News of the Weird: Week of Feb. 24, 2022

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The Neighbors

In the Bolivian city of El Alto, David Choque has alarmed his neighbors with his new decorating scheme, Reuters reported. Choque, a miner, hired an artist to create sculptures of long-horned skeletal devils from cement and wood and mount them on the outside of his home. Choque told Reuters that the sculptures hearken to life in Bolivian mines centuries ago, when indigenous men were forced into digging for silver. Colonial masters would use devil images to scare the men into working. But some neighbors fear that his decor signals satanic worship. Maria Laurel said she has heard about naked rituals in Choque's house: "The truth is, it frightens me." Choque pooh-poohs this idea: "Closed-minded people will think it's something supernatural, but people need to open their minds and see it as a tourist attraction, something that can improve the area."

More Than They Bargained For

Riders in the Bianchi Rock Cobbler, a California bike race known to be "stupidly hard," expected the usual sore muscles after the 80-mile off-roader on Feb. 12. They did not expect, however, neck and back injuries suffered after being attacked by a bull during the race. Tony Inderbitzin told KMPH-TV that he did see the animal, but he usually bikes right by cows with no problem: "As I got 10 to 15 yards from him, he turned ... squared up, and I had maybe a second to brace myself or do anything. It's a case of a mistaken identity from a cow to a bull." The bull, after dislodging him from his bike, flipped Inderbitzin up in the air. Two other riders were also attacked but were able to finish the race and celebrate with beers.

Inexplicable

• When police officers in Orem, Utah, pulled over Victor Chavez-Zuniga, 27, for a broken headlight on Feb. 9, they discovered that he had several outstanding warrants, The Smoking Gun reported. As a result, they searched him and found something "extra" in his wallet: a severed finger in a cloth wrap, which had "what appeared to be pus and blood on it" and "was beginning to turn green and the fingernail appeared to be decayed." Well, gross. Officer Bryce Mondragon also noticed a "foul smell." Unfortunately, the mystery lives on: The court filing does not say who the finger belonged to or why Chavez-Zuniga had it, but he was held on a charge of desecration of a dead human body, among other charges.
• On Feb. 10, as a 38-year-old man walked with a friend and his two children in Frauenfeld, Switzerland, he felt an unexplained sharp pain in his lower body. Later, at the emergency room, doctors discovered he had been shot, Oddity Central reported. But the man and his companions heard no gunshot and saw no one with a firearm: "An accident, a crime, a shot fired from afar -- we're not ruling anything out at the moment," said Matthias Graf, a police spokesman. Investigators are hoping the public can help; for now, they believe an air gun or a small-caliber weapon was used from a great distance, as a larger bullet would have caused more damage. The man is recovering.

Rude

In January 2021, Winchester Hagans of Auburn, Alabama, lost his fiancee, Hannah Ford, in a car crash. "She was the love of my life," Hagans told WTVM-TV on Feb. 7. After her death, Hagans built a flower box for her grave, where he planted her favorite flowers (she was not a fan of cut flowers) and placed photos of the two of them. He checked with the city that it was OK to place the planter by her grave; they told him as long as the family didn't object, it was fine. In January, while visiting Ford's grave, Hagans was approached by a police officer, who asked him to get out of his car and said there was a warrant for his arrest. The charge was littering. "I said, 'No, that's impossible, there's no way,'" Hagans said. Ford's father, Tom Ford, had signed the arrest warrant, but had never contacted Hagans personally about the planter box.

Unruly Passenger

Perhaps Michael Brandon Demarre, 32, has never heard of social media. On Feb. 12, Demarre was charged in federal court in Oregon for interfering with a flight crew in an incident that happened the day before on a Delta flight between Salt Lake City and Portland, Oregon. During that trip, KSL-TV reported, Demarre allegedly "removed the plastic covering of the emergency exit handle and pulled on the handle with his full body weight," witnesses said. Demarre was moved to the back of the plane and restrained until the flight landed and police took him into custody. As he explained his actions, Demarre said he grabbed the handle "so other passengers would video him, thereby giving him the opportunity to share his thoughts on COVID-19 vaccines." He will remain in custody until his next court hearing.

Sign of the Times

Soho House, the parent company of private spas, hotels, lounges and bars around the world, is offering new members another perk: the opportunity to choose from 41 options for pronouns when they sign up on the club's app, the New York Post reported. Choices go way beyond they/them, leaving one new member baffled: "It was hard for me to navigate 31 flavors of ice cream at Baskin-Robbins when I was a kid. The idea I have to pick from 41 pronouns to be a Soho House member seems a bit excessive." But no worries; a new member can skip the process if it's too overwhelming.

First, Do No Harm

Dr. Onyekachi Nwabuko, an ER doctor at UF Health Leesburg in Florida, was charged on Feb. 16 with three counts of battery after he allegedly struck a patient repeatedly, the Naples Daily News reported. Nwabuko reportedly was trying to confirm his suspicions that the patient was faking a medical condition. As such, he grabbed her hand and struck her in the face with it multiple times, leading to her IV line being ripped out and blood covering her face and arm. She was also bruised around her eye. One witness said Nwabuko was laughing and mocking the patient; finally, nurses intervened and stopped the doctor. In a curious statement, UF Health identified Nwabuko as "not employed by UF Health," but said they could not provide any more information.

Oops

A French dad in the town of Messanges was desperate to limit his kids' internet time, so he employed the use of a scrambler, which blocks connection to the web, the New York Post reported on Feb. 17. Unfortunately, the powerful tool also blocked the connections of the rest of the town and beyond -- and now he faces up to six months in prison and a fine of up to $34,000. Authorities said the unnamed man just wanted to block the internet between midnight and 3 a.m., but when neighbors started reporting their outages, the local service providers investigated.

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