Dateline: Croatia– An angry husband who threw old clothes into his garden and set fire to them because he couldn’t find any clean underwear accidentally burned down his own home. Ivo Jerbic, 55, from Prikraj, near the capital city of Zagreb, told police he had lost his temper after failing to find any clean underpants in a closet full of old clothes. “My wife never throws anything out, I just lost my temper,” he admitted to officers. Jerbic dumped all the clothes in his yard and lit them on fire. Unfortunately, the fire spread to the house, which burned to the ground. Local news agency Hina reported Jerbic could face up to eight years in jail for putting other family members in danger, even though no one was injured. Dateline: Alaska– The Juneau Empire reports about 10,000 Juneau residents lost power on Sunday, Jan. 29, when a bald eagle lugging a severed deer head crashed into an Alaska Electric Light & Power transmission system in Lemon Creek. “You have to live in Alaska to have this kind of outage scenario,” Gayle Wood, an AEL&P spokeswoman, told the newspaper. It is believed that the eagle scavenged the deer head from a nearby landfill. The oversized meal proved too heavy, however, and the bird failed to clear transmission lines as it flew from the landfill toward the Lemon Creek Operation Center. When the repair crew arrived, they found the eagle carcass with the deer head nearby. The landfill has a program in place to discourage eagles, ravens and other birds from feeding. Nonetheless, this particular eagle got hold of a bit more than he could handle. “This would have been a major score,” Wood said. “That eagle would have been the king eagle of the Lemon Creek group.” Dateline: Wisconsin– Last Sunday, reporters for WDJT-TV (Channel 58) in Milwaukee were driving around snowy, rural Wisconsin in the station’s news van preparing a segment on the dangers of thin ice when the vehicle plunged through an iced-over channel and ended up in Big Muskego Lake. The driver, Susan Wronsky, 27, told police that she thought she was still on the road when the ice gave way and the van went down into five feet of water and silt. WDJT chief engineer Dan Dyer told police the live transmitting van was a complete loss and estimated its worth at between $200,000 and $250,000. Kem Water Recovery of Muskego had to dig a seven-foot wide, 150-yard-long trench so a large tow truck could drag the 9,000-pound news vehicle back onto dry land. Recovery crews spent two days chipping away at ice before it could be winched free. Dateline: Ohio– A high school student who stripped naked, covered himself in oil and ran through his school’s cafeteria did so because, “It just seemed like a good idea at the time.” At least it did until police showed up with a taser gun. Taylor Killian, 18, performed the streaking stunt as students were eating lunch at Westerville North High School, reported the Columbus Dispatch . Killian, an honors student at the school, strolled into a bathroom, removed his clothing, smeared his body in grapeseed oil and ran into the lunchtime crowd. His appearance caused pandemonium. A school administrator tried to confront him, but the teen ran. School resource police officer Doug Staysniak ordered Killian to stop and, after trying unsuccessfully to grab the greased-up student, fired his taser. Killian was zapped once, tried to get up and was given a second jolt. Killian was taken to the hospital to have the taser prongs removed, then booked into the Delaware County jail on charges of inducing a panic, public indecency, resisting arrest and disorderly conduct. Dateline: West Virginia– Police in South Charleston told the Charleston Daily Mail they arrested a man for driving under the influence after he flipped his middle finger at Kanawha County Sheriff Mike Rutherford and then crashed his car. The incident occurred when Rutherford was driving home last Thursday night from a County Commission meeting. While merging into traffic on Interstate 64, the sheriff noticed a 1997 Mercury station wagon weaving over into his lane. The station wagon, driven by 53-year-old Glenn Harold Vickers, began to tailgate Rutherford’s unmarked Jeep Laredo. “I thought he was going to ram me,” Rutherford told the Daily Mail . Eventually, Rutherford radioed police headquarters to see if there were any other officers in the area. By this time, Rutherford’s Jeep and Vickers’ station wagon were approaching the Montrose Avenue interchange. Rutherford said Vickers took the exit, and as he did, he extended his middle finger toward the sheriff. Vickers then crashed his station wagon into the exit’s guardrail. “He was looking directly at me, giving me the finger and just ran into the guardrail,” Rutherford said. “There’s no question in my mind he was not paying attention.” Vickers failed a field sobriety test and was taken into police custody.
Compiled by Devin D. O'Leary. E-mail your weird news to devin@alibi.com.
