Evil ninjas terrorise Pittsburgh

A spate of mysterious crimes carried out by ninjas has left Pittsburghers annoyed and confused. In the latest event, a sword-wielding ninja smashed 11 cars in South Union Township, PA. and tried to stab a man who confronted him, say police. Santino Guzzo said he heard glass breaking, found the ninja hiding in a yard, and was cut in the hand during the ensuing ninja escape. "He was like a gazelle that just got attacked by a lion," Guzzo told the Pittsburgh Trib. "He got up and fell, and got up and fell. Then he jumped off a cliff."Guzzo reported that he "did not move with the grace typically associated with a ninja" and that he therefore "will not live in fear of the ninja's return." WTAE news, quoting neighbor Chelsey Cunningham, said the ninja also left behind "like, a fifth of liquor." A few weeks ago in Scottdale, PA, a man was charged with child endangerment after leaving his 4-year old child at home alone. Police insist that Ross Hurst, 28, was dressed in ninja garb when approached. Hurst denies being a ninja and says it was all a misunderstanding. "I wasn't playing ninja," Hurst told WPXI news. "I wasn't playing anything. I went out for a jog." Not long ago, two sword-wielding ninjas robbed a gas station in Richland Township, PA, taking with them cash, cigarettes and lottery tickets. "It did appear they were dressed like ninjas," said local police chief Robert Amman. Local businessman Rick Lekki reported that it happened just across from his bar. "It's shocking. Things like that just don't happen out here. I just can't believe it happened," Lekki told a local news affilliate, narrowing his eyes as a menacing, discordant note escaped an unseen shakuhachi flute.

• [knoxblox]

  Drunken Master + Ninja Warrior = Drunken Ninja Master-Warrior.

  *Hic* Ffffuckyeah.

• [Lobster]

  “Me” is to “Ninja” as “Lion” is to “Gazelle?”

  Pretty bold statement to make. One that might result in ninja attacks.

• [Anonymous]

  He was like a gazelle
  that just got attacked by a lion,
  (Don’t fear the ninja.)

  He got up and fell,
  (Don’t fear the ninja.)
  and got up and fell.
  (Don’t fear the ninja.)

  Then he jumped off a cliff.
  (Don’t fear the ninja.)

  [Excessive cow bell solo]

• [Xander Crews]

  Get April O’Neil on this story, pronto!

• [straponego]

  Ever since the EPA banned the good ninja spray…

• [grimc]

  Consider Pittsburgh’s baseball team, and it’s clear this was bound to happen.

  • [t3knomanser]

    Hey! The Pirates are over .500. So far. I mean, that’s better than last year! Where were the ninja then?

    • [Will/Nobilis]

      Remember, ninja have this habit of going unseen. . .so they were everywhere then. These guys must be amateurs. . .yeah.

• [Anonymous]

  Now we know what Sidney Crosby’s been doing with all his spare time.

• [Boondocker]

  To paraphrase Miller: “Guns are the weapons of the enemy. We do not need them. We will not use them. Our weapons are annoying — confusing. In time, I will teach them to you. Tonight, you will rely on your sword — and your booze.”

• [thatbob]

  First pirates then zombies now evil ninjas? What is Pittsburgh, the Land of the the Living Internet?

  • [Drew from Zhrodague]

    Yes, thatbob, Pittsburgh can be pretty bizarre. Dig deep enough, and Pittsburgh is the San Francisco of the rust belt. Sorta.

• [diracshard]

  Hilarious writing on this post, btw. Particularly the bit with the flute.

• [Anonymous]

  Cos play, CMU computer science dept. Nuff said.

• [The Irreverend]

  Hey wait a minute… I’m in Pittsburgh and also have an assortment of ninja stuff. I think its time to go batman it up.

  • [n1gh75h4d3]

    dammit, you beat me to it.
    even though i do live a considerable distance from pittsburgh, and school starts up again tomorrow. or today, i should say, as it’s currently 1:20 in the morning.

• [Familiar]

  These ninjas are so good that even though I live in Pittsburgh, I was unaware until boing boing spilled the goods.

• [Antinous / Moderator]

  My entire perception of Pittsburgh is formed by five seasons of Queer As Folk. Ninjas don’t seem particularly improbable in a city consisting of nothing but gay bars, sex clubs and rehab facilities.

  • [inkyblue2]

    the bad news is that queer as folk was filmed in toronto. the good news is that there are, in fact, plenty of gay bars on liberty avenue. i think there were four at the time; pegasus has since closed.

    thatbob, don’t forget: we also have lots of robots.

    • [thatbob]

      OMG you have robots too??!? That’s it, my monkeys and I are coming over to Pittsburgh to look for unicorns.

    • [Blaine]

      Alright, there’s about 3 gay bars on Liberty Ave.

      Images, There and the recently moved and renovated Pegasus. I hate the fact that I know that, but all the girls from work go to the gay bars and I go where the women go.

      I prefer the term “Paris of Appalachia” over “San Francisco of The Rust Belt”, although we do have steeper streets than San Francisco.

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canton_Avenue

      It’s just amazing fun to watch people try to bike up it.

• [DrOrbitalDeathRay]

  Rampant ninja related crimes these days… Is Whitehouse the exception?

• [MWR]

  Question: did any of them express a love for pizza and smell like a sewer?

• [BastardNamban]

  Antinous, I have never seen Queer As Folk- but I can tell you I know of only one gay bar in the city, Pegasus (as they also host a smashing industrial night, or used to), no sex clubs at all- one strip bar, and maybe a rehab facility?

  It’s really a pretty boring town, unless you’re in South Oakland on a Friday/Saturday night to watch countless people pissing in public/getting arrested outside more bars per foot than anywhere else in the US, or so it seems.

  The ninja on the news in Uniontown was hilarious, though. Nobody seems to explained to the foo that it has never been proven ninja historically used swords!

• [Derek C. F. Pegritz]

  Well, originally the ninjas were brought in to help the Pittsburgh local and Pennsylvania State Police deal with piracy on the Monongahela, Allegheny, and Ohio rivers in the mid-1980s. Unfortunately, they mistook the Pirates baseball team for their targets, and have been lurking around killing the Bucs’ best prospects–hence the reason the Pirates have sucked for the past twenty years.

  In the 1990s, the Pittsburgh Police attempted to get the ninjas off the Pirates’ backs by offering them a more lucrative contract to handle Pittsburgh’s zombie problem. Unfortunately, zombies are really slow, really stupid, and not much of a threat at all: the ninjas just rounded them up, drove them towards Monroeville, and trapped them in the local Mall, wherein they didst take their time chopping heads off for a straight 15 hours. The zombie problem was taken care of, and the ninjas returned to their depredations of the Bucs.

  Late last year, the ninjas finally grew tired of stalking the Pirates’ draft picks and turned to petty crime in an attempt to remain active in the city. In March, the Pittsburgh City Council okayed a joint proposal from Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center to bioengineer a task force of highly-trained turtles to “fight the ninjas on their own footing.” We’ll see how this turns out.

• [Anonymous]

  Somewhat OT, but in the segment at WTAE News, the reporter uses her cell phone at :14 to show an image of a ninja.
  At least you’d never see that in a newspaper.

• [Aknaton]

  “It’s shocking. Things like that just don’t happen out here.” I mean, this isn’t Israel.

  Seriously, where DOES he think such events are commonplace?

• [Nadreck]

  Probably just some losers from the RNC (Rival Ninja Clan).

• [Anonymous]

  if it wasn’t for the taxes and no jobs, i love pittsburgh area.
  i moved to fla where it makes the city area seem sane. miss the area, but not the taxes, lack of jobs, and cold.

• [Anonymous]

  Well, whats funny about this for me is that its actually fitting a pattern along with all those silly vigilante style “masked heroes”.

• [Rob Beschizza]

  Apparently Queer as Folk hyped up the gay scene in Pittsburgh way beyond what was actually true, but Pittsburgh has a sex club so gay it comes up with a nice convenient google map when you google for ‘pittsburgh gay sex club’

• [Shart Tsung]

  Western PA is a very weird region. I don’t think it’s so much that there are a lot of gays, just a lot of folks that will hump anything with a pulse(read: they f*** animals too).

  Ben Roethlisberger is actually a typical Western PA person.

  • [hassenpfeffer]

    Ben Roethlisberger is actually a typical Western PA person.

    Um, except for the fact that he’s from northern Ohio.

    Typical Pittsburgh people:
    – Randy Pausch
    – Jonas Salk
    – Fred Rogers
    – David Conrad (http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/11114/1141290-294-0.stm)

    One of the cool things about the Pittsburgh area is that you can drive from city to country in about 15 minutes. The not-so-cool part to that is that the country folk can be seriously whackadoo.

• [Agies]

  I love this city.

• [Anonymous]

  I lived in Pittsburgh (well, actually Mt St Clair, but I worked in Pittsburgh) back in the early 1990s. I vaguely remember reading a story about a man attacked by a katana-wielding assailant, close to where the “Mr Rogers’ Neighborhood” used to be taped.

  So, I suppose Pittsburgh’s had a ninja terrorism issue for at least two decades.

• [MadRat]

  I’ll bet Madara Uchiha is behind this.

• [Anonymous]

  i live in the burgh, and i have’nt seen one of these idiots yet.

• [Anonymous]

  As a general rule Ninjas dont leave living witnesses. I am curious as to what type of swords were used as well as what other weapons. It would seem to me that this is a distraction technique.

• [Anonymous]

  And there’s even a t-shirt for Santino…sheesh: http://www.cafepress.com/SharpFool.529666802

• [Andy Rofl]

  I know what this is: http://tmnt.wikia.com/wiki/Foot_Clan

• [Snakefarmer]

  Dang, it sounds like a good time for a vacation in Pittsburgh! I’ve never seen a real ninja, and Pittsburgh is probably as close as I’m gonna get to one, given my limited budget.

• [BK]

  Maybe the ninjas can help with the damn stink bug invasion here in Pittsburgh. They seem even bigger and noisier than last year.