xxxNews Of The Weirdxxx
Bizarre but true stories about real people collected by syndicated columnist Chuck Shepherd.
Salem, Mass., police Sgt. David Connelly was finally arrested in January after an alleged two-year vandalism spree; according to police in nearby Lynnfield, Connelly had been angry at a 2001 court decision against him by Judge Howard Whitehead, who lives a few blocks away, and at least 90 times in two years had driven by Whitehead’s house and tossed empty beer cans into the yard.
In St. Petersburg, Fla., in March, the U.S. ambassador to Italy, Melvin Sembler, who for 17 years ran an aggressive drug treatment program called Straight, filed a lawsuit against disgruntled Straight ex-client Richard Bradbury, who allegedly has harassed Sembler since 1987, including rummaging through his garbage (once finding Sembler’s penile pump and advertising it on eBay).
In May, the principal of Lincoln Multicultural Middle School in Washington, D.C., already under investigation for some missing school student activities money, was fired after trying to sell two school buses to someone in Panama.
In May, C&F Construction Inc., which had been suspended from D.C. government contracts earlier this year because its president had been convicted of defrauding the government on road-paving materials, was abruptly reinstated and in May awarded a $3.1 million road repair contract.
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Copyright © 2001 by Chuck Shepherd
NEWS OF THE WEIRD