Topics: News of the Weird - 1480 results

The City Council of Jersey City, N.J., voted in September to settle a lawsuit filed by Joshua Lopez, who had driven his car directly at a police officer during a 2009 traffic stop, trapping the officer against his own squad car, and thus forcing the officer to fire at him. Lopez suffered only an injured hand, but the city has now agreed to give him $26,500 out of fear of “litigation risk.” [The Jersey Journal, 9-13-2012]      

A Detroit homeowner is living with an unwelcome houseguest because she cannot legally kick the woman out, pending a civil judgment. The alleged squatter, Missionary-Tracey Elaine Blair, is a write-in candidate for president of the United States. According to a local news story, Heidi Peterson bought the house for $23,000 and rented it to Blair and other tenants in 2010. However, in February 2011 she kicked everyone out because the house was not safe to live in anymore. Little did …

Dakoda Garren, 19, was arrested in Vancouver, Wash., in September on suspicion of stealing an antique coin collection in May that was estimated to be worth $100,000. Garren and his girlfriend were identified after spending some of the coins at a movie theater and a pizza restaurant, using rare Liberty Head quarters (worth from $5 to $18,500) at their face value. [The Daily News (Longview, Wash.) via The Columbian, 9-20-2012]

Francesco Piserchia, 36, filed a $17 million lawsuit in August against Bergen County, N.J., police, and individual officers, for being shot following a wild, high-speed car chase through residential neighborhoods in 2010. Although Piserchia and an associate had nearly hit a squad car and were fleeing on foot after their car crashed, they claim the police had no reason to shoot at them because, just moments before the shots, the men had decided to surrender. (In a separate matter, two …

They say the mullet hairstyle is business in the front but party in the back. But there isn’t much of a party where the ironically-named Samuel Mullet, Sr. is concerned: The leader of a breakaway Amish group in Ohio is facing life in prison for forcibly cutting off the beards of Amish men and the hair of Amish women who had left his compound.   Violent Shearings A Cleveland jury on September 20 convicted Mullet, who is 66, and 15 …