Chuck Shepherd's News of the Weird

Redneck Chronicles

Ronald Adams, 49, was arrested in June for assaulting an 8-year-old boy in his home in Ouachita Parish, La., after an argument over which TV program to watch. Adams allegedly threw a TV remote, hitting the child in the head, because the kid insisted on "cartoons" while Adams preferred "wrestling."

The Continuing Crisis

• Small-Town Democracy: The City Council of Gould, Ark. (pop. 1,100), voted in July to make it illegal for its citizens to form new "groups" without written permission from the council. The mayor and the city council are feuding over the budget, so the council, attempting to stifle lobbying by a group supporting the mayor, has tried to put a stop to new "groups." Of course, the ordinance appears to blatantly violate the First Amendment.

• Carole Green was fined $1,000 in July by a court in Leavenworth County, Kan., for littering onto the property of Gary Bukaty in Bonner Springs "most afternoons" for the past two years. Green apologized and said the charge was a complete surprise. She said when she starts out in her SUV, she drinks a bottle of tea, and it just happens that she finishes it at about the same spot on her journey—in front of Bukaty's property—and that's where she tosses the bottle. She promised to stop.

Chutzpah!

In July, inmate Johnathan Pinney, 26, petitioned U.S. District Court in Chicago, demanding that state and federal officials stop arresting him (because he did nothing illegal, he wrote, despite his current four-year sentence for aggravated battery on a police officer). Pinney helpfully suggested a way for the federal government to compensate him for all the grief it has caused him: The government should give him $50 billion "restitution" and award him uninhabited land so that he can start his own country, with sovereign and diplomatic immunity.

Plan B

Jonathan Schwartz called 911 in New York City in July to report that he had stabbed his mother to death. A few minutes later, before police had arrived, Schwartz called back 911 to report a correction: "No, she committed suicide." (The mother's body was found with multiple stab wounds, and police, notwithstanding Schwartz's "correction," arrested him. Schwartz has been charged with murder.)

Target Practice

Authorities in St. Lucie County, Fla., investigated an incident in May in which a woman allegedly fired an AR-15 rifle at a target inside her bedroom closet. Reportedly, the gunshots went through the wall and damaged a washing machine, springing a leak that spread water throughout the residence. (Officials said the woman's husband had fired shots, too, and that it wasn't the first time the couple had engaged in bedroom target practice.)

The Pervo-American Community

Jerry Prieto, 38, pleaded guilty in July in Benton County, Wash., to possession of methamphetamine and "malicious mischief with sexual motivation," and was sentenced to 45 days in jail. Prieto had been arrested with the drugs in October 2010 in a stall at a highway rest stop. According to the prosecutor, Prieto had written sexual notes on the floor with a felt-tipped pen and drawn an arrow pointing directly to his stall. (As a condition of his sentence, Prieto is allowed in rest-stop bathrooms only for "traditional" purposes.)

Names in the News

Arrested (again) for prostitution (this time in Columbus, Ga., April): Ms. Suk Kim Ho, 46. Charged with conspiracy to commit child molestation (Woodstock, Ga., June): Mr. Patrick Molesti, 58. Arrested for lewdness for allegedly exposing himself (Howe Township, Pa., June): Mr. Handy H. Wood, 35 (not to be confused with the man arrested in Columbia, Mo., in July, on suspicion of the same thing: Mr. Willy Wood, 54). Charged with DUI in a crash into a library (Buffalo, N.Y., July): Mr. Jack Goff, 47.

© 2011 Chuck Shepherd