xxxNews Of The Weirdxxx
Richard Hobbs, who solicits tips in public by making balloon sculptures for children, filed a lawsuit against Westchester County, N.Y., for denying him the right to work the crowd at the county’s Playland Amusement Park. In the course of defending the lawsuit, the county discovered that Hobbs had been convicted in 1978 and 1982 of sexual abuse of children. However, Hobbs persisted with the lawsuit, and in December, federal judge John Martin ordered the two parties to settle among themselves the issue of which areas of the park are commercial and which are traditional park space, in that Hobbs apparently has a constitutional right to practice his craft in traditional park spaces.
A judge in Monroe County, N.Y., denied Jerold Ponder’s application for a handgun permit, but Ponder is appealing that decision, even though he is currently in jail charged with the shooting death of his pregnant girlfriend. Ponder’s best-case-scenario defense is that it was just an accident, occurring while he and the girlfriend were target-shooting with a rifle, and that that incident is not relevant to whether he is safety-conscious enough to carry a pistol.
According to the prosecutor at the Waterloo, Iowa, theft trial of Bradley Steven Bailey, 21, in December, not only did Bailey steal a day’s bank deposit for the Hardee’s restaurant where he worked and leave town, but after he was arrested and jailed, he wrote a letter to the Hardee’s manager saying he was sorry but that he never did get his final paycheck, and could it please be mailed to him.
Margie Schoendinger of the Houston suburb of Missouri City, Texas, filed a lawsuit in December against George W. Bush for a lengthy series of alleged actions while he was governor, including “watching” her and “having sex” with her and her husband. The rambling and non sequitur-laden complaint, filed in Fort Bend County Court and reported on by the weekly Fort Bend Star, names the Sugar Land (Texas) Police Department as corroborating many of the plaintiff’s allegations (example: that “plaintiff had seven dates, which became seven lovers, had told no lies, committed no crimes, gotten two traffic tickets, and dated George W. Bush as a minor”), but a department spokesman said no one had any idea what Schoendinger was talking about.
Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa, Fla. 33679 or [email protected]
Copyright © 2001 by Chuck Shepherd
NEWS OF THE WEIRD
