xxxNews Of The Weirdxxx

Bizarre but true stories about real people collected by syndicated columnist Chuck Shepherd.

Between June and August, high school dropout Jonathan Harris, 34, acted as his own lawyer in three Philadelphia felony cases and won them all, including a murder trial that could have sent him to death row. At press time, he had scheduled two more for himself, on a 2001 gun charge and at a new trial on several lesser charges related to the murder (although he had taunted a prosecutor in court about taking him on again). The prosecutor blamed the murder verdict on unreliable and no-show witnesses.

Zachary G. Holloway, 20, and a pal were arrested in Springfield, Ill., in September and charged with breaking into one car (and stealing, among other things, a motorcycle helmet) and attempting to break into another. To try to get into the second car, Holloway put on the helmet, stood back from the car, and charged into it, head-butting a window, unsuccessfully, twice. The two were arrested shortly afterward.

Ms. Jamila Glauber filed a lawsuit against the transit system in Juneau, Alaska, because a driver’s attempt to enforce the well-known no-eating rule on a bus (it was a Snickers bar) caused her, she says, at least $50,000 worth of emotional distress (July).
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