News of the Weird

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

A teenager, 17, was booked into a juvenile detention center in Lynnwood, Wash., in October after he got his arm stuck in the dog door of a house he was allegedly attempting to burglarize. (Experienced burglars avoid houses with dog doors because that usually means that a dog is present.)

In Sheboygan, Wis., in November, police arrested Leah Jerolimek, 21, and charged her with trying to pass a counterfeit $20 bill at a gas station, even though the bill (made with a computer and printer) was blank on the back.

News of the Weird first noted Professor Jukka Ammondt of the University of Jyvaskyla in Finland in 1995, and apparently his twin passions (Elvis Presley and Latin) have only grown stronger since then. He performs Elvis' songs in the "dead" language that's far from dead in Finland -- a country that features a regular radio newscast entirely in Latin (drawing about 75,000 listeners), according to an October BBC dispatch from Helsinki. Among the Ammondt-Presley standards: "It's Now or Never" ("Nunc hic aut numquam") and "Love Me Tender" ("Tenere me, suaviter").

In Shamokin, Pa., in October, Terry Jackson, 36, distraught for an undisclosed reason, kept police at bay in a suicidal standoff in which she wielded five poisonous snakes (from an aquarium in her home). They bit her hand and face numerous times, leaving her bloody, until police subdued her with a Taser gun. She was hospitalized in critical condition but survived and will face charges for threatening police.
(Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa FL 33679 or WeirdNews@earthlink.net or go to www.NewsoftheWeird.com.) NEWS OF THE WEIRD