xxxNews Of The Weirdxxx

Fitzroy Barnaby of Evanston, Ill., angrily grabbed the arm of a 14-year-old girl whom he almost ran into as she was playing dangerously in traffic. He was convicted under the state’s “restraining a minor” statute, which requires that its violators be listed as sex offenders (even though the trial judge and, in June, the state Appellate Court, both discounted any sexual motive).

Ohio state alcohol and drug undercover agent Timothy Gales was accused, after an internal investigation, of having undermined his own teenage confidential informant in a Columbus store that the pair were probing for selling cigarettes to minors. According to the official report (described in the Columbus Dispatch in July), Gales stood alongside the teenager, and when the clerk proceeded with the sale, Gale asked, “Hey, aren’t you supposed to ask for ID?” It was allegedly Gales’ second blown-sting incident this year.

Elijah Walker, 35, who pleaded guilty to cocaine possession in Cincinnati in June, resisted complying with the state requirement that he also give up a DNA sample, in that he feared the state would use it to create a clone of him. (Said the prosecutor, reassuringly, “I’m not sure the state really wants another Elijah Walker.”)

Earlier this year, the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Investment in Belfast, Northern Ireland, banned the use of the term “brainstorming” when referring to thinking up ideas, instead decreeing that staff will use the term “thought showers” since the former term might be offensive to some people with brain injuries.
(Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa FL 33679 or [email protected] or go to www.NewsoftheWeird.com.) NEWS OF THE WEIRD