Thread: Stupid People

STUPID PEOPLE


- Leon Howard Matter was arrested in Sandusky, Ohio, in August for sending a letter containing "anthrax" (though it turned out to be harmless powder) to the local FBI office. He told agents the reason he did it was because he was facing earlier child pornography charges and didn't want to go to prison for that because he'd get beaten up. Threatening the FBI, he reasoned, has a better cachet. [WKYC-TV (Cleveland)-AP, 8-9-06]
-------------------------------------------------------
- At the York Crown Court in England in September, Antonia Pearson-Gaballonie, 36, was convicted of having enslaved a 26-year-old housekeeper from 1997 to 2005 despite her defense that the woman had actually been earning the equivalent of about $55 a week during that time and that all she had to have done was ask for it, but she never did. [BBC News, 9-8-09]
-------------------------------------------------------
- Urinating continues to be a dangerous activity (even fatal, over the years, among several men who had stopped on the side of the road at night to answer nature's call and fallen down slopes to their deaths, as News of the Weird has reported). In July, an Australian man, looking for a place to relieve himself near the Commercial Drive SkyTrain station in East Vancouver, British Columbia, fell about 100 feet into a ravine, but tree branches broke his fall, and he survived. And Jerry Mersereau, 23, after camping in the Mount Hood National Forest in Oregon, filed a lawsuit against the federal government in August for injuries he suffered after wandering off a cliff at night while searching for a place to relieve himself. [Canadian Broadcasting Corporation News, 7-19-06] [The Oregonian, 8-4-06]
-------------------------------------------------------
- Pennsylvania inmate Donta Thomas was re-arrested in August and charged with operating a drug ring on the outside, carried out via the Fayette County prison's pay phones. According to police, Thomas routinely gave explicit instructions to his accomplices over the phone despite an automated message on each call that the conversation was being recorded. According to a spokesman for the state attorney general, Thomas, speaking, would pause so as not to have to talk over the recording, but then afterward resume planning his deals. [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 8-26-06]
-------------------------------------------------------
- Executive chef George Llorens, 60, was arrested in Bridgeport, Conn., in July, accused of punching a colleague in the face because the appetizers she made were cold. [New York Post-AP, 7-20-06]
-------------------------------------------------------
- Judge Paul E. Zellerbach was admonished by California's judicial agency in August for behavior in October 2004, when he left a jury deliberating a murder charge in order to attend an Angels-Red Sox playoff game and declined to leave the game when notified that the jury had reached a verdict (forcing everyone to return the next day). [Inland Valley Daily Bulletin, 8-16-06]
-------------------------------------------------------
- School bus driver Delores Davis faced termination in Coushatta, La., in August after she decided to arrange seating on her bus, with whites up front and all nine black kids into the back two rows. [News Star (Monroe, La.), 8- 24-06]
-------------------------------------------------------
- Carry-on Blues: (1) Just after the Aug. 10 restrictions were imposed, British Airways refused to allow disabled New Zealand runner Kate Horan (on her way to the paralympic world championships in the Netherlands) to carry on her prosthetic leg, as she had long been allowed to do. Her checked-baggage leg was then lost in the chaos at Heathrow airport, and the prosthetic's manufacturer scrambled to make Horan a new one. (The leg was found a week later, and at press time, Horan had won at least one medal.) (2) The Transportation Security Administration's ban on carry-on liquids, gels and ointments apparently does not apply to small quantities of "personal lubricants," such as the gels popular as sex aids. [Townsville Bulletin (Australia), 8-29-06; New York Times, 8-31-06]