xxxNews Of The Weirdxxx

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

In December, when Nicholas J. Valeri, 19, was arrested for allegedly passing a counterfeit $20 bill at a Wendy’s restaurant in Hempfield Township, Pa., he claimed innocence, saying that he inadvertently acquired the bill shortly before, while selling $240 worth of marijuana.

Several times over the years in News of the Weird, bad things (including death) have happened to drivers who make the poor decision (usually while inebriated) to stop along the side of a highway at night to urinate but then fail to deal properly with the various dangers. Usually the dangers involve wandering out into traffic or falling over an embankment, but in November, Henry Turley, 77, started to exit his pickup truck to urinate near Kingsbury, Ind., and when rescue workers arrived 20 minutes later, Turley’s truck was in a ditch, and Turley was lying on his back with his left foot caught between the wheel well and the left front tire and his right foot caught between the driver’s side door and the front seat. (A nearly empty bottle of whiskey was on the passenger side.)

In December, a wheel from a tractor-trailer on Interstate 84 in Idaho (glowing hot from an overheated bearing) came off, rolled across a frontage road, and started several fires after it crashed into the home of Charisse Stevenson. According to a report in the Times-News (Twin Falls, Id.), Stevenson, seeing her 10-year-old son trapped by flames on the second floor of their home and separated by the red-hot wheel, moved it out of the way (though it weighs 250 pounds), scooped up her son (135 pounds), and carried him to safety. Afterward, of course, Stevenson was found to be unable to lift either the wheel or her son.
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