News of the Weird: Week of March 17, 2022

×

Expand

News of the Weird newspapers illustration

Ooohhh-kkkaaayyyyy

Some romantic relationships are full of drama and strife, so maybe Sandra, 28, of Budapest, Hungary, has come up with a better model. According to Oddity Central, Sandra has fallen for Luffancs, a plastic model of an airplane. After breaking up with her latest human boyfriend in January, Sandra bought Luffancs for $660 and fell madly in love. "I don't know why I love him, I just love him," she said. Sandra works in the aviation industry and is around airplanes every day, but says she will never cheat on Luffancs. In fact, she doesn't know if she'll ever date another human being. "Planes are more reliable as partners," she said.

Unclear on the Concept

When Bshar Ahmed, 30, of Youngstown, Ohio, was arrested on March 7, he told police that he was selling marijuana from the gas station where he was working the midnight shift because he just got out of prison and he needs the money, WKBN-TV reported. The owner of the station called officers about Ahmed and produced a bag, which Ahmed admitted was his, that contained bags of weed and a loaded .38-caliber semiautomatic handgun, along with suspected methamphetamine, crack cocaine, indeterminate pills and over $1,000 in cash. Ahmed's previous convictions bar him from possessing a firearm.

The Neighbors

When ya gotta go ... At 4:40 p.m. on March 4, Kenneth Clark Carlyle, 64, walked up his neighbor's driveway in his birthday suit and relieved himself, No. 2 style, on the neighbor's glass patio table, The Smoking Gun reported. The whole thing was caught on not one, but two "separate angles of the victim's home security video footage," the police report noted. Clearwater, Florida, officers arrived at Carlyle's RV camper, where they spoke to him "through the door ... and he was still visibly naked and highly uncooperative." The bond on this incident is $250, but he was already in trouble from a December infraction, so he remains in the pokey.

Unexpected Trip

Three Michigan men ice fishing in a homemade shanty on Saginaw Bay on March 6 went for the ride of their lives as winds nearing 50 mph pushed their structure about a mile across the ice, the Associated Press reported. The men had spent the night before in the shanty and were aware that a storm was approaching, but thought they could ride it out. But the next morning, someone onshore saw one of them struggling with the hut as it scooted over the ice. It eventually ended up about 1.5 miles offshore before deputies arrived; the men were able to return to shore without rescue equipment and were unharmed.

Surprise!

As construction crews worked to remodel the Henry J. Kaiser Convention Center in Oakland, California, on March 9, they made an alarming discovery, NBC News reported. The building, which has been out of use since 2005, was the final resting place for "an unidentified, decayed body," said Lt. Ray Kelly of the Alameda County Sheriff's Office. "We found remains best described as mummified," he said. "The conditions in the walls were such that the body was preserved in good condition." He said authorities will obtain fingerprints to try to identify the deceased. "Any theory is possible," Kelly said, "... from someone who got in behind the wall and became trapped ... to someone put the person there."

It's a Head-Scratcher

On March 3 in a quiet Denver neighborhood, someone broke into a box truck parked along a street and stole a box marked "Science Care," KDVR-TV reported. Inside the box were a number of human heads that were being transported for use in medical research. The thieves also stole a dolly. Isaac Fields, who lives nearby, was perplexed: Why was the truck parked in his neighborhood? Where was the driver? Why would someone steal human remains? Police wouldn't provide many details because the case is still open.

Creepy

Yes, this item is about clowns. Or at least circuses. Or circus train cars. In Nash County, North Carolina, nine railroad cars from the 1960s Barnum & Bailey circus that had been abandoned in the woods caught fire on March 10, WRAL-TV reported. The cars were just outside the city limits of Spring Hope, where they were stored after the North Carolina Department of Transportation bought them in 2017, hoping to refurbish them for passenger service. Later they were put up for auction, but more recently the cars were a popular destination for urban explorers and people seeking shelter. At least four of the cars appeared to be badly damaged by the fire; the cause of the blaze is under investigation.

People With Issues

Prosecutors have accused 20-year-old Mauricio Damian Guerrero of Bensalem, Pennsylvania, of burglary after he traveled to Somersworth, New Hampshire, and hid in the attic of a woman he had met on the website OnlyFans, WKBN-TV reported on March 7. Guerrero allegedly descended from the attic to take video of the woman while she was sleeping, stole some of her underwear, and planned to place a tracking device on her car. Police were called after someone at the home heard a noise; Guerrero was found on the roof of the home. He was released on bail and ordered to wear a tracking device.

Ewwwww

U.S. Customs and Border Protections agents probably rarely having a boring day, but between Feb. 19 and 25, officers in Philadelphia came across some particularly skin-crawly cargo: about 300 leeches from Bulgaria, NBC New York reported. The medicinal leeches, which arrived in jars distributed among six separate air cargo shipments, were headed for Connecticut, Florida and Illinois, but they'll never make it: That type of leech, the Hirudo medicinalis, is a protected species and can't be traded internationally. Instead, they were turned over to federal wildlife agents.

Girls Just Wanna Have Fun

Dot Grant, 52, attended the musical "Bat Out of Hell" with her family at the Edinburgh Playhouse in Scotland in February, Edinburgh Live reported. It was a real treat, as it was her first theater visit since the pandemic began two years earlier. But as Dot tapped her thigh and sang along quietly under her mask, one of the ushers "flashed their torch" at her before the intermission. Dot couldn't figure out why: "I did not think I was doing anything wrong." As the performance continued in the second half, a security worker motioned for Dot to come to the aisle, and she was removed from the theater and told she was "at a musical theater show, not a concert." "I was surrounded by eight men, which made me feel very uncomfortable and uneasy," Dot said. "People had been complaining about my actions of singing and dancing in my seat, that it was a distraction and off-putting for the cast. I waved my hands a few times, but I didn't think that was wrong." The theater said that audience participation "had never been encouraged."

Least Competent Criminal

U.S. border agents at the San Ysidro crossing in California stopped a 30-year-old man driving a truck on Feb. 25 as he attempted to cross from Mexico, the Associated Press reported on March 8. Agents found 52 live reptiles tied up in small bags -- not so weird, except they were "concealed in the man's jacket, pants pockets, and groin area," CBP said in a statement. Nine snakes and 43 horned lizards were seized. Some species were endangered. The driver was a U.S. citizen.

Send your weird news items with subject line WEIRD NEWS to WeirdNewsTips@amuniversal.com.

COPYRIGHT 2022 ANDREWS MCMEEL SYNDICATION

1130 Walnut, Kansas City MO 64106; 800-255-6734