News of the Weird, August 8, 2010
Chuck Shepherd
by Chuck Shepherd
Copyright 2010 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
Lead Story
* The Outer Frontiers of U.S. Immigration Policy: The $125
million Jay Peak ski resort in Vermont, with 120-room hotel, ice
arena, golf course, and the Northeast's largest water park, is just
months away from completion, thanks to half-million-dollar
investments from each of 250 foreign nationals from 43 countries
who, as part of the deal, were given conditional U.S. "green cards"
(for permanent residency). At the other end of America's
immigration conundrum, prosecutors in Snohomish County, Wash.,
dropped the rape charge in July against illegal immigrant Jose
Madrigal-Lopez, 46, for lack of evidence and released him back
onto the street. Madrigal-Lopez has been deported from the U.S.
10 times already but keeps returning. [ABC News-AP, 7-8-10]
[Seattle Times, 7-9-10]
Can't Possibly Be True
* Two-year-old Ardi Rizal of Banyuasin, Indonesia, has developed
a two-pack-a-day cigarette habit, according to several news
organizations that splashed his story around the world in May, with
video of Ardi casually puffing away as he frolics on his tricycle.
Said Ardi's mother, "If he doesn't get cigarettes, he gets angry and
screams and batters his head against the wall." Ardi's father, noting
the kid's pudginess, seems not to sense the problem: "He looks
pretty healthy to me." An additional concern is financial: Ardi will
smoke only one particular premium brand, at a cost of the
equivalent of about $5.50 a day. [New York Daily News, 5-26-10,
Daily Mail (London), 5-27-10]
* With heroin too expensive for many African addicts, some ask an
addicted friend for a temporary fix - withdrawing a teaspoonful of
the friend's heroin-tinged blood and injecting it into their own
bloodstream. Evidence of this practice (called "flashblood") comes
from anecdotes from health officials in Tanzania, Zanzibar, and
Kenya, reported in the New York Times in July. Doctors said they
question the euphoria-producing quality of such tiny amounts of
heroin but are certain that flashblood will potently deliver any HIV
present in the donor's blood. [New York Times, 7-13-10]
* Motherly Love: (1) Ranay Collins, 49, was arrested in Las Vegas
in June and charged with beating her 16-year-old daughter with a
cane. The arresting officer quoted Collins's explanation: "That
[expletive] owes me fifty dollars for rent." (2) Police arrested
Christina Muniz, 29, in Surprise, Ariz., in June, after being
summoned to the home by Muniz's son, 11. Muniz had just
informed the boy and his brother, 6, that she was abandoning them
to move to California with her boyfriend to fulfill her dream of
becoming a stripper. With police watching, the older boy
approached Muniz for a hug, but Muniz slugged him in the
stomach. [KTNV-TV (Las Vegas), 6-25-10] [ABC News, 6-15-10]
Inexplicable
* Colin Hall, Lord Mayor of Leicester, England, visiting the
Southfields library for its Summer Showcase on global
understanding in June, apparently at some point experienced his
pants falling down. His spokesman later said, "He was not wearing
a belt, and the trousers came loose and fell." (Reports in The
Guardian and other newspapers emphasized that nothing indecent
occurred.) [Sydney Morning Herald-Press Association (London), 7-
1-10]
* Jammie Harms, 34, who had been executive assistant to CEO
John Smith of the developer Hearthstone Homes, filed a lawsuit
against the Omaha, Neb., company in June for wrongful firing.
According to the lawsuit, Smith told Harms that, after consulting
with psychics, he was troubled by her pregnancy. He said he was
feeling "negative energy" from her fetus, sensing that it was
"hostile" toward him and causing him to be reminded of his own
unpleasant experience as a fetus. [KFAB Radio (Omaha)-AP, 7-1-
10]
Spectacular Clumsiness
* (1) An internal police inquiry concluded in April that it was an
accident that an officer in the Utica, N.Y., courtroom of Judge
Randal Caldwell shot Caldwell in the leg with his Taser gun.
Investigators concluded that the officer was merely trying to re-
holster the weapon to make it less uncomfortable, and it slipped.
(2) Youth worker Cherie Beekman, 33, took a group of her kids to a
bowling alley in Didsbury, England, in April for a diversion but got
her thumb stuck in her bowling ball. She was taken to a fire station,
where, for over two hours, rescuers used an electric saw, hacksaw,
and chisel to free her. [Utica Observer-Dispatch, 4-9-10] [Daily
Mail, 4-20-10]
Things Aren't What They Seem
* Fine Point of Florida Law: David Lowe, 47, was convicted in
Brooksville, Fla., last year of "lewd or lascivious exhibition" after
he sat in his car, masturbating, outside a convenience store while
ostentatiously holding a large dildo to his mouth in front of a
woman and her child. In July 2010, a Florida appeals court reversed
the conviction and freed Lowe, pointing out that conviction under
that particular statute requires "sexual activity," which is defined as
occurring between two or more persons. [WKMG-TV (Orlando), 7-
7-10]
* Vietnam's Version of an "Innocence Project": "Traditional
medicine" practitioner Pham Thi Hong is credited with freeing three
men who had been convicted of a rape in 2000 and were serving 16-
year prison sentences. According to Hong, men with certain small
spots on their ears are virgins, and since the men still have their
spots, they could not have committed rape. (Although Vietnam's
President Nguyen Minh Triet was reportedly impressed with Hong's
work and thus ordered the case re-opened, discovery of additional
errors by police and prosecutors contributed to the recent decision to
release the men.) [Yahoo News-AP, 7-2-10]
* Mark Seamands, 39, went to trial in May in Port Angeles, Wash.,
accused of second-degree assault and two lesser charges for the hot-
iron "branding" of his three children, aged 13, 15, and 18. Each of
the kids bore the mark "SK," for "Seamands' Kids." At trial,
however, the kids testified that they not only consented to the
branding but thought it was cool (despite the second-degree burns),
and as a result, the jury dismissed the assault charge and deadlocked
on the two lesser ones. [KIRO-TV (Seattle)-AP, 5-14-10]
Redneck Chronicles
* (1) In July, Mike Morateck, 46, a self-described "man of science,"
won the Jefferson (Wis.) County Fair's annual cricket-spitting
contest with a hock of 21 feet, 2 inches. His two main "scientific"
secrets (he told Milwaukee's Journal Sentinel): "pick a big cricket"
and "feet first on its back with the head pointing out because you
don't want the legs dragging on the way out." (2) Juliana Bryant, 33,
was arrested in Florala, Ala., in July after police were called to her
home on a disturbing-the-peace complaint and discovered several
open gasoline containers throughout the house. Bryant explained to
the officers that she "like[s] the smell." [Journal Sentinel, 7-7-10]
[Mobile Press-Register, 7-22-10]
Least Competent Criminals
* Crime Scene Escapades: (1) Allen Dawes, 28, and Jimmy Lee,
43, were charged as burglars in, respectively, York, Pa. (June), and
Blackburn, England (July), after having inexplicably left clues
behind. For reasons unreported, Dawes had left his birth certificate
at the scene and Lee his DNA-laden false teeth. (2) Officials at the
Synergy Credit Union in Lashburn, Saskatchewan, have the
surveillance video but not the perp. On April 13th, a man in black
with a curved sword jabbed at the ATM, then smashed his way
through the glass front door, then roamed around, leaping over
counters and jabbing at more things with the sword before departing
empty-handed (and bleeding). [Yahoo News-AP, 6-23-10]
[Blackburn Citizen, 7-19-10] [CNews (Toronto), 4-22-10]
A News of the Weird Classic (December 1989)
* Denise and Jeffrey Lagrimas, who were hosting a neighborhood
watch meeting in their Oroville, Calif., home in December [1989] to
discuss rising concerns about local crime, were arrested during the
meeting after a neighbor spotted her recently-stolen TV set in the
house and then realized that Denise was wearing her stolen dress.
Police officers were already on hand at the meeting to give a
presentation and subsequently found $9,000 worth of stolen
goods. [San Jose Mercury News, 12-12-1989]
Thanks This Week to Chris Paone, Steve Dunn, Jon
LaFalce, and Michael Greer, and to the News of the Weird Board of
Editorial Advisors.
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