Police have charged a New Jersey mother who allegedly lied and said her son was suffering from cancer in order to deceive friends and loved ones out of thousands of dollars.

Investigators say Susan Stillwagon, 35, stole as much as $3,500 through cupcake and bracelet fundraisers by claiming that her 9-year-old son had a type of lymphoma and needed medical care.

"You tell people your son has cancer and they want to help," said Police Lieutenant Michael Probasco in Pennsauken, N.J.

Police got a tip earlier this week that Stillwagon’s story about her son wasn’t adding up. Investigators subpoenaed medical records and discovered she had been lying.

Probasco says Stillwagon even convinced her son he was sick to carry out the scheme.

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The suspect’s mother, who did not tell NBC10.com her name, says that her daughter is being treated at a local hospital.

“I will just tell you my daughter is sick and something snapped in her head. That’s why she is where she is so that we can find out what’s wrong with her,” said Stillwagon’s mother. “I am very concerned for my daughter, very concerned. We will get through this but people have to leave us alone or we will never get through it.”

New Jersey’s Division of Youth and Families checked on Stillwagon's four children Tuesday.

“They came to make sure the house is livable, food in fridge and that the kids aren't being mistreated and they didn’t find any of that,” said Lieutenant Michael Probasco.

Tamara Disalvo, a neighbor, says her thoughts are with the little boy.

“Just as a friend and neighbor you do feel deceived by this. He must be pretty confused because of he was deceived this way by his mother, that’s got to feel awful,” said Disalvo.

Stillwagon was charged with theft by deception and using her own son to commit a crime.

Stephanie O'Connell / NBC Connecticut

Shattered windows at the Dunkin' Donuts on East Main Street in New Britain. According to police, a 63-year-old man smashed them with an ax after being told he couldn't stay in the store.

A man angry about being sent away from a Connecticut Dunkin' Donuts came back wielding an ax.

Wilfred Levine, 63, of New Britain, Conn., was loitering inside the Dunkin' Donuts at 118 East Main Street, New Britain, Wednesday afternoon, according to police. 

Employees of the restaurant told Levine to leave and escorted him out.

Levine returned a short time later with an ax, police said. He jumped the counter and said he was looking for the two employees who sent him away, according to police.

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Levine began to demolish the inside of the store with the ax, before he walked outside and smashed the restaurant's plate-glass windows.

According to police, Levine raised his ax at the first officer to arrive at the scene. The officer drew his weapon and ordered Levine to drop the ax.

Levine refused, and officers used a stun gun to subdue him.

Levine faces charges of criminal attempt to commit assault, criminal attempt to commit assault on police, criminal mischief, criminal trespass, possession of a dangerous weapon, breach of peace, reckless endangerment and interfering with police. He is being held on $750,000 bond.

A fire-spitting effect was removed from the Lyric Opera of Chicago's production of “Die Meistersinger von Nurenberg" on Monday after a stilt walker was seriously burned during a dress rehearsal.

Despite his flameproof costume and mask, fire-blowing actor Wesley Daniel suffered second-degree burns to his face and throat while performing in front of an audience.

Daniel staggered away and collapsed just off stage. A stage manager with a fire extinguisher then put out spots of flame onstage.

"I don't think he closed his mouth quick enough, so the fire, the stuff in his mouth, came on his clothes and so did the fire, and it also dribbled all over the floor so we saw a line of fire across the stage," said audience member Karen Avgush. "And then I think he was trying to quickly get off the stage, and I think he was moving too quickly with everybody in the way, so he fell really hard off the stilts."

First responders responded to the theater, at 20. N. Wacker Dr., shortly before 5 p.m. and took the actor to Northwestern Memorial Hospital on advanced life support, officials said.

"It was really scary and nerve-wracking, and we were just all really nervous for what was going to happen to him," said child actor Mia Rehwaldt, who was on stage with Daniel when he caught fire.

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Opera spokesperson Magda Krance said the 24-year-old Daniel suffered blistering around his mouth but said his injury didn't appear to be serious.

Fire officials later said Daniel had second degree burns.

He was being treated at Loyola Hospital on Monday night.

The effect had been approved by the Chicago Fire Department, Krance said. 

Last week, another performer had experienced a lesser mishap attempting the same trick, part of a festival scene on the crowded Lyric stage.

Several hundred people made up the audience. The mishap occurred about 30 minutes prior to the end of the five-and-a-half-hour performance.

The incident halted the performance for about 45 minutes before it resumed. Still, the audience missed out on the last few minutes of the show because of a union-mandated break for the 81-member orchestra.

A couple with four children were shot and killed in an argument over dog feces on Monday, police in Texas said.

Officers were called to a shooting at the Sable Ridge Apartments in Dallas at about 8 a.m. Monday.

When officers arrived, they found two people, later identified as 32-year-old Michelle Jackson and 31-year-old Jamie Stafford, dead at the scene from apparent gunshot wounds.  An infant inside the couple's apartment was not injured.

After talking with witnesses, police began searching for Chung Kim, a resident of the complex identified by residents as a man who lived in the unit below Stafford and Jackson and was seen leaving the complex after the shooting.

Police later located Kim in his black Lexus SUV nearby and took him into custody.

Investigators said the couple had been dumping dog feces on the patio and at the front door of Kim's apartment.

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Police said Kim pulled out a gun and shot Jackson as she stood on her balcony. Police said Kim then went upstairs and into the couple's apartment and shot Stafford as he jumped off the balcony while trying to escape. 

Police said Kim then stood over Stafford and shot him again.

Residents said they heard arguing followed by several gunshots.

"I heard about eight or nine gunshots just go off, ‘Bow, bow, bow,’ like three separate times,” said resident Michael Issa. “It was like, first there was two or three, then there was a pause for like 30 or 40 seconds and then there was another three or four shots, and there was a pause, and a couple more shots

"I waited for like three or four minutes and I ain't hear nothing. I came outside to smoke a cigarette and look upstairs and there's feet hanging over my head," he added.

A friend of the victim said there had been several arguments over pets and noise.

One neighbor, Yoland Washington, spoke of the couple's children, including the infant who was home at the time of the shooting.

"When they come home today, their mother and their father is gone. Little baby, they call the newborn Little Mama, Little Mama is not going to never know her parents,” said Washington.

Child protection officer Marissa Gonzales said they had taken temporary custody of a one-month-old child found unharmed inside the apartment and that three other children who were at school at the time of the shooting are now with relatives.

Keaton Fox, Greg Janda and Stefan Gorman, NBC5, contributed to this report.

Police in South Los Angeles are trying to figure out why someone left a pair of old military grenades in the backyard fire pit of a house.

The new owner of a home in the 400-block of 70th Street was doing some cleaning and happened upon the rusted explosives, said Omar Bazulto, the watch commander at the Los Angeles Police Department's Newton Division.

The pins, which trigger grenades to blow up, were still intact.

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Officers evacuated a 300-foot area around the house shortly after noon on Sunday, when the explosives were discovered.

It was not immediately clear how old the grenades were, of if the ammunition inside was still live.

The department's bomb squad planned to detonate the grenades on site on Sunday.

CLEVELAND, Ohio - Humane society members wearing protective masks removed nearly 300 animals including pigeons, chickens and rabbits from an Ohio man's reeking house this week.

Most of the animals are expected to survive including some that were sick, Sheila Marquis, an officer with the Humane Society of Dayton, Ohio, told Reuters on Saturday.

Workers on Thursday took away 60 pigeons, chickens and roosters from the house in Huber Heights, a suburb of Dayton. They returned the following day for 223 animals including 100 pigeons and 30 rabbits.

The sheer number of pigeons, which can carry airborne diseases, created a health hazard inside the house, Marquis said.

Authorities were tipped off by complaints about a stench coming from the property.

The animals' owner, who has not been identified, was very cooperative and knowledgeable about the birds, which included homing pigeons, Marquis said.

She said she thinks he just got overwhelmed taking care of so many animals.

"He told us he took some animals from other people and other pigeon organizations. That's how the cycle happens. He kept getting more birds and building more cages," Marquis said.

The man will be allowed to keep two dogs and some cats living in the house.

There was no word on whether he will be charged with animal neglect or abuse, a misdemeanor for the first offense in Ohio. Huber Heights has a ban on farm animals but does not limit the number of pets residents can own.

Authorities at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport are holding up a shipment of 18 human heads meant to be used in anatomical research at a facility in the Chicago suburbs, local media reported.

The heads arrived from Rome just before Christmas, and officials initially said an issue with paperwork caused the hold-up, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. But the newspaper reported Tuesday that authorities stopped the shipment from going through because it was headed to a facility that is under investigation.

According to an anonymous source quoted by the Sun-Times, the investigation itself is “absolutely not” connected to the shipment of the heads.

A spokeswoman for the Cook County Medical Examiner's Office, Mary Paleologos, told The Associated Press the heads were now being held in containers at the Cook County morgue.

The heads, shipped from a legitimate facility in Italy, were properly embalmed, wrapped and tagged as human specimens, Paleologos told the AP. There is no suggestion of foul play, she added.

The heads, still covered in skin, were found Monday at the airport.

“There’s no issue with the transportation of body parts for medical purposes,” Brian Bell, a spokesman with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, told the Sun-times. “There’s nothing against the law that says you cannot ship them, provided you have the right documentation.

“Everybody here is ‘Oh my gosh, you got a box of heads’ and everybody thinks that it’s unheard of,” Bell added. “It is a potentially legitimate medical shipment. We’ve seen it at various ports in the nation.”

It is hard for some to believe, but even as some Americans dream of hitting it big in the Lotto, Powerball, and Megamillions jackpots, for some it might have happened and whizzed by unnoticed.

"Happens all the time," says Illinois Lottery chief Michael Jones. "People misinterpret whether they won or lost. People misplace tickets all the time."

Jones said the lottery estimates about one percent of all lottery prizes go unclaimed. And, considering the Illinois games raked in about $3 billion last year, he estimates about $2 million a month find no takers.

"They look to see whether they won the big prize, and then they discard the ticket," he said.

Indeed, right now there are some whoppers looking for a home: $750,000 in Megamillions winnings, along with a $6.5 million lotto winner from last August. There are $845,833 in combined winning tickets in the Lucky Day Lotto game. And there is even a million dollar winner from the millionaire raffle last March.

In some cases, unclaimed winnings are tied up in court. Right now, there is an ongoing dispute among employees at a Chicago Heights bakery over a $118 million windfall. Some of those employees contend they were squeezed out of an office pool which they all routinely play.

But in many cases, people simply don’t know that they’ve won.

Take Ron Yurcus for example. The hospice chaplain routinely played various lottery games but failed to check the Powerball ticket he bought last August. For three months.

Then, in November, Yurcus was cleaning his desk and found the ticket. He decided he should check the numbers before throwing it away. And, left to right, as each one matched, his eyes got bigger.

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"When I saw that number one, with all those zeroes after it, I just about fell over," Yurcus said. "Thinking, this isn’t real. This isn’t me. This can’t be happening."

He said he waited until his wife came home, sat her down, opened a bottle of wine, and broke the news that they had just won a million dollars. And that they had done so, three months earlier.

"Of course, we didn’t sleep that night," she said. "And it was like, 'Oh my gosh, we’ve had this treasure in our house for two months!'"

Most unclaimed tickets are, in actuality, small prizes of a few dollars or more. But those add up to millions every year. After 365 days, lottery prizes expire and are reclaimed into an unclaimed prize fund, the money used for various state purposes and additional jackpots.

Jones, the lottery director, says the state’s hope is that more people will avail themselves of his agency’s new online games. Those, he says, are foolproof.

If you win, they contact you.

"It’s the first time there will be no unclaimed prizes," he said. "We will inform you when you’ve won, and we will send you the money."

Victims of a number of recent heists on the Chicago Transit Authority's Pink Line say one of their robbers is so tall his head almost touched the top of the train.

In the eight days between Dec. 10 and Dec. 18, there were four robberies, police said.

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Each time, two men would grab someone's phone just as the train approached a station, jump out as the doors closed and run away.

The men were described as being between the ages of 20 and 30 years old. One of them was about six feet tall. The other man, witnesses said, was more than seven feet tall.