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A daily look at some of The News & Observer headlines on this date in past years.
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On this day in 2011, a 35-year-old woman adopted a cat from the Wake County shelter that turned out to be rabid, biting her on the hand and triggering enormous bills.
The kitten, named Silverbelle, took sick and died in a vet’s office nine days after adoption, having first bitten her unlucky owner on the hand.
All four of the woman’s other pets — two dogs and two cats — had to be quarantined for six months at a cost of $2,000 apiece, not to mention the rabies shots she had to endure with only partial state funding.
Wake County’s response: “There’s still a risk,” a spokesman told The N&O. “We’re taking 16,000 unwanted animals every year. Our animals are coming in the back door as fast as we can find them a place.”
Sheriff’s deputies in Edgecombe County charged a 6-year-old Tarboro boy with manslaughter after he shot his 7-year-old brother in the chest with a family shotgun. The boy, who went unnamed in news reports, showed deputies how he climbed his parents’ dresser to fetch a shotgun shell from a dish, then loaded it into the gun he pulled from a closet. The district attorney explained that the state has no minimum age for prosecution, but he doubted the child would go to jail.
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Six prisoners briefly escaped the Women’s Prison in Raleigh after a riot broke out in the cafeteria — apparently sparked by an unsatisfactory noontime meal of “luncheon loaf” served cold. The riot involved 18 prisoners and resulted in one prison matron being socked in the face before the six escaped over a fence. They were quickly recaptured on Rock Quarry Road, still in sight of the prison.
In 1926, Gov. Angus McLean completed his tour of all 100 North Carolina counties with a stop in Ocracoke, where he landed a 35-pound fish.
The governor fought for 18 minutes with a stubborn drum, then declared, “They are the gamest fish I have ever struck.”
He followed his catch with a speech to the Outer Banks town, “where courts, policemen and even door locks are unknown.”
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