BACK BLAST & other hot gases.

THEY CALL HIM "THE FLASH"

Constables in North Hamptonshire, England, say their latest robbery suspect would have gotten away clean from his last heist if he could have hot-footed it from the scene. With no one to stop the daring desperado, it was just a matter of making a fast exit followed by a dash down a side alley. As it was, the best the sinister thug could manage was a kinda shuffle and the bobbies arrived before he made it to the street.

The velocity-challenged suspect was an unidentified 70-year-old man who moseyed into Huxlow School and stuck up the headmaster, taking his wallet and accessories. Aside from his slightly-advanced age, the suspect also appeared to be extremely arthritic, so it took him "considerable effort" just to get turned around and headed back out the door. About three minutes and thirty paces later, the cops screamed up, gently removed the chap's plastic toy pistol from his shaking hand, and led him quietly off to the slammer.

At last report, Scotland Yard was checking to see if this was the last episode in a career of crime, or just a late-in-life occupation change.

Ace Idiots Visit Friendly Mexican Jail

Of course, when a dope deal in El Centro, Calif., goes sour, you might expect the sellers to murder the prospective buyer, rip off his bucks and keep the dope anyway. This is what unlicensed pharmaceutical distributors call "maximizing your long-term profit margin." But there wasn't any "long-term" about it.

Transitioning smoothly from murderous to stupid, our two gringo idiots then decided to drive the body across the Mexican border and dump the deceased in Tecate, where another body more or less ain't hardly noticeable. Apparently the U.S. authorities felt this vehicle fit the "drug-running, stupid-killers" profile, and tried to wave 'em over. Showing some real Advanced Stupid, ace idiots hit the gas and crashed the border, with the Mexican Federales in cap-poppin', tommy-gunning hot pursuit.

Finally, our homeboys abandoned their perforated Plymouth and fled into a semi-quiet residential neighborhood, where they tried to hide out in a shed. Too bad, the shed was padlocked. But then they approached the resident, an elderly man watering his lawn, and asked him if he had the key. He said he did. They asked him if he would please lock them inside for a while, and please, please, don't, uh, mention this to any nosy Federales. The old man agreed, and locked 'em up.

About 10 minutes later the Federales indeed dropped by and asked the old fellow, still watering his lawn, if he had seen any gringos hotfooting it through the area. "Si, senors," he told them. "They are locked up there in my shed." You can guess the rest. Both guys made full confessions, and are currently begging to be extradited and imprisoned in the U.S. Make that "begging and pleading and crying and whining and..."

If You're Gonna Deal in Guns, Have One Handy

Just another warning to folks already high in the "Smart & 'Lert" category comes to us from the National Shooting Club, a gun store and public range in Santa Clara, Calif. In early July, a 21-year-old whacko came in, managed to display enough normalcy to rent a 9mm semi-auto carbine, popped some rounds at paper targets, then flipped out and tried for the big leagues.

A spokesman for SCPD said Richard Gable Stevens came in with his own seige-load of ammo after writing a suicide letter in which he announced his plans to kill as many people as possible before being shot down himself. Thanks to one armed and alert range employee, he never got the chance.

Stevens came back to the range office after a bit of trigger time, fired shots through the ceiling, then herded three employees out into the back alley, telling them he was going to kill all of them. As soon as one of the intended victims had a clear shot and a good backdrop with no innocents in the line of fire, he swept his own .45 auto from under his shirt and capped "several rounds" into Stevens' chest, putting him down.

Our Back-Alley Avenger held his roscoe on the still-breathing Stevens until Santa Clara police arrived. Stevens could still move his arms, so when he refused to comply with a cop's orders to show his hands, officers capped several non-lethal but painful rubber bullets into him. He's in a hospital in critical condition. SCPD said it was obvious from Stevens' note that he planned to kill a large number of people.

Okay, Hand Over All The Stuffed Dolls

Another routine robbery in the Los Angeles area, ho-hum. Here comes the suspect, bursting through the door in a ski mask, waving the mandatory "big black automatic pistol" and ordering everyone to lie face down on the floor. How pedestrian, yes?

Not quite. This robbery went down at the trendy "Aahs" toy store in Sherman Oaks, and the dude didn't want the dough, he wanted the Beanie Babies, and only the most collectable ones, at that. Demanding the most sought-after Beanie Baby stuffed dolls by model name, our armed collector passed up the contents of the till, other expensive toys, and even the watches and wallets of seven well-heeled customers to load up on 42 Beanie Babies with a street value of about $5,000.

Sgt. Roy VanDuyne of LAPD's Van Nuys station caught the case, lucky guy. Even if he catches the culprit, how much bragging value does a toy thief get you in the coffee shop?

"I didn't even know what a Beanie Baby was until today," Sgt. VanDuyne told reporters. We bet he wishes he still didn't know.