News of the Weird

Some good ones:

* Embarrassing: In March, on duty on opening day of the jail at the new Adair County judicial center in Columbia, Ky., sheriff's deputy Charles Wright accidentally locked himself in a cell and was fired after he tried to shoot open the lock. [WKYT-TV (Lexington), 3-3-10]

* A Collier County, Fla., sheriff's deputy suffered a broken ankle when he and a colleague accidentally locked wheels while patrolling in Naples on their Segways. [Naples Daily News, 2-23-10]

* It wasn't pretty, but sheriff's deputies in Montcalm County, Mich., got their man on March 3. Mark McCuaig, in court on an earlier charge, became unruly and escaped from two different sets of officers (despite a Tasering). Another court officer tried to stop him outside, but McCuaig got loose (despite being maced). He locked himself inside a van, but officers surrounded it, broke a window, and Tasered him again, yet couldn't stop McCuaig from driving off. After a high-speed chase, state troopers disabled his tires with "stop sticks" but couldn't apprehend him before he reached his home, where he barricaded himself. Officers surrounded the house, and four of them (plus a police dog) entered, but McCuaig escaped and got into another vehicle. Finally, after another chase, he was forced off the road, Tasered a third time, and subdued. [WWMT-TV (Grand Rapids), 3-3-10, WZZM-TV (Grand Rapids), 3-3-10]

* Once oddities but now increasingly common are reports of prisoners storing larger and larger inventories of valuables in their rectums. However, one accounting from a jail in Amarillo, Texas, might still be a record. A man was arrested in November 2000 with $12,300 inside (eighty $100 bills, two $50s, and money orders worth $4,200). The cash record before that was believed to be a Florida State Prison inmate who had only $2,000 (although he also had room for six handcuff keys and an assortment of razor and hacksaw blades in a pouch). [Amarillo Globe-News, 11-2-2000]

* Deanne Elsholz, 44, was charged with domestic battery in Wesley Chapel, Fla., in February after hitting her husband, David, in the face with a glass. David, intoxicated, had enraged Deanne by apparently completely missing the toilet bowl as he stood to urinate. (Deanne then angrily charged after him but lost her footing on the slippery floor.) [St. Petersburg Times, 2-17-10]

* In March, sheriff's deputies in Kissimmee, Fla., detained a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent who was working undercover but who had aroused suspicions of residents of a neighborhood. After investigating, the deputies discovered that in order to guard his identity as an ICE agent, the man was posing as an FBI agent. [Orlando Sentinel, 3-4-10]

* A 36-year-old man drowned in Denville, N.J., in January during a friendly swimming competition with a pal, as they raced underneath a 30-yard long ice patch on partially frozen Indian Lake. [WINS Radio-AP, 1-4-10]

* New York City police believe that drug-gang hit man Hector Quinones, 44, shot three men to death in a high-rise apartment in December, but allowed a woman in the apartment to escape when he tripped on his own baggy pants while chasing her. As police arrived, Quinones climbed out onto the fire escape but accidentally fell off and broke his neck. [New York Daily News, 12-19-09]

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