xxxNews Of The Weirdxxx
Bizarre but true stories about real people collected by syndicated columnist Chuck Shepherd.
In May, 36-year-veteran ambulance driver Mike Ferguson, rushing a liver for transplant from Leeds to Cambridge, England, on the A1 highway, was ticketed for doing 104 mph. In fact, Ferguson was ticketed by two jurisdictions that night, but Cambridgeshire police dismissed the ticket after Ferguson’s explanation while Lincolnshire police sent the case to prosecutors even after the explanation, and at press time, a court date was being set.
The Florida Legislature finally amended its open-government law in May to prohibit sex-crime inmates from getting access to photographs of their victims. Under the previous version of the law, a state appeals court had ruled that convicted sex-assaulter Dale W. Weeks was entitled, under the liberal public-records procedures, to investigative photos that depicted his victim’s genitals.
The U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco overturned the “armed robbery” conviction of Deshon Rene Odom in May, saying that even though Odom had a gun in his waistband, he hadn’t meant for anyone at the bank he was robbing to see it, and therefore that he was not legally “armed.” The court said that the federal law speaks only of using a gun, not carrying one; on the other hand, the court acknowledged that if Odom had waved around a toy gun that looked real, that would be enough for “armed” robbery.
A 70-year-old man and a 60-year-old woman pleaded no contest to public indecency in New Philadelphia, Ohio, in June after their arrest for engaging in sex acts in a booth at a Hardee’s restaurant. Though it was the couple’s first lewdness charge, the prosecutor told the judge that it was not the first time they had done something like that.
Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa, Fla. 33679 or [email protected]
Copyright © 2001 by Chuck Shepherd
NEWS OF THE WEIRD
