Lead Stories
In January the general manager of a Ford-Toyota dealership in Lake City, Florida, told reporters that the vandalism incident on his lot involving acid should be punished as a hate crime because only Fords were hit. And in Berlin, owners of pit bulls and other aggressive breeds planned a May protest against proposed legislation to ban the dogs; organizers planned to have their dogs wear yellow Stars of David.
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Recent weapons: In a January bar fight in Rock Island, Illinois, one woman hit another on the head with a toilet lid. In Oklahoma City, a 21-year-old man wielding a small python robbed a convenience store in December. In Toledo, Ohio, a man holding a dildo and wearing a jockstrap over his head robbed a Hungry Howie’s of $40 in February. Also in February, in Pinellas Park, Florida, a man robbed a sex shop, menacingly waving a vibrator shaped like a tongue at the clerk.
Police in Dublin, Ohio, arrested alleged veteran thief Rudolf Nyari, 64, in April for taking a diamond bracelet from a jewelry store. Nyari had asked to see the bracelet, then left the store, after which an employee noticed it missing. Police stopped Nyari just outside town, searched his car, and threatened to take him for X rays. Later, according to a detective, Nyari “drank several glasses of water and smoked cigarettes to build up enough phlegm to cough [the bracelet] up.” The bracelet contained 39 diamonds.
Well Put
In April a 43-year-old snowmobiler was killed in an avalanche in Alaska’s Hoodoo Mountains while “highmarking,” or driving to ever-higher peaks on the slopes; earlier that day, he had been pulled, in shock, from another avalanche after highmarking and advised by rescuers to quit. And a 30-year-old motorcyclist was killed near Phoenix in December in an apparent road-rage incident in which he sped up to overtake a pickup truck, swerved in front of it, and then slammed on the brakes.
Send your weird news to Chuck Shepherd, Chicago Reader, 11 E. Illinois, Chicago 60611 or to weird@compuserve.com.
