunt is working for the Tropical Gym, where membership is up. But LaLanne hasn’t taken Fortin up on the challenge to enter the ring.

LaLanne’s spokeswoman learned of the boxing challenge when she was contacted Tuesday by a reporter from the Sun Journal newspaper in Lewiston.

“That’s not quite his cup of tea,” Liz Cardenas said Wednesday from California. Besides, she said, LaLanne is too busy traveling for public appearances, and he no longer performs athletic feats for which he was known earlier in his career.

Despite the rebuff, Eckonen has not abandoned the idea. He said he plans to deliver the ad to fight promoter Don King to see if he’s interested.

“It’d be a gentleman’s fight, obviously,” Eckonen said.

Fortin, a widower who has wintered in Florida since retiring from the funeral business decades ago, doesn’t think either man would get hurt in a brief square-off. “He’d knock me down, I’d knock him down,” he said.

Eau Claire man burns genitals while drunkenly copying stunt

Trying to duplicate a movie stunt landed a man in the hospital with burns to his hands and genitals and left a second man facing criminal charges.

Randell D. Peterson, 43, of 1822 Vine St., was charged Tuesday in Eau Claire County Court with felony counts of battery and first-degree reckless endangerment.

Peterson is free on a $2,000 signature bond and returns to court April 16.

According to the criminal complaint:

Police were called to Luther Hospital to meet with Jared W. Anderson, 20, who had serious burns to both his hands and genitals. Anderson said he didn’t want anyone to get in trouble because of what happened.

Police then spoke with witnesses, who said a group of people, including Anderson, were at Peterson’s house Sunday night watching a “Jackass” movie, in which the characters perform outrageous stunts, sometimes ending up injured.

One of the characters in the movie lit his genitals on fire as a stunt.

Anderson, who was drunk, wanted to duplicate the stunt. Peterson was willing to oblige.

Anderson pulled his pants down in Peterson’s kitchen. Peterson sprayed lighter fluid on Anderson’s genitals.

After he was unable to start a fire, Peterson sprayed more lighter fluid on Anderson, and some of the fluid got on Anderson’s clothing.

Peterson tried again and a fire started. Anderson’s genitals, hands and clothing all caught fire.

Anderson ran into the bathroom, jumped in the bathtub and put the flames out.

Anderson’s burns were serious enough that skin was peeling off his hands. Two witnesses forced Anderson to go to the hospital.

Anderson eventually was taken to the Regions Hospital Burn Unit in St. Paul with second-degree burns.

Peterson later admitted his involvement in the incident.

Peterson, if convicted, could face up to 10½ years in prison.

Woman in vegetative state for 6 years awakens for 3 days

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — A woman who went into a vegetative state more than six years ago awoke this week for three days and spoke with her family and a local television station before slipping back.

“I’m fine,” Christa Lilly told her mother on Sunday, her first words in eight months. She has awakened four other times for briefer periods since suffering a heart attack and stroke in November of 2000.

“I think it’s wonderful. It makes me so happy,” Lilly told television station KKTV-TV. She also got to see youngest daughter, Chelcey, now 12 years old, and three grandchildren.

Before her relapse on Wednesday, Lilly told the station her biggest frustration was learning how to talk again.

After years of being fed from a tube, eating was no problem. “I’ve been eating cake,” she said.

Her neurologist, Dr. Randall Bjork, said he couldn’t explain how or why she awoke.

“I’m just not able to explain this on the basis of what we know about persistent vegetative states,” he said.

A vegetative state is much like a coma except Lilly’s eyes remain open. Bjork said that he’s never seen a similar quality of awakening.

Bjork said that unlike the much publicized case of Terri Schiavo, Lilly is minimally conscious. He said she could awake again.

After Lilly relapsed her mother and caregiver Minnie Smith said: “The good Lord let me know she’s alright, he brings her back to visit every so often and I’m thankful for that.”

LOS ANGELES — An Iraqi immigrant faces deportation after triggering a security scare at Los Angeles International Airport when authorities found a suspicious device lodged in his body, officials said.

Fadhel Al-Maliki, 35, of Atlantic, N.J., prompted the alert March 6 during a screening for a flight to Philadelphia when he tried to go through security with two objects in his rectum. The FBI said he told screeners the objects, a polished stone and a piece of metal, were used to fight stress.

That wasn’t enough to constitute a federal offense, FBI spokeswoman Laura Eimiller said. However, immigration agents reviewed Al-Maliki’s case and said they found two violent convictions on his record.

The convictions for domestic violence and possession of an illegal weapon violate the terms of Al-Maliki’s status as a permanent U.S. resident and make him subject to deportation, said Lori Haley, a spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Haley said she had no details on the convictions, and that it wasn’t clear when deportation proceedings would begin.

A US Airways plane bound for Philadelphia was diverted because Al-Maliki’s checked luggage had been screened and put aboard without him.

’Romo Rule’ proposed for kicking balls

Michael Irvin, Emmitt Smith, Erik Williams, Roy Williams and Deion Sanders all prompted NFL rules changes in recent seasons.

Tony Romo could be next.

The NFL’s competition committee is proposing changes to how the kicking balls (or K-balls) are prepared and which one is used. The proposal comes after Romo’s botched hold late in the Cowboys’ 21-20 loss to Seattle in a wild-card playoff game in January.

“Just to make sure that there is no perception—it is not reality in our mind—we’re doing everything we can to make sure that people feel comfortable that the balls that are being played with in the games are appropriate,” said Rich McKay, the Atlanta Falcons general manager who is co-chairman of the competition committee.

At their annual spring meeting next week in Phoenix, the 32 NFL owners are scheduled to vote on increasing the preparation time for balls used in the kicking game. The 12 K-balls would be numbered, and officials would do their best to ensure the balls are used sequentially, with the No. 1-marked ball being kicked with as long as it’s available.

“They need to do something with those balls, so that the guys handling them—the punters, the snappers, the holders—at least have a chance,” said Seahawks special teams coach Bruce DeHaven, who was with the Cowboys the past four seasons. “If they don’t get those balls worked right initially, you can squeeze them and they pop right out of your hand.”

The NFL introduced K-balls in 1999 after the competition committee decided specialists were doctoring balls for additional height and distance. Now, 12 balls marked with a “K” are delivered from the manufacturer, Wilson Sporting Goods, to officials the night before a game.

Two hours before kickoff, a representative from each team—usually an equipment manager—is allowed to rub down the K-balls. In the past, the allotted time was 20 minutes, which Cowboys kicker Martin Gramatica said Wednesday isn’t enough time to get more than half of the balls worked in properly.

Conspiracy theorists believe the Seahawks’ ball boys intentionally gave the Cowboys a slick, unused ball, leading to Romo’s botched hold. It denied Gramatica a chance for a 19-yard field goal that would have given the Cowboys a 23-21 lead with 1:14 remaining.

McKay said other plays last season contributed to the proposal. In Week 16, Bengals long snapper Brad St. Louis botched a snap on an extra-point attempt late in Cincinnati’s 24-23 loss to Denver.

“But do you think we’d even be talking about this if that [Romo play in Seattle] hadn’t happened?” Cowboys punter Mat McBriar asked rhetorically Wednesday. “It’s a weird thing, and I don’t want to say that Seattle had any intention of doing anything [illegal]. I don’t think they tampered with the balls.

“But, normally, only a handful of the allotted balls are used, and, come the fourth quarter, all the balls have been kicked or worked in a little bit by then, and to see a slick ball like that, that was disappointing. You don’t expect brand-new balls in the fourth quarter.”

At the annual owners meetings in Phoenix, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell plans to unveil his new player-conduct code. Owners also are to discuss several rules changes. Among them:

Allowing radio communication between coaches and one defensive player.

Creating a 5-yard penalty for spiking or throwing the ball while in the field of play. The rule will not apply to end zone celebrations.

Moving kickoffs to the 35-yard line from the 30-yard line in overtime.

Adopting instant replay permanently.

Changing the injury reporting system.

Experimenting with moving the umpire, putting him behind the offense instead of in the middle of the defense.

JERUSALEM — A woman with three crocodiles strapped to her waist was stopped at the Gaza-Egypt border crossing after guards noticed that she looked “strangely fat,” officials said today.

The woman’s shape raised suspicions at the Rafah terminal in southern Gaza, and a body search by a female border guard turned up the animals, each about 20 inches long, concealed underneath her loose robe, according to Maria Telleria, spokeswoman for the European observers who run the crossing.

“The woman looked strangely fat. Even though she was veiled and covered, even with so many clothes on there was something strange,” Telleria said.

The incident, which took place on Thursday, sparked panic at the crossing.

“The policewoman screamed and ran out of the room, and then women began screaming and panicking when they heard,” Telleria said. But when the hysteria died down, she said, “everybody was admiring a woman who is able to tie crocodiles to her body.”

In her defense, the woman said she “was asked” to carry the crocodiles, said Wael Dahab, a spokesman for the Palestinian guards at the crossing. She was permitted to cross without the animals.

The reptiles, which had their jaws tied shut with string, were returned to the Egyptian side of the border.

Dahab said the animals were likely meant for sale to Gaza’s small zoo or to private owners. The crocodiles would fetch “good money,” even in the impoverished territory, he said. In Gaza, the animals can fetch about $500 — roughly two months’ salary for a low-ranking policeman.

The woman was not the first to try to illegally smuggle exotic wildlife through the Rafah crossing, Dahab said: another woman tried to bring in a monkey tied to her chest, and other travelers tried to smuggle in exotic birds and a tiger cub. Border guards more frequently confiscate cigarettes, prescription drugs and car parts.

The crossing is the only way in and out of Gaza for residents of the crowded coastal strip.

Since Israel pulled out of Gaza in 2005, the crossing has subject to a complex system of control: Egypt and the Palestinians are responsible for the crossing, with European monitors stationed at the terminal and Israeli inspectors watching from a distance over closed-circuit TV.

Israel retains final say over whether the crossing can open, and has kept it closed over 80 percent of the time since an Israeli soldier was captured by Hamas-linked militants in Gaza nine months ago, charging that the crossing is being used to smuggle money and weapons to militants.

LUBEC, Maine - Kathleen Tarbell “fell head over my stomach” for her husband Waldo when they met at a dance. They married in 1927, during Calvin Coolidge’s presidency. This weekend, they’ll celebrate their 80th anniversary.

Waldo is 101 and Kathleen will turn 100 in June. The anniversary party will be Saturday afternoon at Oceanview Nursing Home, where the couple shares a large room.

Maine’s Office of Vital Records could not immediately determine if the Tarbells’ marriage is the longest in the state. The 2007 Guinness Book of World Records lists a Rhode Island couple wed for 83 years as having the longest marriage among living people.

Kathleen, a native of Pembroke, moved to Waldo’s hometown of Meddybemps after they married. Two years later, they moved to Pembroke, where their two children, Helen Brown and Elliot Tarbell, were born.

Waldo and Kathleen lived in their home in Pembroke until a few weeks ago.

“I had to go to the hospital to have some X-rays taken. My back was killing me,” Kathleen told the Bangor Daily News. After she was hospitalized, Waldo was moved to the nursing home and she later joined him.

For 37 years, Waldo worked for Maine Central Railroad, at a starting wage of 37 cents an hour. After their children were raised, Kathleen worked for 32 years as a “herring choker and wrapper” at sardine factories.

“Sometimes it’d be 10 o’clock at night before we’d get done. We’d go into work at eight in the morning. By the time we got home and got turned over in bed it was time to get up again,” she recalled.

Kathleen has been a Democrat her entire adult life. Waldo, originally a Republican, turned Democrat. “She converted me,” he said.

They remain up to speed on current events. Kathleen reads the newspaper every day, and she thinks the war in Iraq is “scandalous.”

“Somebody ought to take Bush and wring his neck, and I might be the one to do it,” she said with a sparkle in her eye.

LAS CRUCES, N.M. — The ashes of James Doohan, who played chief engineer Montgomery “Scotty” Scott on the original Star Trek TV series, have been loaded into a rocket that is set to launch in New Mexico later this month.

The remains of Doohan, Mercury astronaut Gordon Cooper and some 200 others were loaded into the rocket Friday by Charles Chafer, chief executive of Celestis, a Texas company that contracts with rocket firms to send cremated remains into space.

“And we’re ready to go,” Chafer said after inserting the silver canister.

Jerry Larson, president of Connecticut-based UP Aerospace Inc., said the rocket will be launched April 28.

Families paid $495 to have a few grams of their loved one’s ashes placed on the rocket.

Chafer said he’s aware of the dedication of Star Trek fans.

“There’s no doubt that we’ll find a way to accommodate fans who travel here and want to be part of that experience,” he said.

Doohan died in July 2005 at age 85.

The remains of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry were blasted into space in 1997.

- UPDATE -
Ashes of ‘Star Trek’s’ Scotty beam down, go missing! (did they check the buffer?)

A search team continues to look for a rocket carrying ashes of the actor James Doohan, who played Scotty on Star Trek, almost two weeks after it hurtled to the edge of space from New Mexico, the company behind the launch said on Thursday.

Remains of the Canadian born actor, who died two years ago at the age of 85, blasted off from a remote launch site on April 29 carrying a payload that included the ashes of astronaut Gordon Cooper and several experiments.

A spokeswoman for Houston based Space Services, which organized the “memorial spaceflight,” said the telephone pole size rocket descended by parachute into a rugged area that a search team has repeatedly failed to reach.

“The terrain is very mountainous; it’s not somewhere that you can walk or drive to. My understanding is that it will take some time to get up into there,”. “They know the general location, and we have the utmost confidence that they will recover it.”

The search had been hampered by “horrendous” weather in the desert state, but expected the Up Aerospace Spaceloft XL craft to be recovered in coming days.

Keith Richards: `I snorted my father’

Keith Richards has acknowledged consuming a raft of illegal substances in his time, but this may top them all.

In comments published Tuesday, the 63-year-old Rolling Stones guitarist said he had snorted his father’s ashes mixed with cocaine.

“The strangest thing I’ve tried to snort? My father. I snorted my father,” Richards was quoted as saying by British music magazine NME.

“He was cremated and I couldn’t resist grinding him up with a little bit of blow. My dad wouldn’t have cared,” he said. “... It went down pretty well, and I’m still alive.”

Richards’ father, Bert, died in 2002, at 84.

Richards, one of rock’s legendary wild men, told the magazine that his survival was the result of luck, and advised young musicians against trying to emulate him.

“I did it because that was the way I did it. Now people think it’s a way of life,” he was quoted as saying.

“I’ve no pretensions about immortality,” he added. “I’m the same as everyone ... just kind of lucky.

“I was No. 1 on the `who’s likely to die’ list for 10 years. I mean, I was really disappointed when I fell off the list,” Richards said.

While not as fevered as the coverage of Anna Nicole Smith’s passing, the claim this week by Keith Richards that he snorted some of his father’s ashes “with a little bit of blow” stirred up a storm of news coverage, very little of it skeptical.

Major media organizations including The Sun, the BBC, Forbes.com and The Washington Post ran the story and quoted its source, the British weekly New Musical Express.

Representatives for the 63-year-old Rolling Stones guitarist rushed to douse the controversy by saying Richards had been joking.

“It is not true,” Bernard Doherty, a spokesman for the band, told the Associated Press yesterday. “File under ‘April Fool’s joke.’”

The music paper, however, asserted that the remark was “no quip, but came about after much thinking” by Richards during his interview with NME reporter Mark Beaumont.

“He didn’t offer the information,” Beaumont wrote on the NME site. “I had to ask him a couple of questions to get the information out of him. He didn’t come straight out with that.”

Later, Richards posted a statement on the Stones’ Web site that blamed the media for the ruckus: “The complete story is lost in the usual slanting! The truth of the matter is that I planted a sturdy English Oak. I took the lid off the box of ashes and he is now growing oak trees and would love me for it!”

Richards maintained that he was “trying to say how tight” he was with his father, Bert, who died in 2002 at 84. The famously sybaritic guitarist, who suffered a concussion a year ago when he fell out of a tree in Fiji, wrote that he “wouldn’t take cocaine at this point in my life unless I wished to commit suicide.”

His retraction followed several frantic episodes of public backpedaling last year, most notably those of actors Michael Richards, Mel Gibson and Isaiah Washington, as well as U.S. Sen. George Allen, all of whom had spouted racist or bigoted slurs.

But Al Tompkins, a faculty member at the Poynter Institute, a journalism think tank in St. Petersburg, Fla., noted that Richards’ statement did not specifically retract his comment that he had snorted his father’s ashes. Neither did it say he did not use cocaine at the time of his father’s death only that he does not do so now.

Tompkins said the media’s job “is to report,” and that rather than agonizing about whether to run a correction of Richards’ initial comments, “I would just explain what he said.”

Kurt Loder, a former editor of Rolling Stone magazine, accepted Richards’ explanation without question. In a posting on MTV.com, Loder wrote, “Clearly, this is one of the all-time great rock and roll stories. Unfortunately, it’s not true. It seems to have been either a joke one that sailed right over the NME interviewer’s head or a misunderstanding of Richards’ famously hard-to-parse verbal style.”

Loder wrote that none of the “horde of newspapers, wire services and TV and online outlets on both sides of the Atlantic” that ran the story “attempted to confirm the story” with Richards’ camp.

Rory O’Connor, a former rock critic who co-founded media channel.org, was equally dismissive of Richards’ initial claim, calling it “an obvious joke by a perpetually stoned rock-and-roller who fell on his coconut climbing after coconuts not too long ago.”

O’Connor compared Richards’ initial comment to John Lennon’s assertion in 1966 that the Beatles were more popular than Jesus, a statement that drew outrage in the Bible Belt and for which Lennon later apologized.

In the NME interview, Richards seemed to be answering a question when he referred to inhaling his father’s ashes.

“The strangest thing I’ve tried to snort? My father. I snorted my father,” he said. “He was cremated and I couldn’t resist grinding him up with a little bit of blow. My dad wouldn’t have cared.”

Richards also recounted his worst experience with drugs, when “someone put strychnine in my dope” in Switzerland.

“I was totally comatose, but I was totally awake. I could listen to everyone, and they were like, ‘he’s dead, he’s dead!’ waving their fingers and pushing me about, and I was thinking, I’m not dead!”

POMONA, Ca. A man accused of using a chain and pickup truck to yank a 1,500 pound ATM from a market failed to escape police when his prosthetic leg fell off during the getaway.

Gregory Daniels, 48, was arrested Tuesday on suspicion of burglary for the attempted heist from Pomona Ranch Market, police said.

Authorities say Daniels and another man drove up to the market about 3 a.m., smashed a window, wrapped a chain around the ATM and used the pickup to rip it from the floor. After loading the cash machine into the truck, the pair drove off.

Officers chased the truck into a residential neighborhood, where the men drove into a dead end street. Daniels’ alleged accomplice fled, but police said Daniels wasn’t able to escape.

“Daniels was on the ground near the vehicle in an attempt to flee from officers,” Sgt. E. Vazquez said. “However, he was unsuccessful, as his prosthetic leg fell off.”

The ATM and its cash were recovered. The assistant manager of the Pomona Ranch Market, Tom Zvoda, said he didn’t know how much money was inside.