xxxNews Of The Weirdxxx

Bizarre but true stories about real people collected by syndicated columnist Chuck Shepherd.

From the police column of The Union (Grass Valley, Calif.), June 25, 2004: "A (caller) reported that he heard someone screaming and went outside to find a woman lying in the street. When he asked her if she was all right, the man reported, she started yelling at him, ran inside a residence and appeared to be smashing things inside. Police contacted the woman, who said she was just having an argument with herself."

LaTonya Finney and her boyfriend, Adrian Howard, somehow managed to become intimate while they were jailed, separately, in 2002 on robbery charges in Crawford County, Ga., with the result being the birth of a daughter, Adrianna. Raising the child has fallen to LaTonya's parents, Ronnie and Patricia Finney, who petitioned the county in July 2004 for financial support for Adrianna because they say the sheriff should have kept Finney and Howard far enough apart to prevent their mating.

In July 2003, Russell Weller, 88, made national news when he froze, with his foot on the accelerator, in Santa Monica, Calif., and plowed through a farmer's market, killing 10 people and injuring 63, in the worst of a recent spate of incidents in which senior citizens momentarily confuse the gas and brake pedals. In July 2004, families of two of the dead and nine of the injured beat the statute of limitations by filing lawsuits. Weller is named, but the main targets are the farmer's market, a local farmers' association, the Los Angeles County agriculture commissioner, the city of Santa Monica, and the state of California, all of whom were supposedly careless in allowing Weller to crash into the victims.
Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa, Fla. 33679 or Weird@compuserve.com
Copyright © 2001 by Chuck Shepherd

NEWS OF THE WEIRD