Reading comprehension- sample paper

ISFD Nº 24 – PRUEBA DE SUFICIENCIA 2012 

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READING COMPREHENSION

The pizza order, the bomb collar, and the bank job that went wrong

By David Usborne from The Independent – New York

Wednesday 13 October 2010

It was the crime that felt more like a scene from a Tarantino film than real life in western Pennsylvania. A man is fitted with a bomb collar and forced to rob a bank before it goes off. Except that the police catch up with him after the robbery. They call in the bomb squad, but they are too slow. The device detonates.
Seven years after the events of 28 August 2003 at the PNC bank in the city of Erie, jury selection began yesterday in the trial of the woman described by prosecutors as their instigator. Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong, 61, they allege, orchestrated the robbery because she needed cash for a hit-man to kill her estranged father.
Ms Diehl-Armstrong is accused of arranging for someone else to order pizzas, rig their victim with the bomb when he arrived with the food, and force him to rob the bank. She was then to stop the time bomb.
But things went wrong. When the victim, Brian Wells, a 46-year-old pizza delivery man, entered the bank, he told the bank clerk that his walking stick was a disguised gun and showed her the bomb locked around his neck. But instead of collecting $250,000 as planned, he took just $8,702.
It was then that the police intercepted. He collapsed to his knees in a car park and shouted that he was not responsible for the robbery, but had been coerced. "I'm not lying," he cried. "I'm not doing this. This isn't me." Before the bomb experts could get there, the device went off and Mr Wells was killed instantly.
The defence team, led by Douglas Sughrue, faces additional difficulties. Ms Diehl-Armstrong has already admitted to killing two boyfriends and is serving a 20-year prison term for the killing of the second man because he knew too much about the bank plot.
Moreover, the hit-man she intended to hire, Kenneth Barnes, 56, has already pleaded guilty to his role in the robbery and the death of Mr Wells. He is serving a 45-year prison term and is expected to be the government's key witness at the upcoming trial.
Court papers show that the defence will manage to have the defendant declared mentally incompetent. However, she has been declared competent, narrowing the options for the defence. Mr Sughrue is expected to argue that while she was not insane, Ms Diehl-Armstrong, in the flurry of murdering her boyfriend and plotting the murder of her father, could not at the same time have planned the bank job. He will also make the case that she had lost the ability to tell right from wrong.

1-      Pre-reading task

Where is the article from?

Who wrote it?

2-      Explain in what way these people were involved

Kenneth Barnes

Mr Sughrue

Brian Wells

3-      Choose the correct option

The robbery was not successful because

a-      Wells told the clerk that he had a gun and a bomb

b-      The bomb exploded before the police could dismantle it

c-       He stole less money than Ms Diehl-Armstrong had planned

4-      Questions on the text

a-      What did Ms Diehl-Armstrong need the money for?

b-      Explain using your own words: “He will also make the case that she had lost the ability to tell right from wrong.”