?Wild Woman? accused again
New York state Sen. Ada Smith, known to some as the “Wild Woman of Albany” for her temper, pleaded not guilty in April for yet another alleged outburst (accused of assaulting a staff member with hot coffee after a comment about Smith’s weight).
According to Senate officials cited by the New York Daily News, more than 200 of her staff members over the years have either quit or been fired. Besides Smith’s previous run-ins with Albany police, New York City police and United Airlines, other former employees have claimed she assaulted them (the latest being a woman who said Smith threw a phone at her). Smith has denied virtually every accusation, but her exasperated Senate party leader has stripped Smith of seniority privileges.
People With Issues
In July, Cory Neddermeyer, 42, was turned down for unemployment benefits in Iowa, after a judge ruled he was fired for cause. His employer, the Amaizing Energy ethanol plant, suffered a massive spill that created a pond of fuel alcohol, and Neddermeyer (a recovering alcoholic), after resisting as long as he could, gave in and started drinking from the pool (causing him to pass out and later register an 0.72 blood-alcohol reading).
Least Competent Criminals
Not Cut Out for a Life of Crime: (1) Lawrence C. Lawson, 60, was charged with robbing the Lasalle Bank in Troy, Mich., in July, which was an easy collar because, as he emerged from the bank with his loot, he spotted a passing police car and promptly fainted.
(2) Pierre Barton, 20, was arrested in Cleveland following the robbery of Georgio’s Pizza, shortly after he had accidentally dropped his two “cheat sheet” cards containing his robbery speech reading “Give me the money” and “I’ll kill your family.? In fact, Barton apparently was a poor ad-libber: Although his makeshift “gun” had come apart and was lying on the floor, he still threatened to shoot the manager as he was fleeing.
Election Follies
After All, They’re Not Running for Husband of the Year: (1) David Spellman was sworn in as mayor of Black Hawk, Colo., on July 12, a week after pleading guilty to two charges for pistol-whipping his wife with a handgun in 2005 (and firing three shots).
(2) Self-described “pro-traditional family” candidate Jim Galley lost a two-man June congressional primary in San Diego, with no help from the San Diego Union Tribune’s discovery, a week before the voting, that he had had child-support payments garnisheed from his paycheck for four years and was once, for a 17-month period, simultaneously married to two women.
Chutzpah!
(1) Randall Roye, whom New York City government lawyers say entered the country illegally in the 1990s and assumed the identity of a dead man, nonetheless tried to sue the city for $20 million after he allegedly “fell” out of a first-floor window of a school building. (With his cover blown, he has dropped out of sight, according to a June New York Post story.)
(2) The U.S. military has attempted to hand back 32 parcels of land and buildings to the South Korean government after restoring them to their pre-Korean War condition (except for capital improvements the U.S. has made, which stay with the buildings). However, South Korea is refusing 25 of them, according to a June Stars and Stripes story, until the U.S. provides further upgrades.
No Longer Weird
Adding to the list of stories that were formerly weird but which now occur with such frequency they must be retired from circulation:
(79) The man who falls victim to a random prank by sitting innocently on a public restroom toilet seat that has been coated with glue, as happened to a 20-year-old man at a North Salisbury, Md., Wal-Mart in May.
(80) The drug dealer or buyer who dials a phone number and begins a specific drug-sales conversation immediately upon the recipient’s answering, oblivious that he has accidentally dialed a police officer’s phone, as when a Hesperia, Calif., sheriff’s deputy answered in June (and used caller ID to make the arrest).
By the Way, What Else Has Been No-Longer-Weirded?
Eighty such themes have been “retired from circulation” since News of the Weird began publishing in 1988, and for the next few months, they’ll be reviewed here. Two popular criminal slip-ups involve the thief who tries to pass a stolen check not knowing that the check belongs to the clerk who is handling his transaction, and the robber who accidentally drops some form of ID at the scene of the crime.
Even though they’re both No Longer Weird, we still applaud Calvin Barfield’s “two-fer” in July.
According to police in Sylvester, Ga., Barfield not only cluelessly tried to cash Joyce Powell’s stolen check at the bank where she works, but also got nervous and fled the scene, leaving his driver’s license in the drive-thru drawer.
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