Date: 20 Aug 93 14:25:14 PDT (Friday)
Subject: Life A.E
----------------------------------------------------
The following are selections from the New of the Weird
I've gotten them from
bostic@vangogh.cs.berkeley.edu (Keith Bostic)
wisner@privateidaho.EBay.Sun.COM (Bill Wisner)
(Bill posts this to the eniac mailing list)
--------------------------
In July, three trained dolphins escaped from their performing pen at an
exclusive resort in Key Largo, Fla., and swam away. They were found several
days later in a lagoon by a gold course on Key Biscayne, Fla., where, on their
own, they showed up at 10 a.m., 2 p.m., and 4 p.m. (the same times as the
Key Largo shows), and performed tricks, apparently hoping to be fed.
--------------------------
In December near Mineral Wells, Texas, three men who were attempting to
steal copper wire off live electrical lines for resale were electrocuted.
Copper wiring is a valuable scrap metal in Texas but is usually stolen from
electric cables that are not being used.
--------------------------
In November, a St. Louis judge accepted a guilty plea from rock star Axl
Rose to settle assault and property damage charges, permitting Rose an
unusal privilege for a convicted criminal: He would not be totally forbidden
from associating with ex-felons. Two members of his Guns N' Roses band are
ex-felons.
--------------------------
Cleveland, Ohio, police captured a man on Dec. 31 who they say car-jacked a
van at gunpoint from Clinton Clark, who had been sitting in it. Clark
immediately reported the theft to police. After recovering the van and
checking the vehicle identification, police also arrested Clark, charging him
with theft of the van in the first place from a neighborhood support center.
--------------------------
Wesley Nunley, 73, pronounced the $10,000 concrete slab he built on his
property near Dallas open for business as "UFO Landing Base 1." He said
it has been a dream of his "for decades" to have aliens land on his property.
The landing pad is located in a quarry and is surrounded by mud much of
the year.
--------------------------
Former Quik Trip convenience store employee Mark Douglas, 32, was arrested
for robbing a store in Overland Park, Kan. The robber wore a cap. When
police asked Douglas whether he had such a cap, he said no. The girlfriend
said, "Yes, you do. It's in the closet."
--------------------------
Part-time security guard Bob Huggins, 86, learned that his share of the
Gaston Gazette's pension plan is nearly $1 million. Huggins began working
at production jobs in 1926 and became a guard in 1974. He had never earned
more than $8,000 in a year, and the company had no pension plan until 1989.
Huggins' award is so large because the 1989 plan was poorly designed and
because Huggins outlived all others in his employee category.
--------------------------
Henry County, Ga., jail inmate Mackey Junior Pope, 28, was apprehended
in February after an escape attempt. Using a smuggled-in gun, he got the
drop on four guards, locked them in a cell, and then crept along a hallway
toward the front of the building. However, Pope had neglected to take
the guards' walkie-talkies, and the front desk guards were waiting for him.
--------------------------
According to a recent study by University of California at Irvine
researchers, violent criminals have five times as much of the metal
manganese in their hair as do law-abiding citizens. The researchers
have no explanation but seem confident that the metal is a symptom rather
than a cause of the violent behavior.
--------------------------
* The Associated Press reported in April that the Red Belle Saloon in Salt
Lake City is prospering under its new owners. Last year, bikers in a
motorcycle gang called the Barons, whose clubhouse is near the bar, became
angry at seeing the drug dealing, prostitution, and violent crimes taking
place at the bar so they bought it, rehabilitated it, and set the
clientele straight. [Raleigh News & Observer-AP, 4-14-93]
--------------------------
* In March, the U. S. Court of Appeals in Denver dismissed a civil lawsuit
by Merrill Chamberlain, who is serving a life sentence for the murder of
an Albuquerque, N. Mex., police officer. Chamberlain had sued the
Albuquerque Police Department and the city, claiming that he wouldn't have
been guilty of murder if the officer had not allowed him surreptitiously
to gain access to his handgun or if the officer had been wearing a
bulletproof vest. [Albuquerque Journal, 4-1- 93]
--------------------------
* In April, Scott Abrams, 27, filed a $2 million lawsuit against the
owners and managers of an apartment building for injuries he suffered in
1991 when he was hit by lightning while sitting on the roof of the
building during an electrical storm. He said the defendants were
negligent in maintaining the rooftop and should have provided signs and
brighter paint, among other things. When hit, Abrams was sitting on a
ledge on the roof with his feet in a water puddle; rescue workers revived
him from cardiac arrest. [Arlington Journal, 4-13-93]
--------------------------
* In February, a federal judge in Washington, D. C., dismissed a lawsuit
filed by a sex offender serving time in D. C.'s Lorton Reformatory.
Michael A. Johnson had filed the lawsuit for $12,500 because the prison
store had charged him $6.00 for a $5.80 book of twenty 29-cent stamps.
[Washington Post, 2-27-93]
--------------------------
* In April in Los Angeles, B. R. Chavez, a small, slow- moving 77-year-old
man who said he was sick of riding paint-vandalized buses, made a
citizen's arrest of two boys, ages 18 and 15, who had started to
spray-paint the bus he was riding. Chavez flashed a card with a drawing
of an eagle on it and announced that the boys were under arrest. The bus
driver signaled a police car, and the boys went quietly. The older boy
was sentenced to three days in jail plus two years' probation and 30 hours
of graffiti-removal service. [Los Angeles Times, 4-29-93]
--------------------------
* New York Gov. Mario Cuomo demanded in early May that
Oklahoma return Thomas Grasso to New York so that he
can serve a 20-year-to-life sentence for a 1991 murder.
Grasso is on death row in Oklahoma for a 1990 murder
and has waived all appeals so that he can speed up his
date with destiny. Grasso told The Daily Oklahoman
newspaper that he is "perplexed" that New York still
wants him, especially since Cuomo's decision will cost
financially-strapped New York taxpayers at least a half
million dollars if Grasso serves the minimum sentence
before being returned to Oklahoma to be executed. [The
Daily Oklahoman, 5-7-93]
--------------------------
* Jane Bryne [B-R-Y-N-E], 42, was arrested in Clayton,
Mo., in March and charged with possession of cocaine.
She had been in the second row of a courtroom attending
the robbery trial of her boyfriend when her purse fell
out of her lap, sending the contents rolling underneath
the seats to the front row. A police officer sitting
in front of her gathered the lipstick and cosmetics to
return them when he noticed one of the items was a vial
of cocaine. [Columbia Daily Tribune-AP, 3-21-93]
--------------------------
* A Reading, Pa., kidnaping victim was freed in
Philadelphia in April after two suspects, who had
attempted to get $200 from the victim's daughter, told
her to call back when she had the money and gave her
their home telephone number. Police matched the phone
number to an address, went to the house, arrested
Claude Smith, and freed the victim. Smith's partner
fled. [Reading Eagle/Times, 4-23-93]
--------------------------
* In March, a SWAT team in Tucson, Ariz., drove Mark Allen
Anderson, 35, from his armed, barricaded position in a
metal house trailer by hurling so many bricks at the
trailer that he soon gave up because of the noise.
[Washington Times, 3-25-93]
--------------------------
A civilian dog in Knoxville, Tenn., came home in December carrying in his
mouth a bag of cocaine with a street value of $16,000. His owner declined
police efforts to recruit the dog.
--------------------------
* In January, Canadian sculptor Raymond Mackintosh
opened the annual Pennsylvania Farm Show in Harrisburg
with a nearly-life-sized statue of a vendor scooping
ice cream from a cart for a little boy and girl--but
made entirely of butter. And last summer, Linda
Christensen sculpted "butterheads" out of 85-lb. blocks
of butter for the Minnesota State Fair. And in
February in Chicago, Buddhist monk Sonam Dhargye
exhibited several Tibetan yak butter sculptures, each
about two feet high, at the Field Museum of Natural
History. [Sikeston Daily Standard-AP, 1-8-93; L. A.
Daily News, Sept92; Chicago Sun-Times, 2-15-93]
--------------------------
* In February, an 86-year-old woman shopping in a
Foodtown store in Union Township, N. J., stopped a 32-
year-old woman she said was trying to steal from her
purse. The elderly woman threw a sweet potato at the
alleged thief with such force that it broke apart
against her head and slowed her exit from the store so
that she was soon captured. [[Central New Jersey Home
News, Feb93]]
--------------------------
* Officials conducting a district middle school
spelling bee in Bell County, Ky., in April buzzed off
finalist Amanda O'Bryan, age 12, when she spelled
"label" L-A-B-E-L instead of the way they thought it
should be spelled, L-A-B-L-E. The other finalist, who
heard the judges rule L-A-B-E-L as incorrect, guessed
correctly that what they wanted was L-A-B-L-E and was
declared the winner, moving on to the state contest.
[Louisville Courier-Journal, Apr93]
--------------------------
Los Angeles jail inmate Leslie White blew the whistle on alleged conspiracies
between government prosecutors and inmates who would commit perjury. However,
White himself was convicted of perjury in May while testifying about inmates'
perjury.
--------------------------
* In May, Baron Trevor, 64, a member of the British
House of Lords since 1950, took to the floor to make
his very first speech to that body, saying that after
43 years he had finally found an issue "that affected
the locality in which I live." He spoke on the need
not to over-supervise police officers. [Boston Globe-
Reuters, May93]
--------------------------
* In February, Wellington, New Zealand, police
commander Murray Jackson told reporters that
construction of a new police station and lockup would
be delayed because the building would be subject to the
new local safety code, which would require that
prisoners have immediate access to exits in case of
fire. According to Jackson, that would require
furnishing them with keys. [Washington Times, 2-19-93]
--------------------------
* In April, the Montana Legislature passed a harsh
animal-abuse law that increased the penalty for a
second conviction to two years in prison and a $1,000
fine. The state's maximum penalty for second-offense
wife-beating is six months and $500. [Bozeman Daily
Chronicle-AP, Apr93]
--------------------------
* Sheriff's deputies near Cudahy, Wis., arrested
Michael Foster, 21, and a companion, 17, in April and
charged them with theft of a large, electronic dart-
game machine from a bar. When the heavy machine in the
back of the boys' pickup truck caused it to sink into
the mud in the tavern's parking lot, one of the boys
called the sheriff to ask for a tow. Said sheriff's
Lt. Jim Paape, "They didn't put a real lot of thought
into this." [Shopper Community News, 4-18-93]
--------------------------
* Kansas City, Mo., police reported that two music
store break-ins over Memorial Day weekend netted the
thieves nearly 1,000 empty CD boxes. They apparently
thought they were stealing CDs, but the stores are
among a growing number that remove the CDs themselves
for safekeeping while displaying the boxes. [Kansas
City Star, 6-7-93]
--------------------------
* In April a Penn State University woman complained to
local police in State College, Pa., that she had been
ripped off. She said she had given a fellow student a
$1,200 stereo to take an exam for her, but that he had
flunked it and now wouldn't return her stereo. Buying
academic work is illegal in Pennsylvania. [Columbus
Dispatch, 4-23-93]
--------------------------
* Todd A. Hummel, 23, was arrested in March, shortly
after the Best Western motel in Cherokee, Iowa, was
robbed. The desk clerk had no trouble identifying
Hummel; only minutes before the robbery, he had
checked into the motel as a guest, giving his actual
name and home address in Cushing, Iowa. [Sioux City
Journal, Apr93]
--------------------------
* In March in Houston, Tex., Humallah Mendenhall, 18,
to obtain the local Crimestoppers cash reward, told
police that his colleague David Clyde Spencer, 18, had
murdered a convenience store clerk a few days before.
Evidently, Mendenhall failed to realize that, when
arrested, Spencer would turn him in, too, because
Mendenhall allegedly drove the getaway car for the
murder, and had allegedly committed another murder two
months earlier. [Houston Post, 3-12-93]
--------------------------
* In January in Ft. Wayne, Ind., a 16-year-old boy was
accused by a younger boy in juvenile court of stealing
a Penn State University athletic jacket. The 16-year-
old happened to have worn the jacket to court that day,
and the name of the younger boy was printed on the
inside of a sleeve. [Ft. Wayne Sentinel, Jan93]
--------------------------
* Accused drug dealer Alfred Acree bolted from police
in Charles City, Va., in April on a Saturday night and
took off in the dark through the thick woods. However,
police tracked him down easily because he was wearing
new L. A. Gear athletic shoes containing small,
battery-operated lights that light up each time the
heel is pressed. Said sheriff's investigator Anthony
Anderson, "Every time he took a step, we knew exactly
where he was." [Newport News Daily Press, 4-8-93]
--------------------------
* In May, a Pennsylvania appeals panel ruled that a
student in Hempfield, Pa., expelled for selling
marijuana in the school hallway, should be reinstated
because he has a "learning disability" that somehow
impeded his judgment. [Insight, 4-25-93]
--------------------------
* Last summer, Greg Morris, 38, of Tulsa, Okla.,
threatened lawsuits against several New Mexico state
agencies because they failed rescue him and his family
soon enough after his plane crashed around Taos earlier
that year. The plane crashed around 8 p.m.; a
volunteer-only search operation began around 9 p.m.,
and the crash site was discovered at 6:32 the next
morning. Said the Taos town manager, "We had a lot of
volunteer citizens who gave of their own time without
any compensation to help them find that airplane crash,
and later to provide the victims with emergency first
aid and rescue." [Daily Oklahoman-AP, Jul92]
--------------------------
* In December Dorothy Pritchard of New Haven, Conn.,
sued mechanic Doug Lopes for negligence in "repairing"
her car. Lopes had stopped to help her on Interstate
95 on a Sunday evening. He trimmed the radiator hose
on the overheating car and topped off the radiator with
spring water he had in his car. Pritchard claimed
that, 60 miles later, the hose came loose again and so
sued Lopes for the hose, engine damage, the anguish of
sitting with a broken-down car, and scratches in the
paint job caused by Lopes. [New Bedford Standard-Times,
12-3-92]
--------------------------
* David Michael Russell was arrested in June in a
tunnel-like attic above the Village Glen Plaza shopping
center in Thousand Oaks, Calif., where he had been
living for the last three years. Inside his "home,"
which was accessible only through crawl space, police
found rugs, bookshelves and books, a desk, a TV, a
microwave oven, and a stereo system. [Columbus
Dispatch, Jun93]
--------------------------
Copyright 1993, Universal Press Syndicate. All rights reserved.
Released for the personal use of readers. No commercial use may
be made of the material or of the name News of the Weird.
--
Henry Cate III [cate3@netcom.com]
The Life collection maintainer, selections of humor from the internet
From: "Patrick Ryan" [p.ryan@uws.edu.au]
"Honour thy father" does not mean repeat his mistakes.
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