Police raid Lawrence school superintendent's office

A self-described street alcoholic known as “the Stomper’’ has been charged with assault and battery and ordered held on $5,000 cash bail in Boston Municipal Court for allegedly assaulting another homeless man, Suffolk District Attorney Daniel F. Conley said yesterday. Police took Dennis Connolly, 58, into custody last weekend for the alleged beating of a 43-year-old man on May 18 on Ipswich Street, Conley said. During his arraignment Monday, Judge Sally Kelly also revoked Connolly’s bail on an earlier malicious destruction of property charge. Last year, a Suffolk Superior Court jury acquitted Connolly of assault with a dangerous weapon and witness intimidation, Conley said. In 2005, Connolly served nine months for assault and battery with a dangerous weapon after attacking a 48-year-old homeless man. The man later died.

A former Lowell police officer has been found guilty of intimidating a bookie into forgiving his gambling debt. Prosecutors say David Annis, 33, was convicted yesterday by a judge of extortion, keeping a place for registering bets, unauthorized access to a computer system, and unlawfully obtaining criminal offender records. The Middlesex district attorney’s office requested a three- to four-year prison sentence, but a judge fined Annis $12,000. Authorities say Annis ran up $5,000 in debt to a Westford bookmaker. When they met to settle the debt, Annis showed his badge and suggested he was investigating gambling cases. He told the bookmaker he wouldn’t be arrested, and the money was not paid. Annis’s lawyer did not immediately return a call. (AP)

Officials say an anonymous donor has stepped forward with a $12,000 gift to keep Attleboro’s four public pools open all summer. Because of budget cuts, the Recreation Department’s pool budget came up about $13,500 short, meaning that the pools would have had to shut down early this summer. (AP)

Police have accused a driver of running over a mother duck as she was walking with 12 ducklings in a shopping mall parking lot. The driver told police he didn’t see the ducks at the Dartmouth Mall and he left the scene because witnesses were yelling at him. The 25-year-old Acushnet man, whom police have not publicly named, could face animal cruelty charges. (AP)

Stories by satirist David Sedaris, crime author Laura Lippman, Stephen King, and Ernest Hemingway were pulled from a school’s curriculum after parents complained. Campbell High School principal Bob Manseau said he removed the teacher-chosen stories from a reading list. Lippman’s “The Crack Cocaine Diet’’ includes explicit sexual language. King’s “Survivor Type’’ features a surgeon stranded on a deserted island who amputates his limbs for food. Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants’’ is about a couple’s debate over abortion. Parents objected to Sedaris’s “I Like Boys’’ because they don’t want their children learning about homosexuality in school. (AP)