Weird News Collection 2

PASTORAL WEIRD - The Reverend Glen Summerford was convicted in February of attempted murder of his wife in Scottsboro, Alabama. A jury found that he had forced his wife to stick her hand into a cage of rattlesnakes (which he handles in his services at his Church of Jesus With Following Signs in addition to drinking strychnine and touching live electrical wires), saying that she had to die because he wanted to marry another woman. Much of the trial testimony concerned which of the spouses had sinned or "backslid" more. (While Summerford was in jail, his inadequately supervised parishioner, Clyde Crossfield, was bitten on both hands by a rattlesnake he was handling.) SUE `EM ALL!! - Scott D. Carpenter, 27, filed a lawsuit in September against the management company of Three Rivers Stadium in Pittsburgh and its chief concessionaire because they allowed him to buy too many beers during a 1989 Steelers game and then failed to warn him about the danger of riding on escalator handrails, on which he was injured in a drunken fall. - In Tacoma, Washington, Christine Lauritzen filed a lawsuit against her husband, Bret, last year for negligence that subjected her to injury. Bret's error was in ignoring Christine's driving instructions: During a visit to Miami, Florida, they wound up in a bad section of town, where they were eventually robbed and where she suffered a severe arm injury. - A newspaper in Ireland reported in February that 38 Irish soccer fans recently won a lawsuit against two bus companies that had caused them to miss the 1990 World Cup games in Italy. They sued because the bus drivers drove too slowly (an average of 20 mph) on two trips, causing them to miss one game and to miss a scheduled ferry that would have transported them to another game. - Takashi Nakayama, 25, filed a lawsuit in December in a court in Niigata, Japan, against his mother and grandmother, seeking about $1,548 in damages because his grandmother had thrown out his comic-book collection without his consent and his mother had failed to stop her. POLITICOS FROM HELL - Magoo Dorcy, 42, announced his candidacy for mayor of Dover, Delaware, despite having pleaded guilty in Columbus, Ohio, three years ago for molesting a 5 year old girl.

- Harold W. "Tony" Glacken was charged last year with running a fraudulent auto-inspection scheme. Upon announcing his candidacy for sheriff in St Louis, Missouri, recently, Glacken said, "I just decided it was time I get involved and get this community straightened out. I'm tired of all the [county's] bad publicity." - In Salem, Oregon, former Baptist minister Joe Lutz withdrew from the U.S. Senate race in January, saying that his "family values" campaign had lost credibility because he had abandoned his wife to marry another woman and reportedly was $2,000 behind in child support payments. - Donald L. Traxler, newly installed mayor of Ada, Ohio, and education professor at Ohio Northern University, declared in December that he would take office later in the month, as scheduled, despite his December 13 arrest when rangers observed him masturbating at a local park. - Sherman T. Miller, running for sheriff in Van Buren County in southeastern Iowa, was jailed in March, suspected by authorities to be part of a burglary ring that had been stealing farm equipment. Said Miller, "It's just a bunch of political nonsense to take me out of the race." - Poin Adams, candidate for sheriff in Amarillo, Texas, was found guilty in 1990 of fraud for tampering with his vehicle inspection sticker. He had crudely drawn a "1" on his windshield, to obscure the "0" in 1990, so that his sticker would appear to be valid in 1991. OH RAMI, GET REAL JOB!! - On October 12, a clerk on duty at a convenience store in Abilene, Texas, was persuaded by a man to accept a $100 bill that was accurately printed (1950 series) in every detail -- except that it was 12 inches long and 5 inches wide. REAL WEIRD - Last fall, two men holed up in the Maine State Library in Augusta for two months in makeshift living quarters that a security official said included "everything you could think of," before they were discovered. Andre V. Jatho, 20, was charged with burglary, but the other man moved out. For sustenance, the two men had looted various state supply rooms (taking an unusually large quantity of pudding). Downloaded From P-80 International Information Systems 304-744-2253

STATE SEX - Theaters in North Carolina recently began showing, as a short feature, a state-funded film advocating teenage sexual abstinence. In "The Power To Create Life," a teenage couple in a car are contemplating having sex until the sky lights up and an alien emperor implores, "You have the power to create life. Don't abuse it!" The kids decide to go to a movie instead. OOOPS!! - Minneapolis prosecutors were expecting a long and difficult child molesting trial against Robert G. Swan because the incriminating photographs they had of him blurred his face. Then, in January, his wife brought Swan, who was in jail, a fresh change of clothing for his court appearance, giving him the very articles he was wearing in the photographs. After the clothing turned up, Swan quickly pleaded guilty. - Xavier Hunter, 26, was arrested in Chicago in December of robbing the Citibank Federal Savings Bank. Unknown to him, President Bush was speaking at the Chicago Board of Trade, less than a block away, at the time, and the neighborhood was thus full of police officers. As Hunter exited the bank, the chemical dye pack in his bounty exploded, alerting the many nearby officers, who chased him down despite his futile attempt to abandon the money by throwing it into the air as he ran. - In St Louis in January, Thomas Hall pulled into what looked like a fast food restaurant's drive thru to place an order. However, the drive thru speaker he yelled into was an intercom stand at the Area III St Louis police station. An officer came out and arrested Hall for DUI. (The next day, after Hall's arrest made local news, DJ "Wacky Pat" Fortune drove up to the same intercom stand to out a gag for his listeners. However, an officer checked Fortune out on the computer, discovered unpaid traffic violations, and arrested him as a fugitive.) - James Bridgewater, 32, was arrested in Kankakee, Illinois, after a mishap at the First of America Bank's drive-in window. He was carrying two white sacks, one containing money for deposit and the other containing two grams of marijuana and rolling papers. He put the wrong bag in the pneumatic tube.

- To quell unruly seventh graders in Irvington, New Jersey, in February, substitute teacher Monique Bazile, 57, cast a voodoo spell on the class. According to pupils, Bazile began shaking and chanting, threw ritual powder on the kids, and warned them that their houses would burn down because of their rowdiness. Criminal charges of endangering the welfare of a child and making terroristic threats were brought against her. - Milford, Utah, high-school teacher Cherry Florence was fired in February for an indiscretion. According to the local board of education, after the school, for health reasons, interviewed students individually as to their level of sexual activity, Florence released to her classes a list of which of the school's 170 teenagers were virgins. - Acting Principal Steven Stocker, 31, voted Fredericksburg, Virginia, outstanding young educator in 1988, was arrested in January after he engaged a 9 year old girl in what the district attorney called a servant-master game. Stocker, the servant, had allegedly kissed the girl's feet and sucked her toes. - The board of education in Worthington Hills, near Columbus, Ohio, disciplined teacher Alan Brady in February on charges that he poked a student teacher in her backside with a fork and that he had third-graders line up and jump on and hit a fellow student who had been bad. - Immokalee, Florida, substitute teacher, Krystal Gail Allen, was fired in January after parents complained that she described her sex life in great detail to an eighth-grade geography class and invited students to share their own tales with her. One student had recorded the class. FOOLS !! - In January, burglars at Rich's department store in Salem, Massachusetts, were forced to flee empty handed after the welding torch they were using to break into a safe accidentally ignited the money inside, causing a fire and setting off the store's smoke alarm. REAL WEIRD - Daniel Hendricks, 34, of St Louis, was charged in February with several counts of aggravated battery in Tampa for ramming at least six cars on an interstate highway and forcing others off the road as he sped at 100mph toward nearby Clearwater, Florida, where Barbara Bush was speaking. Hendricks told police he had to warn Mrs. Bush that Saddam Hussein was preparing to invade the U.S.

I SAY FRY HIM !! - Montique Ramon Brown, 18, surrendered to Richmond, Virginia, police in March, telling them he was the one who had shot a man to death at 12:05 AM on January 1st. He told police he did it because he wanted to be the person who committed Richmond's first murder of 1992.  Downloaded From P-80 International Information Systems 304-744-2253