Big Apple Makes Billy Jack’s Day

Actor Tom Laughlin, who played a crusader who used his prowess in karate to fight injustice in the movie “Billy Jack,” broke up a bloody street brawl in Manhattan, saying: “If it’s killing you want, come and get it.” Laughlin said he became enraged when he saw one man smash another over the head with a bottle and try to keep beating the unconscious victim. “The guy was just a bloody hulk. He was starting to hit him a third time when Billy Jack jumped in,” said a woman who witnessed the incident. “Billy Jack yelled: ‘Look, you touch him again and I’m going to rip your arm off.’ ” The actor said he was equally angered by the “cowardice” of onlookers who stood gawking at the brawl without trying to intervene or call police. Laughlin was in New York for a screening of his movie “The Return of Billy Jack.”

--Princess Caroline of Monaco bounced her car off a rock wall and escaped uninjured about 600 feet from where her mother, Princess Grace, was killed in a car crash four years ago. Caroline, 29, was driving her car to the family’s summer estate on Mont Agel when she noticed a car rolling backward down the incline, a palace spokesman said. Caroline swerved to the right, sideswiping a rock wall and nearly totaling her car. She then got out of the car and walked to the estate, the spokesman said.

--After watching his wife repeatedly back her car over his neighbor’s lawn, engineer Carl Ford built a turntable driveway that is turning heads in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio. “Different people come and they just can’t believe it,” said Ford’s wife, Jean, 59. “They think they’re imagining things when they see this car turning around.” The turntable is a carpeted aluminum platform that turns 180 degrees in 15 seconds and is operated by a modified garage door opener. Ford said someone else might have to pay between $6,000 and $8,000 to have one built. “Compared to some things I’ve done, this is just a toy,” said the 69-year-old engineer.

--The financially strapped parents of an 11-year-old girl who gave her $25 for a day at Six Flags Over Texas may have made the most fortunate investment of their lives--their daughter came home with $25,000. Mendie Purdum, whose father, Ray, lost his dairy job earlier this month just after the family had moved into a new house in Longview, won the money in the park’s 25th Anniversary Giveaway. “We’ll put some in the bank for her,” said her father. “She said she wants a new car when she is old enough. And she’s talking about going to school (college). But I was laid off . . . and we can use the money to take care of a few bills.” Shane Purdum, 15, one of Mendie’s two brothers, has plans, too. “I’m going to be real nice to her. I’m sure she’ll buy me something,” he said.