Saturday, June 10, 2017

Slow Saturday Special: Globe Saw a UFO

No, seriously.

"Hikers looking for UFOs get lost in Blue Hills" by Emily Sweeney Globe Staff  June 09, 2017

Three young hikers who were looking for UFOs got stranded in Blue Hills Reservation and had to be rescued by police Thursday night. But they said their harrowing night on high ground outside Boston paid off.

One of the hikers, Ramona DiFrancesco, 18, said the group saw several UFOs during their journey, including “three bright lights in the formation of a triangle” and a giant orb that looked “bigger than the moon.”

They are "lost," all right. Been watching too much TV.

State Police spokesman David Procopio said the hikers were located by the helicopter.

It's a UFO! 

So WTF were those kids drinking, smoking, or worse?

The three hikers from Plymouth — DiFrancesco, Travis Stoecklin, and Savannah Winship-Cody — said they had ascended Buck Hill to enjoy the views and search the sky. They said they knew exactly where they were but realized when it got dark that it would be dangerous to return the same way they came up the hill.

“The path we took was rocky,” said Winship-Cody, 17, who was wearing slippers at the time.

“Our phones were dying,” DiFrancesco said. “We didn’t have any flashlights. We were a little unprepared.”

Stoecklin, 21, said the hike was a “spur of the moment idea,” and after realizing how wet and slippery the conditions were, and how difficult it was to see in the dark, “we weighed [our] options and we decided to call for help,” he said.

Stoecklin said police led them down a different trail on the opposite side of the hill and gave them a ride to their car, where they were intercepted by a reporter from WHDH-TV (Channel 7), who initially broke the story.

Oh, so the person at Ch.7 called their Globe buddy and said we have a rescue in progress.

Michael Carey, a Boston-area music teacher who started a group on the website Meetup.com for people interested in UFOs, said he was not aware of sightings in the Blue Hills. “There are protocols in place for folks who have the ability, strange as it sounds, to call in interdimensional beings or crafts,” Carey said.

Does the school board know about him? 

One wonders what otherworldly sounds are coming from his classroom.

DiFrancesco said their only regret was that they “weren’t as prepared as we should’ve been.”

“We should’ve brought flashlights and charged our phones and maybe brought better hiking gear,” she said. “But it was overall very worthwhile because it was a beautiful hike.”

As far as seeing the UFOs, she said: “It was very interesting, but also pretty creepy.”

And the kids will of course be made to pay for wasting valuable taxpayer dollars, right?

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Maybe it is just me, but the Globe seemed to treat it as credible. That's the impression I received upon reading that story.

Next thing you know they will be saying little green men are responsible for 9/11.

What I didn't see in print:

"45th member of Columbia Point Dawgs pleads guilty" by Maddie Kilgannon Globe Correspondent  June 09, 2017

Two years after one of the largest gang sweeps in Boston history, a 39-year-old man has become the 45th defendant tied to the Columbia Point Dawgs to be convicted.

Law enforcement officials rounded up 48 members of the violent gang, collecting dozens of guns and a massive amount of drugs, on June 18, 2015.

Israel Delacruz pleaded guilty Thursday to conspiring to distribute cocaine. The final three defendants are facing trials in the case.

The gang started back in the 1980s in what used to be called the Columbia Point Housing Development. The area is now called Harbor Point.

“It is alleged that [the gang] was responsible for the distribution of multiple kilo quantities of heroin, cocaine, crack cocaine, and oxycodone throughout Boston and Maine,” acting United States Attorney William D. Weinreb’s office said Friday in a statement.

Yeah, right under your noses for how long?

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I suppose they had help:

"DEA seizes 50 kilograms of fentanyl precursor in Northborough" by Andrew Grant Globe Correspondent  June 10, 2017

About 50 kilograms of a fentanyl precursor with a potential street value of $570 million was seized by federal and local law enforcement in Northborough, authorities announced Friday.

“It is believed that this represents the DEA’s largest seizure of a fentanyl precursor in the New England Region in recent years,” according to a statement by the US attorney’s office. 

I guess they would know where to look, sigh.

The Drug Enforcement Administration, working with officers from the Northborough, Westborough, and Worcester police departments, raided a Northborough storage facility and seized the chemical N-Phenethyl-4-piperidinone, also known as NPP, on May 25, according to the statement.

That amount of NPP could theoretically produce more than 19 million pills of fentanyl, a synthetic opioid that is between 50 and 100 times more powerful than morphine, the statement said.

Because of its potential use in manufacturing fentanyl, NPP was labeled a controlled substance in 2007, according to the DEA.

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I'm actually not $urpri$ed given the burying of the lead story around here. Glad I never dabbled in that junk.