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News%20of%20the%20Weird

by Chuck Shepherd

March 19, 2009

DOG FIGHT

Pet rescuer Judy Walker of Oviedo, Fla., and Oklahoman Jude Stringfellow are battling over custody of Walker’s two-legged puppy, which Walker believes has special needs but which Stringfellow is seeking to adopt, in part to portray Stringfellow’s own famous, hind-legs-walking dog “Faith” as a puppy in a movie she is working on. Stringfellow said Walker had reneged on a firm February 2 adoption date and implied that she had hired celebrity attorney Mark Geragos to get the puppy.

BOOK HIM

Gildazio Costa, 54, was arrested in Framingham, Mass., in February and charged with kidnapping and beating his girlfriend following a five-hour-long argument they were having about what the operating hours are for the local library.

FIRST, DO NO HARM

Tennessee anesthesiologist Visuvalingam Vilvarajah was arrested in February in Kentucky and charged with providing controlled-substance prescriptions (OxyContin, methadone) to as many as 350 non-patients. However, the more basic question is why Tennessee licensed Dr. Vilvarajah in the first place, since he had been approved by the state Department of Health even though officials knew he was on parole at the time after serving a sentence for murdering his wife and mother-in-law. A department spokeswoman told The Tennessean newspaper that no law prevented Dr. Vilvarajah’s licensing.

HOWDY NEIGHBOR

A 25-year-old man was arrested in Fort Walton Beach, Fla., in February after an apparent suicide attempt. According to police, the man tried to gas himself inside his car in a closed garage, but apparently did not have a garage himself, and was arrested for trespass when he drove into a stranger’s garage for the attempt, causing about $1,000 damage.

SAFETY LAST

In response to a bomb threat called in to Hays High School in Buda, Texas, in February, Principal Shirley Reich directed the evacuation of all students, who were kept out for two hours until the school was deemed safe. The building had not been completely cleared, though. Reich had ordered that eight special-needs students, who presented mobility problems for the staff, be kept inside during the evacuation, and afterward Reich defended her decision, crediting herself for compassion because it was cold outside, and she wanted the special-needs students to be comfortable.

CLAIRVOYANT CON

A 27-year-old “psychic” was sentenced to two months in jail in San Jose, Calif., in December after somehow convincing a woman, who had come to her for a $10 reading, to pay her, in ever-increasing increments, $108,000 for a “spiritual cleansing.”

THE AMERICAN WAY

In February, a federal jury in Tucson, Ariz., awarded damages of $77,000 to six illegal immigrants who had trespassed on rancher Roger Barnett’s land in 2004 (only one of hundreds of forays onto his land over the years by border-jumpers from Mexico) because Barnett had detained them while he was carrying a gun, which the jury said constituted “infliction of emotional distress” (though Barnett said he was merely protecting his property). Originally, 16 Mexican nationals had sued for $32 million, accusing Barnett of violating whatever civil rights illegal-immigrant trespassers might have. MTW