Dateline: ColoradoThe Colorado Department of Transportation has been forced to change at least one highway sign in the wake of the state’s recent legalization of recreational marijuana. Officials say the “Mile 420” marker near Stratton, about 25 miles from the Kansas border, has gone missing several times in the past year. The number “420” has long been associated with pot smoking. The mile marker, located along Interstate 70, has now been replaced with one that reads “Mile 419.99.” Officials hope this will discourage souvenir-seeking stoners from taking the sign. “It’s a traffic safety thing,” spokesperson Amy Ford told USA Today. “It’s a helpful thing to have these signs on the road. But people kept ripping them off.” This isn’t the first time Colorado has been forced to alter mile markers. The “Mile 69” marker in Larimer County’s Cameron Pass had to be replaced with a “Mile 68.5” sign after it went missing several times. Dateline: PennsylvaniaPolice in Philadelphia have arrested 41-year-old Christopher Pagano, of suburban Norristown, hopefully putting an end to the antics of the notorious “Swiss Cheese Pervert.” According to philly.com, Pagano was served a warrant on Thursday, Jan. 16, for “allegedly committing indecent acts with dairy products in the Northeast Philadelphia area.” Pagano is being charged in connection with three incidents in which he offered to pay women to put Swiss cheese on his penis and perform sexual acts. The case became public earlier this month when the Mayfair Town Watch Facebook page began posting about several disturbing incidents in which women were approached and propositioned by a heavyset white male in his 40s. “This guy has been doing stuff like this for years, “ one woman wrote in the page’s comments section. “Online and at bars on Frankford Ave. A few years ago he walked up to a couple of friends of mine and asked them to help him with the cheese. Then pulled down his pants.” Police say a number of victims have already come forward and are cooperating with the investigation. “I understand that people may think this is funny,” Milt Martelack, senior advisor to Mayfair Town Watch, told the Philadelphia Daily News. “But it’s no laughing matter.”Dateline: South CarolinaA woman was arrested and charged with criminal domestic violence of a “high and aggravated nature” after she allegedly stabbed her husband with a squirrel. Following reports of a domestic disturbance, police responded to the North Charleston home of 44-year-old Helen Ann Williams at around 12:20am on Christmas Eve. There they found a 41-year-old man covered in blood from a “large deep” cut across his chest as well as facial lacerations. The man told officers that when he returned home without any beer because the store was closed, Williams became enraged. While he was in the kitchen making himself a sandwich, she allegedly picked up a ceramic squirrel, bludgeoning him over the head with it and stabbing him in the chest. Williams denied the accusation, saying the victim had fallen and cut himself. She told officers the blood on her hands and clothing “had been there.” Williams was arrested and held in the Charleston County Jail on $10,000 cash bond. Williams was treated at a nearby hospital for non-life-threatening injuries, Charleston’s WCBD reported.Dateline: IllinoisA bar owner in Chicago says a would-be burglar was stymied in his attempts to rob the business because he couldn’t figure out how to work a door. Joe Lin, owner of The Shambles bar, said surveillance footage from early in the morning on Jan. 10 shows a man prying the lock from the front door of the business and dislodging a safety guard doorstop. After accomplishing all that, the burglar somehow spent five minutes trying to pull open the push-only door. “It’s much funnier on the video, but the still shots show him pulling on the door. He could have pushed it,” Lin told UPI. Website DNAinfoChicago even confirmed there’s a sticker on the door that clearly reads “PUSH.” Lin said the as-yet-unidentified burglar “ruined the door,” but “never made it in.”
Compiled by Devin D. O'Leary. Email your weird news to devin@alibi.com.
