News of the Weird: July 8, 2021

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Awesome!

In 1961, when she was 10 years old, Gwen Goldman sent a letter to New York Yankees general manager Roy Hamey, offering her services as a bat girl. Hamey responded, "In a game dominated by men a young lady such as yourself would feel out of place in a dugout." Goldman kept the letter from Hamey on her bulletin board for the next 60 years, and her daughter recently forwarded it to current general manager Brian Cashman. On June 28, United Press International reported, Goldman was invited to Yankee Stadium to fulfill her dream. Her visit included a tour of the clubhouse, meet-and-greet with players and coaches, and photos with umpires -- plus she got to throw out the first pitch wearing a full pinstripe Yankees uniform. "Sixty years thinking about this and here it is," Goldman said.

The Passing Parade

Deer are not native to Australia, which might explain why two nude sunbathers in Royal National Park, south of Sydney, ran into the bush when a deer startled them on a nudist beach on June 27. The two men, 30 and 49 years old, became lost and called for help, summoning a police rescue helicopter to pluck them from the forest, Reuters reported. Unfortunately for them, they were found to be breaching a COVID-19 lockdown instated in response to the delta variant, and both were charged with fines.

Least Competent Criminals

An unnamed man in Waterboro, Maine, was arrested on June 27 on an outstanding warrant for a theft from a Walmart, the Associated Press reported. When the bail commissioner arrived, the man tried to use two counterfeit $100 bills to post his bail. He was returned to jail and charged with forgery. Reportedly he was able to meet bail with legitimate bills later that day and is scheduled to be in court on Aug. 4.

In Gillette, Wyoming, a 62-year-old man called the Campbell County Sheriff's Office on June 24 to ask why he hadn't been arrested the day before, when officers raided his home. Undersheriff Quentin Reynolds asked him why he ought to be arrested, and the man admitted that he had used methamphetamine -- which might shed light on the fact that his house was never raided and there had been no plans to arrest him. He also told officers that 10 men were following him, the Associated Press reported. Deputies caught up with him as he was driving and arrested him for driving under the influence of a controlled substance.

Vincent Vinny Marks, 27, of Plaquemine, Louisiana, picked the wrong guy to pull over as he impersonated a police officer on June 10. Law & Crime reported that an off-duty sheriff's deputy was driving that day when the vehicle behind him began "flashing his headlights continuously." The deputy pulled into a convenience store parking lot, followed by Marks, who approached his car, presented a badge and "represented himself as being a police officer." Unfortunately, the off-duty officer recognized Marks from a domestic incident that he had responded to earlier in the year. The Assumption Parish Sheriff's Office launched an investigation, and Marks was arrested on June 28 for false personation of a peace officer.

Extreme Reaction

A couple in Sheffield, United Kingdom, have taken drastic measures over their neighbor's tree, which sits right on the property line and overhangs their driveway. Bharat Mistry, 56, the tree's owner, told the BBC that his neighbor had been complaining for some time about the tree, home to nesting pigeons that relieved themselves on the driveway and cars. First, the angry neighbor asked Mistry to remove the tree altogether. Mistry suggested trimming and installing netting to keep the birds out, but the neighbor called in his own tree surgeon, who completely removed the side of the canopy that was hanging over the drive. "It looks awful," said Brian Parkes, who lives nearby. "It's done, you can't undo it."

Surprise!

Colin Steer, 70, of Plymouth, United Kingdom, was replacing some floor joists in the home he and his wife bought in 1988 when he noticed a dip in the floor near the bay window in the living room. "I immediately thought someone must have buried someone under there or that we had a sinkhole," Steer told the Mirror. Instead, he found a well. Since then, Steer has been digging down into the well, having cleared about 17 feet of debris from it, including a sword that he believes could date to medieval times. While the home was constructed in 1895, Steer believes the well may be 500 years old. "At the bottom of the well is about 4 feet of water," Steer said, which he has sampled and deemed crystal clear. He hopes to dig down another several feet and then extend the structure up into the living room and use it as a coffee table.

But Why?

WLBT-TV in Jackson, Mississippi, reported on June 30 that vandals have been breaking into graves in Rosemount Cemetery -- not only opening the graves, but damaging and opening caskets of people buried there. Mausoleums have also been breached, with urns and remains missing. Zach Martinez, who visited on June 29 to pay respects to a friend, said, "It's sad what's going on out here because this is a resting place for people." Martinez returned one casket to its niche. The secretary of state's office told WLBT that a complaint would have to be raised against the cemetery for an investigation to be opened.

Best Laid Plans

South Los Angeles was the scene of a huge explosion that injured 17 people on June 30 after a planned detonation of illegal fireworks went horribly wrong, CBSLA reported. The Los Angeles Police Department had seized more than 5,000 pounds of commercial-grade fireworks from the home of 27-year-old Arturo Cejas and had moved about 10 pounds of "improvised explosive devices" into a special armored truck designed for controlled detonations. But the blast flipped cars and shattered windows over a two-block area, with neighbors describing it as "a really hard earthquake." The top of the armored vehicle, which weighs about 1 ton, fell blocks away, smashing a roof before landing in a yard. Cejas was held on $500,000 bail; LAPD called on national ATF teams to help with the investigation.

Bad Behavior

Kyle F. Campbell, 31, of Indiana, has been banned from Yellowstone National Park for five years after a series of incidents on June 21 that also landed him with a 60-day jail sentence, five years of unsupervised probation and a fine. The mayhem started with Campbell and his friends being denied access to their kayaks because they were drunk, K2 Radio reported. The group moved to another part of the park, where Campbell threatened a security guard who asked him to drive more slowly. Park rangers placed him in handcuffs and in their patrol car, where he banged his head on the glass until they removed him. One ranger and Campbell got into a struggle, and he was placed under arrest for disorderly conduct. But he wasn't finished. Back in the patrol vehicle, he tried to kick out the back window and had to be placed in leg restraints, then was forcibly sedated on the way to a hospital to treat his injuries. Rangers found empty alcohol bottles and marijuana containers in Campbell's car.

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