Weird News – It Happens

Updated: 11-08-2009
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Van stolen 35 years ago in Wash. state recovered

November 6th, 2009

Better late than never I always say.  Amazing this van has been around 35 years and not been found.  If anyone used it it would have to go through DMV and you’d think vin numbers there would be shared with police organizations.

SPOKANE, Wash. (AP) — A Volkswagen van stolen 35 years ago in Washington state has been found in a shipping container at the Los Angeles/Long Beach seaport.

Customs agents found the 1965 van on Oct. 19 when they opened a shipping container bound for The Netherlands, The Spokesman-Review newspaper reported. They ran the vehicle identification number and discovered it was listed as stolen.

Law officers said the van, which is in great shape, was stolen from an upholstery shop in Spokane on July 12, 1974 – while Spokane was hosting the 1974 World’s Fair.

Authorities have not been able to find the original owner, whom they would not identify.

The operators of a vehicle restoration business in Arizona were the latest to have possession of the van, which they refurbished and planned to sell overseas, said Michael Maleta, an investigator with the California Highway Patrol. Maleta said the shop is also considered a victim in the case, and he declined to identify it.

The van now legally belongs to Allstate Insurance Co., which paid off the original owner’s theft claim back in 1974. The Highway Patrol turned over the van to Allstate this week.

Maleta said the van had been restored to pristine condition.

“Now it’s probably worth 27 grand,” he said. “It’s a beautiful van.”

Megan Brunet, a spokeswoman for Allstate, said the company is looking through old records trying to find the original policy and theft claim.

“Trying to find paper files from that far back can be pretty challenging,” she said.

The company will likely have the van appraised and go through the process of getting a replacement title before selling it at auction, she said.

Information from: The Spokesman-Review, http://www.spokesman.com

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‘You hit a what?’ SUV nearly slams into elephant

November 5th, 2009

The elephant blended with the road?  How does that happen unless someone was blended beforehand!  It’s not like missing a squirrel running across the road here.  Hello???  It’s an Elephant.

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — It’s not unusual to see a deer or a cow crossing Oklahoma’s rural highways. But an elephant? An Oklahoma couple driving home from church nearly slammed into a giant pachyderm that had escaped from a nearby circus late Wednesday.

“Didn’t have time to hit the brakes. The elephant blended in with the road,” driver Bill Carpenter said Thursday. “At the very last second I said ‘elephant!’”

Carpenter, 68, said he swerved his SUV at the last second and ended up sideswiping the 29-year-old female Asian elephant on U.S. 81 in Enid, about 80 miles north of Oklahoma City.

“So help me Hanna, had I hit that elephant, not swerved, it would have knocked it off its legs, and it would have landed right on top of us,” he said. “We’d have been history.”

The couple, who own a wheat farm, weren’t injured. But the 8-foot, 4,500-pound elephant was being examined Thursday for a broken tusk and a leg wound. A local veterinarian said it appeared to have escaped major injury.

“I thought this can’t be happening. Out here you could hit a deer or a cow, but this can’t be happening. The good Lord was with us,” Carpenter said. The elephant’s tusk punched through the side of the SUV, tearing up sheet metal.

After sideswiping the elephant, his wife, Deena, flagged some people down and used their cell phone to call police.

“The dispatcher didn’t believe her: ‘You hit a what?’” he said. “I told my wife, I don’t know whether to cry or laugh.”

Enid veterinarian Dr. Dwight Olson said the elephant was hiding in some bushes just off the highway when he arrived shortly after the accident. Handlers from the circus were able to calm it down, and Olson cleaned the leg wound and gave it some pain killer.

The elephant was taken Thursday to the veterinary school at Oklahoma State University for a follow-up exam.

“I don’t believe there’s a broken bone, but I don’t have an X-ray room big enough to examine it,” Olson said.

The elephant had escaped from the Family Fun Circus at the Garfield County Fairgrounds earlier Wednesday after something spooked it while it was being loaded into a truck with another elephant, Olson said.

A booking agent for the circus, Rachael Bellman, said she was unaware the incident, and a telephone message left with circus officials wasn’t immediately returned.

Carpenter joked about being involved in such a bizarre accident on what is usually a peaceful church night.

“I don’t know what was in the wine, but it must have been pretty strong,” he said.

By Sean Murphy
Associated Press Writer

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Woman’s car hit by a escaped boar on interstate

November 5th, 2009

Holy cow Batman we just got sideswiped by a boar?   What the heck, since when does bacon attack back, apparently in New Hampshire they do.

NEW LONDON, N.H. (AP) — New Hampshire wildlife officials said a boar that ran into the side of a woman’s car on Interstate 89 in New London most likely escaped from a private game preserve. Becky Field said she didn’t realize her car had been hit by a boar until a state trooper told her after her vehicle was damaged on Sunday night.

Fish and Game Wildlife Chief Steve Weber said boar are not native to New Hampshire, but they are stocked at the 24,000-thousand acre Blue Mountain Forest and Game Preserve, based in Croydon, two towns away from New London.

He said most boar sightings are animals that have escaped from the preserve.

Weber told the Concord Monitor there’s little danger the boars will expand into a wild population.

Information from: Concord Monitor, http://www.cmonitor.com

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Man appears alive at his own funeral

November 4th, 2009

Talk about weird.  Terrible news you find out a relative or friend has died in a car crash, the following day you go to the funeral and see the body in the casket.  He doesn’t look like your friend or relative but is badly disfigured so you go along only to have the real person show up for the funeral.  So who the hell is the dead guy?  We will never know.

RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — A Brazilian bricklayer reportedly killed in a car crash shocked his mourning family by showing up alive at his funeral.

Relatives of Ademir Jorge Goncalves, 59, had identified him as the victim of a Sunday night car crash in Parana state in southern Brazil, police said.

As is customary in Brazil, the funeral was held the following day, which happened to be the holiday of Finados, when Brazilians visit cemeteries to honor the dead.

What family members didn’t know was that Goncalves had spent the night at a truck stop talking with friends over drinks of a sugarcane liquor known as cachaca, his niece Rosa Sampaio told the O Globo newspaper. He did not get word about his own funeral until it was already happening Monday morning.

A police spokesman in the town of Santo Antonio da Platina said Goncalves rushed to the funeral to let family members know he was not dead.

“The corpse was badly disfigured, but dressed in similar clothing,” said the police spokesman, who talked on condition of anonymity as he wasn’t authorized to discuss the case. “People are afraid to look for very long when they identify bodies, and I think that is what happened in this case.”

Sampaio told O Globo that some family members were not sure the body was Goncalves.

“My two uncles and I had doubts about the identification,” she told O Globo. “But an aunt and four of his friends identified the body, so what were we to do? We went ahead with the funeral.”

The police spokesman confirmed there were doubts: “His mom looked at the body in the casket and thought something was strange. She looked and looked and couldn’t believe it was her son,” Sampaio said. “Before long, the walking dead appeared at the funeral. It was a relief.”

The body was correctly identified later Monday, the police spokesman said, and has already been buried in another state. He declined to release the actual victim’s name.

By Bradley Brooks
Associated Press Writer

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