Dateline: ChinaTwo young lovers, prevented from seeing one another by their parents, protested by stripping naked and standing on a bridge in crowded Guangzhou, Guangdong province. The couple kept police and rescuers at bay for more than two hours as they embraced in the buff on a flyover 300 feet above a busy motorway. “Our parents say we can’t be together, but we want to show people we have nothing to hide,” the couple shouted to gathering spectators. Bridge protests have become common in China, but public nudity is still considered shocking. “We waited for the high winds and the cold air to cool off their passion and eventually they gave themselves up,” a police spokesperson was quoted as saying.Dateline: WisconsinA 33-year-old woman in Greenfield called 911 shortly before 12:45 a.m., Feb. 4, to say that her boyfriend was having some sort of extreme allergic reaction after helping her apply a Fentanyl pain-relief patch to her back. She said her boyfriend had trouble applying the patch and believed his reaction was a result of it coming into contact with his skin. When they arrived, paramedics diagnosed the 40-year-old man’s condition as a drug overdose. They became suspicious, though, when they located a crack pipe in his pants pocket. The man told police the pipe must have been left in his jeans from years ago when he used to smoke crack. Later, while recovering in a local hospital, the man admitted to rolling up and smoking the prescription pain patch. According to the Greenfield Patch newspaper, he told police he had never done it before and that it was his girlfriend’s idea. He was arrested for possession of a Schedule II narcotic. The woman was arrested for possession of drug paraphernalia.Dateline: GeorgiaPolice in Clayton County outside Atlanta reportedly made “several traditional attempts” to contact the family of 30-year-old Rickie Lamb to inform them he had died. “We make every possible attempt to apply best practices when handling these sensitive maters,” the department said in a statement. When those “best practices” failed, however, they made up a fake Facebook profile and had that person break the news to Lamb’s mother. As reported in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Anna Lamb-Creasey didn’t even see her son’s death notice until a month later. Because of the way Facebook handles messages from individuals who are not “friends,” the message got dumped into a folder marked “other” and sat for some time before Lamb-Creasey found it. The distraught mother told the Jounal-Constitution that the message came from an account labeled “Misty Hancock,” whose profile featured a picture of Atlanta rapper TI. Both Lamb-Creasey and her daughter assumed the message about Rickie’s death was fake. As time passed and no word from her son was heard, however, Lamb-Creasey called the number listed on Misty Hancock’s mysterious Facebook page. It was then that “an officer gave her the bad news.” The Clayton Police Department has apologized for the confusion. “In an effort to prevent this from occurring again, immediate changes are being made,” the department said in its statement. For starters, Clayton Police will launch an official Facebook page—preferably without pictures of TI.Dateline: MassachusettsA 10-year-old boy phoned 911 to report that he did not want to go to bed. Police in Brockton say the child called emergency services just after 8 p.m. on Feb. 20. He told the dispatcher he was calling to report his mother because she had told him it was time for bed. According to the Enterprise News, an officer came to the house to explain to the young man when it was appropriate to call 911. No charges were issued. Presumably, the boy was sent to bed.
Compiled by Devin D. O'Leary. Email your weird news to devin@alibi.com.
