BUNGEE BABY
Nick Fennelly, 31, was rushing his in-labor girlfriend, Sharon
Taylor, into the parking lot at Calderdale Royal Hospital in West
Yorkshire, England, just as their baby’s head started to appear, and,
in a corridor inside, little Ashleigh shot out of her mother so quickly
that Fennelly couldn’t grab her in time. She hit the floor, skidded,
and then came back on the umbilical cord, according to a December
report in the Halifax Courier. Except for a bruise, Ashleigh is fine.
LATEST RELIGIOUS MESSAGES
Checking a boy just before his bar mitzvah, Orthodox rabbis in
Sydney, Australia, found that his rabbi-supervised circumcision had not
quite been “complete” and ruled that it must be done again because,
officially, the boy was not a Jew. The boy’s mother objected and
instead found a Progressive synagogue for the bar mitzvah, though the
Orthodox rabbi, Moshe Gutnick, said she is “fooling the child” into
believing he is Jewish.
POOR BILLY GRAHAM
Ruth Bell Graham, the frail wife of evangelist Billy Graham, has
split with her elder son Franklin by rejecting as her burial place
Franklin’s planned memorial library for Billy near Charlotte, N.C. (in
favor of her mountaintop retreat west of there). According to a
December Washington Post report, Ruth’s long-time friend, the crime
writer Patricia Cornwell, told Ruth that the largely bookless “library”
is “truly tacky,” featuring for example a mechanical cow that greets
visitors, and straw on the floor to resemble the barn of Billy’s youth.
Franklin’s thinking is that the memorial should draw a new generation
of worshipers and donors, including kids who would be attracted by the
farm motif.
FINE POINTS OF THE LAW
In October, Judge Robert Armstrong of Riverside, Calif., dismissed
an indecent exposure charge against a woman solely because a state
statute makes criminal only a person who “lewdly exposes his person, or
the private parts thereof,” which to Judge Armstrong clearly limited
the law to males. The prosecutor quickly filed an appeal.
LEAST COMPETENT CRIMINALS
Morgan Conatser, 29, was arrested a short time after making his way
awkwardly out to the parking lot of the Guitars and Cadillacs store in
De Queen, Ark., in November, with a guitar stuffed inside his clothes.
The manager initially stopped Conatser, recovered the guitar, and let
him go, but decided to call the sheriff’s office when he realized
Conatser had probably also hidden a wireless sound system in his pants.
And Derek Pierson Jr., 21, was arrested in Shreveport, La., in November
after allegedly attempting to rob a convenience store. He was an easy
collar, as he had somehow not noticed that among the customers waiting
in line at the cash register was uniformed police officer L.J. Scott,
of the armed robbery task force.
COUNTRY LIVIN’
Jeffrey Turpin, 41, was arrested in August in Wytheville, Va., for
malicious wounding of a woman after chasing her across two farms on a
tractor. According to a witness, when the woman fell, Turpin dropped
the tractor’s bucket to the ground and rolled it over her, breaking her
leg. And three women were arrested in Columbus, Ga., in September and
charged with forcing a pregnant teenager to drink turpentine, which the
three (and several other family members) had heard would induce an
abortion. MTW
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