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In Olean, New York, in July, Robert Fyfe, 44, fell into a silt and mud pit at a gravel company and could not free himself for 60 hours. In Raritan Township, New Jersey, Jim Kahlke, 36, was locked in an ATM vestibule on Thanksgiving night and wasn’t discovered until a bank employee arrived for work the next morning. Also in November a 13-year-old car-theft suspect was left alone all weekend in an Indianapolis courthouse holding cell after a bailiff forgot about him.
Chutzpah!
Authorities in Tokyo began investigating the giant finance company Nichiei in November after two debtors reported being pressured by Nichiei loan managers to sell their kidneys and other body parts to meet payment schedules. According to a separate lawsuit, another employee demanded a debtor sell his daughter into prostitution. The company is the country’s leading lender to small businesses.
Adding to the list of stories that were formerly weird but which now occur with such frequency that they must be retired from circulation: Amateur videographers who hide cameras to capture their subjects nude and/or in intimate situations, such as whoever installed the two video cameras in a men’s shower room at Yosemite National Park in July. And animal hoarders, usually women with dozens or hundreds of cats, such as the three separate women this year in Edmonton, Alberta; a woman in Pittsburgh in December (who stored feces in animal carriers); and another in Saint Anthony, Minnesota, in August (270 rabbits and “knee-deep” feces).
Send your weird news to Chuck Shepherd, Chicago Reader, 11 E. Illinois, Chicago 60611.
