WEIRD NEWS VOLUME 2

 WEIRD NEWS VOLUME 2

PASTORAL WEIRD

-    The Reverend Glen Summerford was convicted in February of

attempted murder of his wife in Scottsboro, Alabama.  A jury found

that he had forced his wife to stick her hand into a cage of

rattlesnakes (which he handles in his services at his Church of

Jesus With Following Signs in addition to drinking strychnine and

touching live electrical wires), saying that she had to die because

he wanted to marry another woman.  Much of the trial testimony

concerned which of the spouses had sinned or "backslid" more.  

(While Summerford was in jail, his inadequately supervised

parishioner, Clyde Crossfield, was bitten on both hands by a

rattlesnake he was handling.)

SUE `EM ALL!!

-    Scott D. Carpenter, 27, filed a lawsuit in September against

the management company of Three Rivers Stadium in Pittsburgh and

its chief concessionaire because they allowed him to buy too many

beers during a 1989 Steelers game and then failed to warn him about

the danger of riding on escalator handrails, on which he was

injured in a drunken fall.

-    In Tacoma, Washington, Christine Lauritzen filed a lawsuit

against her husband, Bret, last year for negligence that subjected

her to injury.  Bret's error was in ignoring Christine's driving

instructions:  During a visit to Miami, Florida, they wound up in

a bad section of town, where they were eventually robbed and where

she suffered a severe arm injury.

-    A newspaper in Ireland reported in February that 38 Irish

soccer fans recently won a lawsuit against two bus companies that

had caused them to miss the 1990 World Cup games in Italy.  They

sued because the bus drivers drove too slowly (an average of 20

mph) on two trips, causing them to miss one game and to miss a

scheduled ferry that would have transported them to another game.

-    Takashi Nakayama, 25, filed a lawsuit in December in a court

in Niigata, Japan, against his mother and grandmother, seeking

about $1,548 in damages because his grandmother had thrown out his

comic-book collection without his consent and his mother had failed

to stop her.

POLITICOS FROM HELL

-    Magoo Dorcy, 42, announced his candidacy for mayor of Dover,

Delaware, despite having pleaded guilty in Columbus, Ohio, three

years ago for molesting a 5 year old girl.

-    Harold W. "Tony" Glacken was charged last year with running

a fraudulent auto-inspection scheme.  Upon announcing his candidacy

for sheriff in St Louis, Missouri, recently, Glacken said, "I just

decided it was time I get involved and get this community

straightened out. I'm tired of all the [county's] bad publicity."

-    In Salem, Oregon, former Baptist minister Joe Lutz withdrew

from the U.S. Senate race in January, saying that his "family

values" campaign had lost credibility because he had abandoned his

wife to marry another woman and reportedly was $2,000 behind in

child support payments.

-    Donald L. Traxler, newly installed mayor of Ada, Ohio, and

education professor at Ohio Northern University, declared in

December that he would take office later in the month, as

scheduled, despite his December 13 arrest when rangers observed him

masturbating at a local park.

-    Sherman T. Miller, running for sheriff in Van Buren County in

southeastern Iowa, was jailed in March, suspected by authorities

to be part of a burglary ring that had been stealing farm

equipment.  Said Miller, "It's just a bunch of political nonsense

to take me out of the race."

-    Poin Adams, candidate for sheriff in Amarillo, Texas, was

found guilty in 1990 of fraud for tampering with his vehicle

inspection sticker.  He had crudely drawn a "1" on his windshield,

to obscure the "0" in 1990, so that his sticker would appear to be

valid in 1991.

OH RAMI, GET REAL JOB!!

-    On October 12, a clerk on duty at a convenience store in

Abilene, Texas, was persuaded by a man to accept a $100 bill that

was accurately printed (1950 series) in every detail -- except that

it was 12 inches long and 5 inches wide.

REAL WEIRD

-    Last fall, two men holed up in the Maine State Library in

Augusta for two months in makeshift living quarters that a security

official said included "everything you could think of," before they

were discovered.  Andre V. Jatho, 20, was charged with burglary,

but the other man moved out.  For sustenance, the two men had

looted various state supply rooms (taking an unusually large

quantity of pudding).