News of the Weird
Bizarre but true stories about real people collected by syndicated columnist Chuck Shepherd.
Ricardo Meana, 81, was charged with attempted murder in November in Sun City, Fla., when his 82-year-old wife, who has Alzheimer’s, was found inside a van in a store’s parking lot struggling with a plastic bag over her head. Police were called, but Meana seemed unconcerned and even nonchalantly resumed shopping, saying that he often put the bags on when his wife felt sick, so that she would not vomit on herself.
In 2002, Jeffrey Klein and Brett Birdwell, both 17 at the time, trespassed onto a railroad yard in Lancaster, Pa., and climbed atop a boxcar to see what the view was like, but were severely burned by a 12,500-volt line on the roof and thus sued Amtrak and Norfolk Southern railroads for not having done enough to prevent them from trespassing. In October, a federal jury awarded the two men a total of about $12 million in compensatory damages plus $12 million in punitive damages.
(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