News of the Weird: Nov. 4, 2020

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Crime Report, Halloween Edition

Nathan Garisto, 26, of Largo, Fla., was arrested on Oct. 19 on a domestic battery charge. The Smoking Gun reported that Garisto was "heavily intoxicated while engaged in a verbal argument with his girlfriend," according to police. He refused to leave after his girlfriend asked him to, instead throwing "a pumpkin and all insides of the pumpkin at the subject." Garisto maintains he threw the pumpkin at the door, not at the girlfriend. He was released on bond and ordered to have no contact with the victim.

Sweet Love

Sugar Good, 49, who manages a Dunkin' Donuts store in Edmond, Okla., knew a good man when she saw one ... every morning at 7:15 as he collected his sausage, egg and cheese croissant at her drive-thru. After a year of friendly commercial exchanges, The New York Times reported, Good finally got up the nerve to hand John Thompson, 45, her business card along with his food and coffee. Two years later, on Oct. 13, Good and Thompson tied the knot at the place that brought them together: the Dunkin' drive-thru. "We knew we wanted to share it with the Dunkin' family," Good said. She stood at her spot in the window and Thompson drove up in his red truck, where former pastor Colby Taylor was waiting for them. Taylor kept the ceremony short, as other customers were lined up behind Thompson, but at the end, Good came outside and Thompson got out of his truck for their first kiss as regulars, friends and family cheered them on. "Our story wasn't glamour," Good said, "but it was true romance."

Bright Idea

In Littleton, N.H., a Hillsborough County grand jury filed indictments against Lisa Landon, 33, in early October, the Union Leader reported. Landon was scheduled in court for three different cases in November and December 2019, involving drug possession and stalking. To avoid going to jail, Landon impersonated a prosecutor, using the court's electronic system to file fake documents dropping the charges against her. A state forensic officer noticed last November that the charges were dropped and wondered if a scheduled competency evaluation on Landon should proceed, which tipped off court officials. While she was at it, Landon allegedly filed an order on behalf of a relative to halt guardianship proceedings involving Landon's child. She's been charged with one count of false impersonation and six counts of falsifying physical evidence.

Cue the Lawyers

Nightmares really do come true: On Oct. 24, as Leonard Shoulders, 33, waited at a bus stop in the Bronx, N.Y., the sidewalk beneath him gave way and he dropped into a decrepit basement full of rats, Fox News reported. Bystanders alerted authorities, and Shoulders was rescued from the dark hole about 30 minutes later, with injuries including a broken arm, broken leg and scraped face. New York's Department of Buildings said the basement beneath the sidewalk was poorly maintained, and the building was closed until repairs can be made.

The Meth Made Me Do It

Traffic slowed to a crawl and people got out of their cars on a busy roadway in Chongqing, China, on Oct. 17, hoping to collect banknotes that were raining down from the sky. As it turned out, the money wasn't coming from heaven, but from an unnamed 29-year-old man who was tripping on methamphetamine in his 30-story-high apartment overlooking the street. As he showered passersby with money, police arrived and took him into custody, and he was receiving treatment, according to The Guardian.

Florida

A woman who would not leave a St. Petersburg, Fla., Mobil gas station was arrested for trespassing on Oct. 14, The Smoking Gun reported. But that's not the weird part. Melinda Lynn Guerrero, 33, was also charged with providing a false name to law enforcement after she repeatedly said her name was "My butt just farted." Officers were familiar with Guerrero from a series of arrests over several years, and her last name is tattooed on her back, so ... They noted she may have been under the influence of alcohol or drugs.

The Continuing Crisis

Sure, COVID-19 has been tough on human beings. But don't discount the effect the virus has had on our aquatic friends. Take Mikko, a 3-foot-long grouper who lives at the Sea Life Helsinki Sea Lab ocean laboratory, where he had to be isolated because he kept eating his tankmates. When the aquarium closed because of the pandemic, Mikko appeared depressed, becoming "more still and distant than usual," his caretakers told Live Science. "To cheer him up ... the caretakers and other staff had lunch and coffee breaks by his tank." They also had a TV to keep him company, but on Oct. 12, Mikko got the ultimate pick-me-up: a 16th birthday party featuring a salmon "cake." Aquarium representatives said he enjoyed the party.

Election Snafu

Nikolai Loktev, 58, the incumbent mayor of Povalikhino in Russia, asked the woman who cleans the city hall to add her name to the ballot as a formality, in order to comply with a regulation that elections must have two or more candidates. In a twist of fate, however, Marina Udgodskaya received 62% of the vote, compared to Loktev's 34%, on Sept. 28. "I didn't think people would actually vote for me," Udgodskaya said, according to the BBC. But one village shopkeeper explained: "If we could have voted against all we would have done, but we had the option to vote for Marina, so we did. I think she'll cope. The whole village will help." Loktev is sporting a stiff upper lip: "I'm not upset. People voted for her, so let her do her job."

Family Values

On Oct. 8, as an Advent Health worker checked visitors' temperatures at Disney World in Orlando, Fla., she noticed a woman removing something from the stroller she was pushing and place it in the bushes outside the entrance to the park. The woman then proceeded through the checkpoint and into the park. The witness alerted authorities, who found a purse and, inside, a handgun. The woman, Marcia Temple of Georgia, returned to the spot and told the officer the purse was hers, but threw her 6-year-old son under the bus: "I had told my son to hold it for me and stand right here while I go get my brother. He put it down, and messed with the plants and I put them back, but I didn't know he put it down and I didn't know he left it over here." Unfortunately for Temple, security cameras captured her planting the purse in the bushes, ClickOrlando.com reported. Orange County deputies said the firearm was fully loaded, and Temple did not have a concealed weapons permit for either Florida or Georgia. She was charged with carrying a concealed firearm.

Least Neighborly Neighbor

Ryan Ferry and his wife moved into their Clearwater, Florida, home with great expectations about living in a neighborhood they loved. But their next-door neighbor, Ken Nielsen, had other plans. "He's threatened to shoot me in the face numerous times," Ferry told WFLA. "My wife can't go out back and sunbathe because he will pull up a chair and take pictures of her." The final straw came on Oct. 24, when Ferry hung lights on his side of their shared fence for a birthday party that evening. Nielsen called police, who asked Ferry to remove the lights. But he called 911 again, telling the operator, "I've got a ton of ... weapons. I got ... hand grenades. I'll blow them out of the ... ground." Ferry can take comfort in the fact that it's not personal: Nielsen assaulted another neighbor in 2016 for power washing while he was trying to watch the Olympics.

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