Dateline: EnglandA British woman dislocated her jaw trying to eat a “triple-decker” cheeseburger. According to The Mirror, Nicola Peate was attempting to sink her teeth into a “Kids in America” burger at Liverpool’s Almost Famous restaurant. The 25-year-old diner felt her jaw lock, but laughed it off and even managed to finish the three-patty burger. The pain didn’t go away, however. By the time Peate woke up the next day, she was in excruciating pain. “I didn’t think I’d dislocated it,” Peate told The Mirror. “You don’t expect it to happen eating a burger.” Peate said at first the pain, “felt like I had a cramp in my tongue, then I started to get an earache and a headache. The next morning I woke up and felt really, really ill. The whole side of my head was hurting.” An X-ray in the emergency room at the Royal Liverpool Hospital confirmed that her jaw had been dislocated. A doctor popped Peate’s jaw back in place with his thumbs. Nicola has Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, a condition which causes hyper-flexability in joints and makes her prone to dislocation. “I hope that in future, she takes more care when eating oversized burgers,” Kathryn Clark, clinical director of the Royal’s Emergency Department, told The Mirror. A spokesperson for Almost Famous offered Peate another burger on the house—along with a set of silverware and a standby pain killer.Dateline: EnglandA one-legged man has been cleared of charges that he tried to cheat on his disability benefits. Robert Punter, 63, suffered a serious toe injury on his right foot but made a full recovery. This caused officials at the Department of Work and Pensions to question his disabilities. As it turns out, however, Mr. Punter—a former truck driver from Devon—wasn’t claiming disability based on his right leg. His left leg was actually amputated in January. Punter had suffered problems with the leg for many years after it was shattered in a boyhood shotgun accident in which he almost died. The case was thrown out of court in less than five minutes after Punter showed up with only one leg. Punter was reportedly angry for being labeled a welfare cheat after working on his injured left leg, often in great pain, for 47 years.Dateline: New MexicoLaw enforcement officials in San Miguel county say a man pretending to be a police officer picked the wrong car to pull over when he stopped a pair of state police officers in an unmarked vehicle. According to the New Mexico State Police, 26-year-old John Shelton of Logan was arrested on Wednesday, Aug. 7, after he initiated a fake traffic stop on State Road 104 between Las Vegas and Trementina. Using a Dodge pickup with red and white emergency lights, Shelton reportedly forced a black truck to pull over. Investigators say Shelton had a pistol on his hip and told the two men inside the black truck he was a member of the New Mexico State Police Search and Rescue and a trained law enforcement officer. This was not true. It was true, however, that the two men inside the pulled-over vehicle were agents of the New Mexico State Police Investigations Bureau. Shelton was initially let off with a warning, but after some investigation showed no connection with law enforcement, state police arrested him and charged him with impersonating an officer.Dateline: ConnecticutPolice in Fairfield say that missing your favorite show does not constitute an emergency in Connecticut. Fairfield police say they received “numerous” 911 calls about a cable TV outage that hit parts of southwestern Connecticut on Sunday night—during the airing of AMC’s “Breaking Bad.” A post on the department’s Facebook page said the television outage was “neither an emergency or a police-related concern.” Less than an hour later, local service provider Cablevision admitted there was a commercial power outage at its Norwalk facility. The company said, “the power matter has been resolved, and service has been restored to our customers.” Despite the fact that potentially hundreds of people missed last week’s “Breaking Bad,” the Fairfield Police Department warned citizens that 911 is used only for life-threatening emergencies, and misuse of the system could result in arrest.
Compiled by Devin D. O'Leary. Email your weird news to devin@alibi.com.
