Alarming Headline
A sinkhole 100 feet wide and 100 feet deep opened up on June 26, smack-dab in the middle of a soccer complex in Alton, Illinois, The Telegraph reported. The fields are built over an operating limestone mine; the field collapsed above the ceiling of the mine, which is 40 to 50 feet thick. Alton Parks and Recreation Director Michael Haynes said the fields were empty and no one was injured in the collapse, including miners. Along with the artificial turf, the hole sucked up benches and a light pole on the field. [Telegraph, 6/26/2024]
Ewwwww!
Residents of Pomfret, Connecticut, ended their day on a crappy note on June 25, WVIT-TV reported. That evening, a manure truck rolled over in an intersection, hitting another car and spilling its stinky load. “It was literally a waterfall of brown,” said Ann Bedard, whose house lies at the intersection where the crash occurred. “It just flooded down our property.” Workers cleaned up the several inches of manure; the truck also spilled fuel and hydraulic fluid, but the fire department declared no immediate safety threat and said the water was safe to use. [WVIT, 6/27/2024]
Crime Report
Outside the Holy Family Roman Catholic Church in Queens, New York, on June 30, surveillance video captured an SUV taxi driving up, parking, and disgorging the driver around 5:30 a.m., the New York Post reported. The man was then seen removing a shoe and using it to batter statues of Mary and Joseph, which were unharmed, before turning his footwear on a child Jesus statue and decapitating it. The vandal returned to his car, shoe in hand, and drove away. Father Sean Suckiel said the statue, which “holds special meaning to many in our parish,” had stood at the church for 42 years, and repairing it will cost $20,000. [NY Post, 7/1/2024]
New World Order
A two-person crew from DroneUp, a commercial drone services company that is partnering with Walmart in Florida, was demonstrating the delivery service on June 26 in The Overlook at Lake Louisa in Lake County, Florida, when they heard a loud pop, ClickOrlando reported. They believed what they heard was a gunshot, so the crew and the drone high-tailed it back to Walmart, where deputies met them. The drone had a bullet hole in its payload area; officers returned to the neighborhood, where they discovered 72-year-old Dennis Winn. Winn told them he had been working on his swimming pool pump when the drone flew over; he shot it with a 9mm handgun because he suspected drones had been surveilling him in the past. As he was arrested, he shouted to a neighbor that he was being taken into custody for shooting a drone. Winn faces multiple charges; the drone sustained about $2,500 in damage. [ClickOrlando, 6/27/2024]
Democracy in Action
The 8th House District in Eugene, Oregon, held a primary election in late June, with two contenders, Lisa Fragala and Doyle Canning, receiving the same number of votes (seven), the Oregon Capital Chronicle reported. Both are Democrats, but since there was no Republican candidate in the race, one of them could have claimed the Republican nomination — theoretically. State law requires that a tie be broken by a roll of the dice or a coin toss, so the deputy election director, Luke Belant, prepared to flip the coin. Canning won the toss, but strangely, she is ineligible under the state’s “sore-loser law”; because she lost the Democratic primary, she was unable to accept the nomination of any other party. Therefore, Fragala will be the only person on the ballot in November unless the Republican Party chooses a candidate. “The lesson here for any political party is to field a candidate,” Canning said. [Oregon Capital Chronicle, 6/27/2024]
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NEWS OF THE WEIRD
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