xxxNews Of The Weirdxxx

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

According to a police report in the Brainerd (Minn.) Dispatch, in August, thieves had broken into the First Integrity Bank on Excelsior Road in Baxter, Minn., but then used a hammer on a common wall in order to break into the adjacent Lakes Area Eyecare store and make off with numerous pairs of sunglasses. (In most such break-ins, crooks use the store to get into the bank, not the other way around.)

Federal District Judge Thomas A. Higgins of Nashville, Tenn., had just ordered David Bowman, 41, back to prison for violating his probation (cocaine possession and other offenses), and he asked Bowman if he had anything to say. Instead of asking for leniency, Bowman recited the litany of inconveniences that lay ahead (e.g., crowded bus back to prison, various transfers from bus to bus on the way) and then asked, apparently seriously, if Judge Higgins would please personally drive him back to prison. (To the prosecutor’s suggestion that prison would give Bowman “a chance to think,” Judge Higgins said, “I think part of the problem is that Mr. Bowman doesn’t do as much thinking as maybe (we) would like him to.”)
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Copyright © 2001 by Chuck Shepherd

NEWS OF THE WEIRD