Family swept to sea in effort to save dog - who eventually got out of the water on its own

EUREKA, Calif. — A couple died and their 16-year-old son went missing after being swept into sea in Northern California while trying to save their dog, authorities said Sunday.

The family was at Big Lagoon, a beach north of Eureka, Saturday afternoon when the dog chased after a thrown stick and got pulled into the ocean by eight to ten foot waves, said Dana Jones, a state Parks and Recreation district superintendent.

Jones said the boy went after the dog, prompting his father to go after them. She said the teenager was able to get out, but when he didn't see his father, he and his mother went into the water looking for him.

"Both were dragged into the ocean," Jones said.

The Times-Standard reports (http://bit.ly/UmSP2P) the couple's daughter called police.

Jones said a park ranger had to run a half mile to get to the beach because his car wasn't made to handle the terrain. When he arrived, he wasn't able to get to them because of the high surf, she said.

Rescuers eventually retrieved the mother's body and the father's body washed up.

The Coast Guard deployed a helicopter and two motor life boats to search for the teenager, but the aerial search was suspended Saturday evening by thick coastal fog.

A call seeking the status of the Coast Guard's search on Sunday wasn't immediately returned.

The dog got out of the water on its own, Jones said.

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Weird but true

That ain't roadkill — its BBQ.

Bar 3 Bar-B-Q in Montana has settled its lawsuit against a phone-book company that had accidentally listed the restaurant under its "Animal Carcass Removal" section.

The tentative settlement includes payments to the eatery, whose meat comes from traditional sources.

***

There has to be a huge whipped-cream burglary coming next.

Thieves stole 180 pumpkin pies from a refrigerated trailer parked outside a Bristol Farms market in South Pasadena, Calif., police said.

The pies were stored in 20 boxes, and the crooks probably thought they were scoring turkeys, cops said. At least they have dessert.

***

A senior citizen in Sacramento, Calif., went all "Hunger Games" on a suspected burglar.

Don Kiefert, 75, caught a man in his back yard and held him for police by pointing a homemade bow and arrow at the suspect, officials said.

Kiefert has been burglarized before, so he thought this guy was coming back for more. Cops found no evidence the man was there to steal, so he was released.

***

A California caviar purveyor is going where luxury dining has never gone before — the vending machine.

Beverly Hills Caviar is selling fish eggs, truffles and escargot from an automated vendor at the Burbank Towne Center. The products cost $50 to $500.

***

Kids are bad for business, especially if your clients are accused pervs.

Criminal defense lawyer Roland Milliard threatened legal action against the town of Dracut, Mass., after officials approved a day-care center in the same office building as his practice.

Millard represents many clients accused of sex crimes, and he fears the presence of kids could hurt his business.

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Haunted for life

"The Amityville Horror" is still a nightmare for a Queens man who spent part of his childhood in the world's most famous haunted house, he says.

Daniel Lutz and his family called 112 Ocean Ave. in Amityville, LI, home for just 28 days before fleeing for their lives in the middle of the night nearly 37 years ago, when Lutz was 10 years old.

The family's real-life scary movie was chronicled in the 1977 book and 1979 movie "The Amityville Horror'' — and Lutz now details their harrowing ordeal himself for the first time in a new documentary, "My Amityville Horror."

AP

NIGHTMARE LIVES ON: Daniel Lutz is now telling his family's story of living in the famously haunted "Amityville Horror" house.

Facebook

Daniel Lutz as a kid

"My job was to haul boxes inside," Lutz, now 47, recalled of his family's move into the four-bedroom house on Long Island's South Shore in early 1976. "Then I went into the house's playroom to find about four or five hundred flies buzzing about.

"I stood there with a newspaper smashing them on the walls, smashing them on the window. I killed about a hundred in five minutes. Then I ran downstairs to tell Mom, and when I came back up, the dead flies had gone. Even the newspaper had gone."

The documentary, which does not yet have a scheduled release date, is making the rounds at industry film festivals.

"I believe evil can manifest itself in any way, shape or form it chooses and that I was a victim of that," Lutz said in the film. "My mom used to say, 'Good things happen to good people, and bad things happen to bad people. But sometimes, bad things happen to good people.' "

Lutz said his mother, stepfather and two younger siblings moved into the house despite its macabre history: A year earlier, drug addict Ronald DeFeo Jr., 23, had slaughtered his mother, father and four brothers and sisters as they lay in their beds.

DeFeo said the "voice of God" told him to do it. He is serving a life sentence in prison.

The Lutz family moved in, and their lives would never be the same.

There were spooky incidents involving levitation, visits from unseen spirits and a bedroom sighting of an angry pig with wolf-like teeth, Lutz said.

"A spirit came into the house, bumps into my mother, walks through my hands, knocks a peanut-butter knife down onto the floor and sits down," Lutz said. "Then, in three seconds, it was gone."

Many believed that the family made up the story because they couldn't afford their mortgage or that the tales were connected to the now-dead stepfather's alleged interest in the occult. But Lutz, who lives in Whitestone and drives a delivery van, dismisses the naysayers, saying he's coming out now to confront his past.

"I stopped trying to persuade people about this a long time ago," he said.

Lutz said he still remembers his final day in the house.

"My brother and myself shared a levitation experience in our beds," Lutz said. "We both woke up, and our headboards and footboards were smashing each other and banging off the ceiling.

"Mom said, 'Go pack a bag. We're going to Grandma's. We're getting out of here.' I didn't know we were never coming back. "

leonard.greene@nypost.com

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Cyber Monday likely to be the year's busiest online sales day

AP

Cyber Monday is likely to be the year's busiest online sales day.

Bye-bye Black Friday. So long Small Business Saturday. Now, it's Cyber Monday's turn.

Cyber Monday, coined in 2005 by a shopping trade group that noticed online sales spiked on the Monday following Thanksgiving, is the next in a series of days that stores are counting on to jumpstart the holiday shopping season.

It's estimated that this year's Cyber Monday will be the biggest online shopping day of the year for the third year in a row: According to research firm comScore, Americans are expected to spend $1.5 billion, up 20 percent from last year on Cyber Monday, as retailers have ramped up their deals to get shoppers to click on their websites.

Amazon.com, which is starting its Cyber Monday deals at midnight on Monday, is offering as much as 60 percent off a Panasonic VIERA 55-inch TV that's usually priced higher than $1,000. Sears is offering $430 off a Maytag washer and dryer, each on sale for $399. And Kmart is offering 75 percent off all of its diamond earrings and $60 off a 12-in-1 multigame table on sale for $89.99.

Retailers are hoping the deals will appeal to shoppers like Matt Sexton, 39, who for the first time plans to complete all of his holiday shopping online this year on his iPad tablet computer. Sexton, who plans to spend up to $4,000 this season, already shopped online on the day after Thanksgiving known as Black Friday and found a laptop from Best Buy for $399, a $200 savings, among other deals.

"The descriptions and reviews are so much better online so you can compare and price shop and for the most part get free shipping," said Sexton, who lives in Queens, N.Y., and is a manager at a utility company.

Sexton also said that it's easier to return an online purchase to a physical store than it had been in previous years. "That helps with gifts," he said.

How well retailers fare on Cyber Monday will offer insight into Americans' evolving shopping habits during the holiday shopping season, a time when stores can make up to 40 percent of their annual revenue. With the growth in high speed Internet access and the wide use of smartphones and tablets, people are relying less on their work computers to shop than they did when Shop.org, the digital division of trade group The National Retail Federation, introduced the term "Cyber Monday."

"People years ago didn't have ... connectivity to shop online at their homes. So when they went back to work after Thanksgiving they'd shop on the Monday after," said Vicki Cantrell, executive director of Shop.org. "Now they don't need the work computer to be able to do that."

As a result, the period between Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday has become busy for online shopping as well. Indeed, online sales on Thanksgiving Day, traditionally not a popular day for online shopping, rose 32 percent over last year to $633 million, according to comScore. And online sales on Black Friday were up 26 percent from the same day last year, to $1.042 billion. It was the first time online sales on Black Friday surpassed $1 billion.

For the holiday season-to-date, comScore found that $13.7 billion has been spent online, marking a 16 percent increase over last year. The research firm predicts that online sales will surpass 10 percent of total retail spending this holiday season. The National Retail Federation estimates that overall retail sales in November and December will be up 4.1 percent this year to $586.1 billion

But as other days become popular for online shopping, Cyber Monday may lose some of its cache. To be sure, Cyber Monday hasn't always been the biggest online shopping day. In fact, up until three years ago, that title was historically earned by the last day shoppers could order items with standard shipping rates and get them delivered before Christmas. That day changes every year, but usually falls in late December.

Even though Cyber Monday is expected to be the biggest shopping day this year, industry watchers say it could just be a matter of time before other days take that ranking.

"Of all the benchmark spending days, Thanksgiving is growing at the fastest rate, up 128 percent over the last five years," said Andrew Lipsman, a spokesman with comScore.

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Family swept to sea in effort to save dog - who eventually got out of the water on its own

EUREKA, Calif. — A couple died and their 16-year-old son went missing after being swept into sea in Northern California while trying to save their dog, authorities said Sunday.

The family was at Big Lagoon, a beach north of Eureka, Saturday afternoon when the dog chased after a thrown stick and got pulled into the ocean by eight to ten foot waves, said Dana Jones, a state Parks and Recreation district superintendent.

Jones said the boy went after the dog, prompting his father to go after them. She said the teenager was able to get out, but when he didn't see his father, he and his mother went into the water looking for him.

"Both were dragged into the ocean," Jones said.

The Times-Standard reports (http://bit.ly/UmSP2P) the couple's daughter called police.

Jones said a park ranger had to run a half mile to get to the beach because his car wasn't made to handle the terrain. When he arrived, he wasn't able to get to them because of the high surf, she said.

Rescuers eventually retrieved the mother's body and the father's body washed up.

The Coast Guard deployed a helicopter and two motor life boats to search for the teenager, but the aerial search was suspended Saturday evening by thick coastal fog.

A call seeking the status of the Coast Guard's search on Sunday wasn't immediately returned.

The dog got out of the water on its own, Jones said.

18.18 | 0 komentar | Read More

Weird but true

That ain't roadkill — its BBQ.

Bar 3 Bar-B-Q in Montana has settled its lawsuit against a phone-book company that had accidentally listed the restaurant under its "Animal Carcass Removal" section.

The tentative settlement includes payments to the eatery, whose meat comes from traditional sources.

***

There has to be a huge whipped-cream burglary coming next.

Thieves stole 180 pumpkin pies from a refrigerated trailer parked outside a Bristol Farms market in South Pasadena, Calif., police said.

The pies were stored in 20 boxes, and the crooks probably thought they were scoring turkeys, cops said. At least they have dessert.

***

A senior citizen in Sacramento, Calif., went all "Hunger Games" on a suspected burglar.

Don Kiefert, 75, caught a man in his back yard and held him for police by pointing a homemade bow and arrow at the suspect, officials said.

Kiefert has been burglarized before, so he thought this guy was coming back for more. Cops found no evidence the man was there to steal, so he was released.

***

A California caviar purveyor is going where luxury dining has never gone before — the vending machine.

Beverly Hills Caviar is selling fish eggs, truffles and escargot from an automated vendor at the Burbank Towne Center. The products cost $50 to $500.

***

Kids are bad for business, especially if your clients are accused pervs.

Criminal defense lawyer Roland Milliard threatened legal action against the town of Dracut, Mass., after officials approved a day-care center in the same office building as his practice.

Millard represents many clients accused of sex crimes, and he fears the presence of kids could hurt his business.

18.18 | 0 komentar | Read More

Haunted for life

"The Amityville Horror" is still a nightmare for a Queens man who spent part of his childhood in the world's most famous haunted house, he says.

Daniel Lutz and his family called 112 Ocean Ave. in Amityville, LI, home for just 28 days before fleeing for their lives in the middle of the night nearly 37 years ago, when Lutz was 10 years old.

The family's real-life scary movie was chronicled in the 1977 book and 1979 movie "The Amityville Horror'' — and Lutz now details their harrowing ordeal himself for the first time in a new documentary, "My Amityville Horror."

AP

NIGHTMARE LIVES ON: Daniel Lutz is now telling his family's story of living in the famously haunted "Amityville Horror" house.

Facebook

Daniel Lutz as a kid

"My job was to haul boxes inside," Lutz, now 47, recalled of his family's move into the four-bedroom house on Long Island's South Shore in early 1976. "Then I went into the house's playroom to find about four or five hundred flies buzzing about.

"I stood there with a newspaper smashing them on the walls, smashing them on the window. I killed about a hundred in five minutes. Then I ran downstairs to tell Mom, and when I came back up, the dead flies had gone. Even the newspaper had gone."

The documentary, which does not yet have a scheduled release date, is making the rounds at industry film festivals.

"I believe evil can manifest itself in any way, shape or form it chooses and that I was a victim of that," Lutz said in the film. "My mom used to say, 'Good things happen to good people, and bad things happen to bad people. But sometimes, bad things happen to good people.' "

Lutz said his mother, stepfather and two younger siblings moved into the house despite its macabre history: A year earlier, drug addict Ronald DeFeo Jr., 23, had slaughtered his mother, father and four brothers and sisters as they lay in their beds.

DeFeo said the "voice of God" told him to do it. He is serving a life sentence in prison.

The Lutz family moved in, and their lives would never be the same.

There were spooky incidents involving levitation, visits from unseen spirits and a bedroom sighting of an angry pig with wolf-like teeth, Lutz said.

"A spirit came into the house, bumps into my mother, walks through my hands, knocks a peanut-butter knife down onto the floor and sits down," Lutz said. "Then, in three seconds, it was gone."

Many believed that the family made up the story because they couldn't afford their mortgage or that the tales were connected to the now-dead stepfather's alleged interest in the occult. But Lutz, who lives in Whitestone and drives a delivery van, dismisses the naysayers, saying he's coming out now to confront his past.

"I stopped trying to persuade people about this a long time ago," he said.

Lutz said he still remembers his final day in the house.

"My brother and myself shared a levitation experience in our beds," Lutz said. "We both woke up, and our headboards and footboards were smashing each other and banging off the ceiling.

"Mom said, 'Go pack a bag. We're going to Grandma's. We're getting out of here.' I didn't know we were never coming back. "

leonard.greene@nypost.com

18.18 | 0 komentar | Read More

Cyber Monday likely to be the year's busiest online sales day

AP

Cyber Monday is likely to be the year's busiest online sales day.

Bye-bye Black Friday. So long Small Business Saturday. Now, it's Cyber Monday's turn.

Cyber Monday, coined in 2005 by a shopping trade group that noticed online sales spiked on the Monday following Thanksgiving, is the next in a series of days that stores are counting on to jumpstart the holiday shopping season.

It's estimated that this year's Cyber Monday will be the biggest online shopping day of the year for the third year in a row: According to research firm comScore, Americans are expected to spend $1.5 billion, up 20 percent from last year on Cyber Monday, as retailers have ramped up their deals to get shoppers to click on their websites.

Amazon.com, which is starting its Cyber Monday deals at midnight on Monday, is offering as much as 60 percent off a Panasonic VIERA 55-inch TV that's usually priced higher than $1,000. Sears is offering $430 off a Maytag washer and dryer, each on sale for $399. And Kmart is offering 75 percent off all of its diamond earrings and $60 off a 12-in-1 multigame table on sale for $89.99.

Retailers are hoping the deals will appeal to shoppers like Matt Sexton, 39, who for the first time plans to complete all of his holiday shopping online this year on his iPad tablet computer. Sexton, who plans to spend up to $4,000 this season, already shopped online on the day after Thanksgiving known as Black Friday and found a laptop from Best Buy for $399, a $200 savings, among other deals.

"The descriptions and reviews are so much better online so you can compare and price shop and for the most part get free shipping," said Sexton, who lives in Queens, N.Y., and is a manager at a utility company.

Sexton also said that it's easier to return an online purchase to a physical store than it had been in previous years. "That helps with gifts," he said.

How well retailers fare on Cyber Monday will offer insight into Americans' evolving shopping habits during the holiday shopping season, a time when stores can make up to 40 percent of their annual revenue. With the growth in high speed Internet access and the wide use of smartphones and tablets, people are relying less on their work computers to shop than they did when Shop.org, the digital division of trade group The National Retail Federation, introduced the term "Cyber Monday."

"People years ago didn't have ... connectivity to shop online at their homes. So when they went back to work after Thanksgiving they'd shop on the Monday after," said Vicki Cantrell, executive director of Shop.org. "Now they don't need the work computer to be able to do that."

As a result, the period between Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday has become busy for online shopping as well. Indeed, online sales on Thanksgiving Day, traditionally not a popular day for online shopping, rose 32 percent over last year to $633 million, according to comScore. And online sales on Black Friday were up 26 percent from the same day last year, to $1.042 billion. It was the first time online sales on Black Friday surpassed $1 billion.

For the holiday season-to-date, comScore found that $13.7 billion has been spent online, marking a 16 percent increase over last year. The research firm predicts that online sales will surpass 10 percent of total retail spending this holiday season. The National Retail Federation estimates that overall retail sales in November and December will be up 4.1 percent this year to $586.1 billion

But as other days become popular for online shopping, Cyber Monday may lose some of its cache. To be sure, Cyber Monday hasn't always been the biggest online shopping day. In fact, up until three years ago, that title was historically earned by the last day shoppers could order items with standard shipping rates and get them delivered before Christmas. That day changes every year, but usually falls in late December.

Even though Cyber Monday is expected to be the biggest shopping day this year, industry watchers say it could just be a matter of time before other days take that ranking.

"Of all the benchmark spending days, Thanksgiving is growing at the fastest rate, up 128 percent over the last five years," said Andrew Lipsman, a spokesman with comScore.

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E-Hall, T-ville in final

Erasmus Hall and Tottenville will play after all.

The PSAL football rivals, scheduled to meet in the final week of the regular season beforeHurricane Sandy hit, will face each other Dec. 4 at Yankee Stadium for the coveted title after convincing PSAL City Championship division semifinal victories yesterday.

No. 1 Erasmus Hall, last year's runnerup, throttled No. 7 Curtis, 286, behind three touchdown runs from Jonathan Samerson and another from Curtis Samuel, who scoredona74yarddash to pay dirt and ran for over 100 yards on the ground.

No. 2 Tottenville ousted defending champion and fourthseeded Lincoln, 218, on Staten Island. The Pirates, knocked out in the semifinals the past two years, got three touchdown passes from Brandon Barnes, two to Kevin Coughlin, and picked off Lincoln quarterback Javon Moore four times. Moore did throw a scoring strike to Darnell Phillips.

Though the two teams did not meet this year, they saw one another in the semifinals a year ago, when Erasmus Hall rallied for an overtime victory. The latest chapter in the rivalry will have even more at stake.

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Green Bay in way as Giants try to snap annual skid

What we know now about these Giants and what we know soon after now will mean all the difference.

By around midnight Sunday night, the Giants either will have shown themselves to be a worthy contender in the NFC playoff chase, or else living on fumes off last year's Super Bowl triumph.

They are rested and healthier than they have been in weeks, in first place in the NFC East, riding a two-game losing streak, playing at home, brimming with incentive and talking up this six-game closing stretch with all the proper urgency.

The challenge of facing the Packers always is immense, but if the Giants aren't up to it, if they continue to go 0-for-November, what's to say they are going to awaken any time soon?

Getty Images

Aaron Rodgers

"Dallas is right on our tails. We know what our schedule is like the rest of the way,'' Justin Tuck said. "They're coming in our house, Sunday night football, the whole world gonna be watching. This is probably a team, if everything goes right, we'll see again in the playoffs, hopefully. We both are fighting for positions in the playoff race.

"We've played [shoddy] football the past couple weeks. We really would like to swing this momentum back in our favor. We really like to come out this football game feeling very confident about where we are as a football team heading into the rest of the schedule. It will be a great measuring stick for our football team to see exactly where we are.''

A look inside the game:

BEST BATTLE

Packers LT Marshall Newhouse vs. Giants DE Jason Pierre-Paul. Newhouse has started every game, but he hardly is a franchise left tackle. Last season, his first as an NFL starter, he allowed eight sacks and eight quarterback hits, according to Pro Football Focus. Newhouse is greatly improved but figures to need help here. Pierre-Paul has shown flashes but, unlike 2011, hasn't had that "wow'' game, yet.

HIT THE SACK

The Giants used to get all the pub about being a feared defensive front, but it's the Packers who come in as the masters, as their 33 sacks is second only to the Broncos' 35. Actually, it's not the Green Bay front that is applying the pressure, as LB Clay Matthews leads the Pack with nine sacks — no one else on the team has more than three. That's why the absence of Matthews to a hamstring injury is so huge. He cannot be replaced, so the Giants catch a big, big break.

ELI SAYS HELLO AFTER BYE

Naturally, Eli Manning says he hasn't given his remarkable post-bye success any thought, but it's real and it's spectacular. In his past four games coming off the regular-season bye week, he has thrown 10 touchdowns and only one interception. He hasn't had a vintage performance in more than a month, hasn't compiled a quarterback rating above 78.9 in five games and hasn't thrown in a scoring pass in three straight games for the first time since he was a rookie.

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