The Odd Truth, March 7, 2003
The Odd Truth is a collection of strange but factual news stories from around the world compiled by CBSNews.com's Brian Bernbaum. A new collection of stories is published each weekday. On weekends, you can read a week's worth of The Odd Truth.
When The Going Gets Tough ...
PUNTA GORDA, Florida — A short, dumpy man has been going around town faking choking episodes, apparently to get attention from women.
He flails his arms, coughs and sputters. After a woman rushes over to help, he showers her with gratitude, hugs and kisses.
The sheriff's office has gotten about a half-dozen calls about the Choking Man, as the Charlotte Sun Herald dubbed him. So far he has not committed any crime, though a woman on Monday went to the hospital with an anxiety attack after an encounter.
It dawned on people that he was faking it after the newspaper ran a story earlier this week about a woman in a restaurant rescuing an anonymous choking man. The paper started getting calls from women saying they, too, had had encounters with a man who matched the description.
Mary Welcher said she noticed the man outside a hospital in January, flailing his arms, gasping and turning red.
"I ran around and grabbed him around the waist. A piece of apple came out. He'd been eating an apple before he started choking," Welcher said. "He was crying, sweating, hugging us and saying, `Thank you, you saved my life!"'
She and other women who have "saved" him described him as being in his mid-30s with a bald spot and a mustache.
"There's been no crime. Our hands are kind of tied here," sheriff's spokesman Bob Carpenter said Friday.
Heavy Metal Fans Jailed In Morocco
RABAT, Morocco — A Moroccan court has convicted 14 heavy metal music fans of moral depravity and offending Islam, raising an outcry Friday in newspapers fearful of an erosion of civil liberties.
The court in Casablanca, 60 miles south of Rabat, convicted the 14 on Thursday night and sentenced them to prison terms ranging from one month to one year.
Prosecutors had presented the 14 defendants, who range in age from 22 to 35, as "adorers of Satan." They all hung out at Casablanca's "Egyptian" cafe and all loved heavy metal music.
The defendants were arrested Feb. 14 after police seized objects like black T-shirts, a plaster serpent and a latex brain at their homes.
The 14 were charged with moral depravity, inciting debauchery and offending Islam. The objects, which also included fake skulls, were presented in court as incriminating evidence.
The Moroccan press denounced the trial as "absurd" and tending to "destroy liberty."
"Freedom is in danger," well-known writer Rida Lamrini wrote in the newspaper L'Economiste. "The privation of liberty of these young people and their futures, and the distress of their parents are ours."
"Inquisitors are tracking you," wrote the weekly "Tel Quel." "The system has gone crazy."
Californian Pothead Seeks Asylum In Canada
VANCOUVER — A medical marijuana crusader from California is seeking asylum in Canada.
Steve Kubby told the Immigration and Refugee Board in Vancouver that he will be persecuted for pot use if he returns to his home in Placer County.
Kubby admits it's unusual for someone to seek refugee status from the United States.
But he says American police, prosecutors and judges can't be trusted and conspired to violate a state's law that allows for the medical use of marijuana.
Kubby smokes large quantities of pot to control symptoms of a rare adrenal cancer.
He claims that without toking every hour, he could die from a heart attack triggered by overproduction of adrenaline.
Health Canada granted Kubby permission last fall to grow and smoke marijuana.
Immigration officials are dismissing Kubby's claim of persecution in the U.S. as preposterous.
World's Largest Cheeto Finds Home In Iowa
DES MOINES, Iowa — A radio disc-jockey has lured the world's largest Cheeto from Hawaii to rural Iowa to become a tourist attraction.
Bryce Wilson, a disc jockey at KLGA-FM, is bringing the giant lump of orange snack food to Algona, a town of just 5,700 residents whose current claim to fame is the annual display of a wooden nativity scene carved by German prisoners of war during World War II.
Wilson, 24, said Thursday the super-sized Cheeto is comparable in size to a small lemon. It was discovered when Navy Petty Officer Mike Evans, stationed at Pearl Harbor, bought a bag of Cheetos for his 3-year-old son.
"It only weighs about six-tenths of an ounce," Wilson said, "but its girth is really big. It must be 4 to 5 inches long and 5 to 6 inches in diameter."
Wilson first learned about the big Cheeto on a Web site. Evans was trying to auction the Cheeto to the highest bidder on e-Bay.
Wilson began soliciting contributions from listeners to buy it and collected about $180 before talking to Evans by phone.
Evans took pity on the town and shipped the Cheeto for free.
Lynn Markley, a spokeswoman for Cheetos maker Frito-Lay, said the giant Cheeto was the most talked about item this week, noting newspaper columnist Dave Barry has also written about it.
Woman Slips In Dog Feces, Twists Ankle, Sues
FRANKFORT, Ky. — A woman who slipped on dog feces and hurt her ankle while she was shopping at a Petsmart store deserves a jury trial, the Kentucky Court of Appeals ruled Friday.
The Boone Circuit Court granted Petsmart a summary judgment in September 2001, and dismissed Vickie Jenkins' claim that store owners were negligent in her fall.
Jenkins had testified in the original case that she shopped at the store at least once a week for about six years, and never encountered animal feces or urine on the floor.
She told the court that on April 23, 1999, she was shopping at the store, and was not looking where she was going when she stepped in the feces and slipped.
Petsmart argued that because Jenkins acknowledged the feces was out in the open and she could not say how fresh it was, they should not be responsible for her fall.
In a 3-0 decision, the appellate court ruled there are enough questions that a jury should decide the outcome of the case.
Hamster Torturer Convicted
SOMERVILLE - Prosecutors agree to probation for a man caught torturing a hamster he had just bought from a pet store last year.
Richard Mattia will serve three years probation and must undergo substance abuse and psychiatric counseling. He was sentenced yesterday after reaching a plea bargain with Somerset County authorities.
Mattia initially was charged with animal cruelty. But drug possession charges were added after police found 18 packets of heroin on him when he was arrested.
He was charged last October after a Watchung pet store employee saw him squeezing the hamster. Authorities say he also clipped the hamster's teeth so it wouldn't bite him.
Mattia also faces animal cruelty charges in Mountainside, where he's accused of torturing two dwarf hamsters. One of the animals died, but the other has recovered.
Man Unsuitable For Criminal Activity
CANONSBURG, Pa. — Police arrested a man who left his cell phone behind after an alleged gas station robbery.
Terrance Triplett, 22, of Mount Oliver, was charged with robbing a Sunoco station Tuesday. He was jailed on robbery, theft, conspiracy and other charges.
Authorities said Triplett was with another man — whose name was not released — when the other man pointed a gun at the clerk, who handed over money from the cash register and his wallet.
Police said they found a cell phone, left behind as the robbers ran away, and they traced it to Triplett.
'Underwear Bandit' Could Face Life In Prison
SANTA ANA, Calif. - A Southern California man who became known as the underwear bandit could be sentenced to life in prison under California's "three strikes" law following his latest conviction.
Orange County Superior Court jurors today found Bruce Allen Lyons guilty of commercial burglary and possessing stolen property.
He was convicted of breaking into an Aliso Viejo chiropractor's office on October fourth. A prosecutor says Lyons burglarized the office in an attempt to obtain the phone number of a woman who didn't want to date him.
He had been sentenced to 15 years in 1988 for a series of robberies throughout Southern California in which women and teenage girls were ordered to remove and hand over their underwear at gunpoint.
Lyons is scheduled to be sentenced on March 28th.