Weird News: Volume One
OH THOSE COPS!!
- At a high-school basketball game in February, Oklahoma City Police officer Eldridge Wyatt became dissatisfied that no fouls were being called on "No. 21" and walked onto the court to point out the player's elbowing to the referees. When referee Stan Guffey told Wyatt to leave the officiating to him, Wyatt arrested Guffey. Guffey was unarrested a few minutes later so that the game could continue, but when a reporter asked Wyatt after the game what had happened, Wyatt tried to arrest him, too.
PAY ATTENTION DUDES!
- Lynne F. Herron, 33, was hired recently as a municipal bus driver in Cleveland by the Regional Transit Authority. She had just been fired as a municipal train driver after an accident that injured 14 people, which she caused by deliberately disengaging a safety system. The city's labor contract requires that anyone fired for a train accident be rehired as a bus driver.
- A West Chester, Pa., urologist reported in an issue of `Medical Aspects of Human Sexuality' last year that a man had checked himself into an emergency room with pain resulting from a swollen and apparently lacerated scrotum. Days after the doctor repaired the patient's condition, the man confided that he had been masturbating by holding his penis against the canvas drive-belt of a piece of machinery at work during his lunch hour when he leaned too close as he approached orgasm and suffered an industrial accident. He then used a heavy duty stapling gun to close the wound.
- Motorcyclist David Gripon was injured in a collision near Escondito, Calif., in July when he lost control of his bike on Interstate 15. As Gripon came alongside a car with bare feet sticking out of the passenger window, he reached out to tickle them and ran into the car in front of him.
- Montesano, Wash., government prosecutor Steward Menefee announced in November that he would not seek a tougher penalty against convicted murderer Lee Bake, because the required "aggravated circumstances" were not present. Bake had gouged the victim's eyes with a screwdriver, stabbed her to death, and drunk her blood.
- Malaysian Deputy Interior Minister Megat Junid Ayob told an anti-drug conference in January in Kuala Lampur that shortages in heroin and cannabis have caused some addicts to get high by sniffing fresh cow dung. Addicts put a coconut shell over the party, with a hole at the top for sniffing.
- Recently in a New York City supermarket, according to a `New York Daily News' story, a customer became upset that another woman was abusing the maximum limit for items at an express checkout line and precipitated a loud argument, which culminated with the angry woman shouting at the queue-abuser, "I spit into your groceries." the alleged queue-abuser was the wife of reputed mobster John Gotti. Victoria Gotti said she "used connections" to trace the woman's license plate, went to the woman's home, and dumped a box of dog feces on her.
- In December, Washington State Reformatory officials they had erred in obliging a 53 year old inmate's job preference to work in the prison's printing plant. He was serving time for forgery, and officials uncovered, during a routine inspection of his quarters, forged birth certificates, marriage licenses, and a paycheck stub. An official said the prison tries to get inmates jobs "based on their interests."
AS IN REAL WEIRD
- Transsexual Baroness Maria Thyssen von Hexun, formerly James Gonzales, was sentenced to four years in prison in Denver in October, for bilking an elderly woman out of several thousand dollars. As her sentence was pronounced, the 6 foot, 220 pound baroness rolled her eyes and objected, "I've been involved with nothing but a bunch of jerks. They don't listen. They lose things." Her attorney told the judge that "these things happen," referring to the baroness' fantasies that she was a baroness.
REAL DUMB
- Prison escapee James Sanders was captured by federal agents at his home in Stinnett, Texas, in January after 17 years on the lam, during which he had established a new life, married, and fathered a daughter. Agents were tipped off when Sanders, out of curiosity, telephoned the FBI to ask whether they were still pursuing James Sanders.
MAJOR BAD SPORT
- In February, Marc Cienkowski, 26, confessed to the murder last July of his friend, Michael Klucznik, 31, in Doylestown Borough, Pa., after a dispute over a game of Monopoly. Cienkowski shot Klucznik through the heart, using a bow and arrow. According to the district attorney, "[Cienkowski] wanted to be the car rather than the thimble or the hat."
