xxxNews Of The Weirdxxx

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

After a passer-by found two kids (ages 12 and 6) dragging suitcases along a rural road near Marshfield, Mo., in June, prosecutors charged their mother, Roxanna Osborne, and her boyfriend, Timmy Young, with child abandonment. The kids said their mother had awakened them, given them $5 each, and told them to pack up and leave. The kids told police that the two adults are drug-users.

In June, prosecutors in Porter County, Ind., were deciding whether to file charges against the parents of a 17-year-old boy after, according to police, they had beat him up because he had refused to let his sister and her friends borrow his underwear when their own clothes got wet while they were swimming. After initially rebuffing his sister, the boy had moved all his undergarments to his grandparents’ house for safekeeping, but a confrontation with his parents ensued.

Brian F. Monfort, 27, was arrested in Springfield, Ohio, in April and charged with child enticement based on an arrest report noting that twice, in January and March, he had approached children and paid them money (up to $40) to insult him for being fat, supposedly as a tactic to inspire himself to lose weight.
(Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa FL 33679 or [email protected] or go to www.NewsoftheWeird.com.) NEWS OF THE WEIRD