Billy the Kid Won’t Ride Again

--Desperado William V. Scott has been dodging police for months, zipping along city streets on a $900 motorized three-wheeler, running stop signs and darting in the opposite direction whenever he sees a police car. But when Chesapeake, Va., officers finally nabbed him, they couldn’t give him a ticket--he’s only 4 years old. Instead, they charged his mother, Regina A. Scott, with a felony count of child neglect for allegedly letting William ride the vehicle on the street. “William can fly on that little thing,” said arresting officer J. M. Liptrap. “If he sees a police car, he just automatically takes off. All you can do is follow and hope he slows down.” Scott said she knew William was not to ride the trike on the street because police had warned him twice, first in January and again in July. But her father was baby-sitting during the last escapade, she said. Liptrap said the boy zips down the middle of the street at 35 m.p.h. “My main concern is not the prosecution of the mother,” Liptrap said. “My concern is that I don’t want to see another police officer have to respond over there, and this kid is splattered up over a car. He can ride the heck out of it, there’s no doubt about it. But he doesn’t know the law.” Scott said her son has gone through conventional tricycles and a dirt bike that had wooden blocks attached to the pedals so the three-foot-tall youngster could reach them. William got the motorized tricycle for Christmas. “There’s really nowhere for him to ride, and we don’t know where to take him,” she said. “He just loves to ride that thing.” But the boy will not be riding it on the street again, she said. The trike is parked in a shed behind her father’s home--and William isn’t big enough to get it out.

--Eleven of the 18 candidates who ran for president of Bolivia on July 14 will be arrested if they do not pay a 7-billion-peso fine by Tuesday for getting less than 50,000 votes. The fine, equal to about $7,000, is imposed to cover the cost of printing ballots, Comptroller Antonio Sanchez de Lozada said.

--Editor Jim McCaffrey had a few unkind words for the person who stole his camera and other equipment from his weekly Idaho newspaper. “This curse on your head, night thief, street cur, to carry with you on your devious journeys,” McCaffrey fumed in his Glenns Ferry Pilot. “Your crippled heart allowed you to take my trade tools . . . . May you travel through this world alone and unloved . . . . May your children die young that you may never see the fruits of your love. May you die alone, late at night, in great pain and with nobody in this world caring.” There was no word on whether the thief returned the items.