Early on Jan. 14, in Monterrey, Mexico, Carlos Alonso, 32, allegedly broke a glass door at Christ the King Parish and entered, intending to rob the church, Catholic News Agency reported. But as he tried to flee with a statue of St. Michael the Archangel in hand, he tripped and fell on the angel's sword, seriously wounding his neck. Passersby saw the injured Alonso and called for help; he is expected to be charged after he recovers from the fall. The statue was unharmed. [CNA, 1/17/2023]

Recent Alarming Headline

On Jan. 16, a drive-thru customer at a coffee shop in Auburn, Washington, wanted more than an extra shot, KCRA-TV reported. As the barista handed Matthew Darnell, 38, his change through the window, a surveillance camera caught him grabbing her arm and pulling her toward him as he fumbled with a zip tie. The barista was able to pull away from him and close the windows as his dollar bills went flying. He drove off, but a distinctive "Chevrolet" tattoo on his arm was captured on video, along with his side profile. Police later reported that Darnell had been arrested at his home in Auburn and was held on $500,000 bail. [KCRA, 1/19/2023]

Molehill, Meet Mountain

After getting into a dispute with staff at Jinling Purple Mountain Hotel in Shanghai on Jan. 10 over a misplaced laptop, a 28-year-old man named Chen decided to escalate, CBS News reported. He crashed his car through the glass lobby doors and careened around the space, knocking over fixtures and terrifying other guests, who tried to get the driver out of the car. "Do you have any idea what you've done? Are you crazy? Are you?" onlookers screamed at him. As he attempted to exit the lobby, he hit a door frame and came to a stop, and police took him into custody. It turns out the laptop had been stolen and was found outside the hotel; no one was injured. [CBS News, 1/11/2023]

Animal Antics

Carrier pigeons have been couriers of legitimate and nefarious items for centuries, but officials at the Pacific Institution in Abbotsford, British Columbia, nonetheless were stunned when a gray bird with a tiny backpack landed in a fenced inmate prison yard on Dec. 29. The CBC reported that officers "had to corner it," according to John Randle, Pacific regional president of the Union for Canadian Correctional Officers. "You can imagine how that would look, trying to catch a pigeon." After some time, they were able to grab it and remove the package, which contained about 30 grams of crystal meth. "We've been focusing so much on drone interdiction ... Now we have to look at, I guess, pigeons again," Randle said. They set the little guy free and are investigating its origin. [CBC, 1/6/2023]

Fail

When Minnechaug Regional High School in Wilbraham, Massachusetts, was built in 2012, the district installed a high-tech lighting system that was intended to save on energy costs, NBC News reported. But the software that controls the lights failed on Aug. 24, 2021, and every light in the school has been on since then. Aaron Osbourne, the assistant superintendent for the district, says the glitch is costing taxpayers "in the thousands of dollars per month on average, but not in the tens of thousands." Teachers have removed bulbs where possible, and staff have shut off breakers to darken some of the exterior lighting. But help is on the way! Parts from China have arrived to fix the problem, which is expected to be completed in February. [NBC News, 1/19/2023]

Family Values

-- It's important to encourage your children in their scholastic endeavors. But an unnamed mother in La Grange, New York, took parental support too far when she snuck into Arlington High School on Jan. 17 before school started to watch her freshman daughter beat up another girl. The Mid Hudson News reported that Mom was caught on video using vulgar language and egging her daughter on as the girls tussled. Superintendent Dr. Dave Moyer said the woman blended in with the students coming to school by wearing a backpack. "The students and the mother involved ... will be held accountable for their actions," Moyer said. [Mid Hudson News, 1/18/2023]

-- WSMV-TV reported that a car that crashed into a mailbox in Nashville, Tennessee, on Jan. 14 was driven by an underage motorist -- REALLY underage, as in 5 years old. The child's father, John Edwin Harris, 53, was seen by a witness grabbing the kid and running from the scene, police said. Officers found multiple open bottles of alcohol inside and ran the tags; when they arrived at Harris' home, he was driving away in his wife's car. He failed a field sobriety test, could barely stand up and smelled of alcohol. He was charged with DUI and leaving the scene of an accident -- where's the child endangerment charge?! -- and was released on $4,000 bond. [WSMV, 1/16/2023]

Repeat Offender

An unnamed 62-year-old man from Garfield Heights, Ohio, was arrested -- for the 70th time -- in early January after he allegedly stole a shopping cart full of packaged meat to sell to restaurants, WJW-TV reported. The Walmart in South Euclid alerted authorities to the theft; in the parking lot, the thief transferred the goods to a stolen suitcase and threw what wouldn't fit in a dumpster. He told officers he sells the meat half-price to area restaurants. He was booked, again, for theft. [WSW, 1/10/2023]

It's Come to This

Between Oct. 1 and Dec. 31 of 2022, U.S. Customs and Border Protection reported a 108% increase in a certain smuggled item at ports of entry, Fox5-TV reported on Jan. 18. It wasn't fentanyl or heroin, though. Seized egg products and poultry were the hot catch as prices soared in the United States. "My advice is, don't bring them over," said CBP supervisory agriculture specialist Charles Payne. Or, he advised, if you do, declare them so you won't be fined. Thirty eggs in Juarez, Mexico, cost $3.40 -- a fraction of what they'd cost in the U.S. because of an outbreak of avian flu that forced producers to euthanize 43 million egg-laying hens. [Fox5, 1/18/2023]

Least Competent Criminal

Federal prosecutors charged Mohammed Chowdhury, 46, of Boston with one count of murder-for-hire on Jan. 17, ABC News reported, after he allegedly contracted with "hired killers," aka federal agents, on the internet. Chowdhury had shared his wife's and her boyfriend's work and home locations, photos and work schedules with the contractors, and wanted both of them snuffed out -- all for $8,000, with a $500 down payment. The agents met with Chowdhury for two months to plan the murders. "No evidence. No evidence from like, you know, that, uh, I did something, you know?" Chowdhury told them. He was arrested as they met to collect the down payment; he could face up to 10 years in prison. [ABC News, 1/19/2023]

Awesome!

Dominican sailor Elvis Francois, 47, was rescued by the Colombian navy on Jan. 18 after surviving 24 days drifting from the island of St. Martin in the Netherlands Antilles, NPR reported. Francois said he had been making repairs to a sailboat when currents swept it out to sea. He scrawled "help" on the boat's hull, then survived on a bottle of ketchup, garlic powder, seasoning cubes and collected rainwater while he waited for a rescue. "I called my friends, they tried to contact me, but I lost the signal," Francois said. "There was nothing else to do but sit and wait." He finally caught the attention of a passing airplane by signaling with a mirror. "I thank the coast guard. If it weren't for them, I wouldn't be telling the story," he said. [NPR, 1/19/2023]

Send your weird news items with subject line WEIRD NEWS to WeirdNewsTips@amuniversal.com.

LEAD STORY -- Cavity Sam Lives

On Jan. 9 in Kyiv, Ukraine, a surgeon removed an unexploded grenade from the chest cavity of a 28-year-old Ukrainian soldier, The Guardian reported. The weapon lay just below the man's heart, and two "sappers" (military engineering soldiers) were on hand during the delicate operation to neutralize the device after it was removed. Doctors were unable to use electrocoagulation, a method that controls bleeding, because of fear that the grenade might detonate. "I think this case will go down in medical textbooks," said Anton Gerashchenko, Ukraine's internal affairs ministerial adviser. No word about how the grenade ended up in the soldier's chest cavity to begin with. He will now undergo rehabilitation. [Guardian, 1/12/2023]

Least Competent Criminals

Two arsonists were in the hot seat -- and they hadn't even been caught -- after they set fire to a Bakersfield, California, immigration services building on Jan. 2, Fox News reported. Footage from a Ring security camera captured the masked individuals as they spread gasoline around the building's base. But when one bent to light the fire, the flames spread to both people's clothes, causing them to run away screaming. The suspects are still at large. [Fox News, 1/4/2023]

Eyewitness News

Riders on the MAX light rail system in Gresham, Oregon, witnessed a brutal assault around 2 a.m. on Jan. 3, KPTV reported. A 78-year-old man on the train platform was attacked by another man, who "chewed off the victim's ear and part of his face," police said. "The injury was so severe that responders could see the victim's skull." The suspect did not provide investigators with a real name, but through fingerprints he was identified as Koryn Kraemer, 25, who had recently moved to the area from Georgia. He was charged with assault in the second degree. [KPTV, 1/3/2023]

Aero-naughty-cal News

Passengers aboard a charter flight on Jan. 8 from the Siberian city of Magan, Russia (where it was 41 degrees below zero), had to brave even more extreme temperatures when the rear door of the plane flew open in midflight, the New York Post reported. "People had their hats blown off," said Sergei Lidrik, 33, a passenger headed to Magadan on Russia's Pacific coast. One man had just unfastened his seatbelt when the door blew open, and he was nearly sucked out, along with luggage and other personal belongings. The plane, an Antonov An-26, was manufactured between 1970 and 1986. The pilot turned back to Magan and made an emergency landing, and there were no injuries. [NY Post, 1/9/2023]

It's Baaaacckkk

The atmospheric river battering California has another weird consequence, SFGate reported on Jan. 10. The storms are making the Golden Gate bridge eerily "sing." Nearby residents first noticed the phenomenon during summer storms in 2020, when they heard a "screeching that sounded like torture." A Building and Operating Committee report from 2020 said the cause was the retrofit of 12,000 slats on the west side of the bridge. The cost to add clips that would stop the noise is $450,000; officials said installation is due in the coming months. [SFGate, 1/10/2023]

Inexplicable

In Coventry, England, someone dubbed the Cat Shaver is catching cats and shaving a square into their fur, Metro News reported on Jan. 11. Not just a small patch, either: 6-year-old Tallulah had a large bald spot on her stomach that owner Bonnie Towe noticed when her daughter picked the cat up. "Did someone take her and bring her back? Or did they do it in a car?" Towe wondered. "We did notice she wasn't going out quite as much. She mostly sits at home and looks out the window." Other victims' owners have discovered one another on Facebook, speculating that the cats are being marked as targets. But no other harm has come to any of them. [Metro News, 1/11/2023]

Mistaken Identity

A walker out for a stroll in Wickham, Australia, in early January came across what they thought was a dead body clothed in a tracksuit, according to ABC News. Police cordoned off the area and began an investigation, but later concluded that the remains belonged to a cow. Roeburne Police Sgt. Dale Harmer voiced his frustration: "It has caused police to use an entire day and three police officers guarding a scene for something which was never a human in the first place." And what a waste of a perfectly fine tracksuit. [ABC News, 1/10/2023]

Check Twice, Engrave Once

The Washington, D.C., Korean War Wall of Remembrance pays tribute to more than 36,000 American service members who were killed in that conflict. But according to The New York Times, it's also rife with misspellings and omissions. Historians Hal Barker and Edward Barker Jr. of Texas, who run the Korean War Project, call the monument "a damn mess" and say it displays more than 1,000 spelling errors, and 500 names are missing altogether. The National Park Service passed the buck to the Defense Department, which supplied the names. DOD said compiling the list was "challenging." "No one bothered to check it before they set it in stone," said Ted Barker. "But now that it has been done, we need to get it right." [NY Times, 1/11/2023]

Compelling Explanation

Fans of romance writer Susan Meachen were devastated in September 2020 when they read on her Facebook page, titled "The Ward," that she had taken her life in response to online bullying, CNN reported. So imagine their surprise in early January when they read a new post there, claiming to be from Meachen herself. "I debated on how to do this a million times and still not sure if it's right or not," the post read. "There's going to be tons of questions. ... My family did what they thought was best for me and I can't fault them for it. ... I am in a good place now and I am hoping to write again. Let the fun begin." When a fellow romance writer asked for an explanation, Meachen responded, "I simply want my life back." Her former assistant, Connie Ortiz, told CNN she was "devastated" by Meachen's acts. "I did not know what Susan was doing, even though we were close." [CNN, 1/10/2023]

Break Out the Crab Legs

Firefighters were called to the Associated Milk Producers Inc. plant in Portage, Wisconsin, on Jan. 2 after flames broke out there, WMTV reported. But they were hampered by melted butter: "Butter was running down like 3 inches thick on the steps, so our guys were ... trying to drag the hose line. The hose line got so full of butter they couldn't hang onto it anymore," said fire Chief Troy Haase. The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources was called in after the fire was contained to assess the butter runoff, some of which went to a water treatment plant. But about 20 gallons ended up in a nearby canal; booms were used to contain the buttery mess. Officials say the environmental impact appears to be low. [WMTV, 1/3/2023]

What's in a Name?

Someone bought a winning $15.1 million Megabucks ticket at -- wait for it -- Wayne's Food Plus in Luck, Wisconsin, WISN-TV reported on Jan. 5. "We could not be happier for the winner," said store manager Paul Wondra (also a great name). "They truly got lucky in Luck." [WISN, 1/5/2023]

Send your weird news items with subject line WEIRD NEWS to WeirdNewsTips@amuniversal.com.

Dog owner Erik Torres, who owns a pet store in Doral, Florida, is facing charges after he brought his Pomeranian -- dyed to look like Pikachu -- to a Miami Heat game on Dec. 26, WPTV reported. "It made NBA history because nobody's ever seen a Pikachu dog sitting next to an NBA player before," Torres said. But Miami-Dade County Animal Services officials were unamused: "No animal should be dyed, regardless of whether there's an ordinance prohibiting that," said assistant director Kathleen Labrada. She noted it is "unlawful for any person to possess, sell or otherwise transfer within the county any dyed or artificially colored rabbit or other animal." Torres is fighting the charge, saying the dog is not for sale and he used dye that is safe for consumption. He also has no plans to remove the dye. [WPTV, 1/3/2023]

Nay-chur

In Derbyshire, England, Phil and Jane Carter are used to seeing foxes on their lawn. But, the Telegraph reported, a Dec. 17 visitor to their garden caught their attention. Jane spotted a fox nosing around their turf looking for something to eat while balancing on its front legs -- the only legs it had -- and yelled at her husband to come see it. "It was fascinating," Phil said. "It stood bolt upright and ran like a human being on two legs." He got in touch with experts at the Derbyshire Nature Reserve, who told him the fox was likely born with the disability and had learned to survive. While foxes are usually shy, the special animal hung around for about 45 minutes before it took off "like a rocket," Phil said. [Telegraph, 1/4/2023]

Precocious

Ashley Lynn, mother of a 9-month-old baby, took to social media this holiday season after her child was gifted a toy remote control, the New York Post reported. Lynn said the baby loved the toy and was "going to town chewing on" it, but then she noticed that when certain buttons were pressed, it made inappropriate comments. One was about a drive-by shooting, and another was a sexually themed joke about priests. "What? What?" Lynn said. "Walmart, explain this. Linsay Toys, explain this." Lynn reached out to Linsay on Dec. 31 and got a prompt reply, which indicated the toy would no longer be sold. Walmart said the toy was sold by a third-party seller and has been removed for not complying with its "prohibited products policy." [NY Post, 1/4/2023]

Update

In late August, News of the Weird shared a story from Yellowstone National Park about a human foot having been found floating in the Abyss Pool, a hot spring. At the time, officials did not suspect foul play. KTLA-TV reported on Jan. 4 that investigators have now identified the person to whom the foot belonged: 70-year-old Il Hun Ro of Los Angeles. Ro's Kia SUV was found in a parking lot near the spring, and inside were his laptop, a wallet with $447 and a small book of poems -- but no suicide note. Geologists did not find any more human remains in the pool, other than "fatty deposits ... floating to the surface over time," a report indicated. The pool is more than 50 feet deep and has an average temperature of 140 degrees. [KTLA, 1/4/2023]

Overkill

Matthew Greenwood, 32, and Jeremy Crahan, 40, of Puyallup, Washington, only wanted to rob a business on Christmas Day, NPR reported. But their strategy got them in much more trouble than the original crime would have. Both were charged with attacking power substations, causing thousands of people to lose electricity on the holiday; Greenwood and Crahan admitted they just wanted to empty a cash register at a local business during the outage. The sabotage amounts to a federal crime; Crahan's lawyer said he plans to enter a not guilty plea. [NPR, 1/4/2023]

Duuuude

For the third year in a row, the county in Oregon reporting the highest rate of cannabis sales was Malheur County -- which shares a state border with Idaho and is close to Boise. KGW-TV reported that although sales were down in 2022, they still topped out at $104 million, or $3,243 per county resident. Cannabis sales -- medical or recreational -- are illegal in Idaho, which creates a boon for the Oregon dispensaries along the border. [KGW, 1/4/2023]

It's a Mystery

Public lands officials in Salt Lake City are trying to solve a mystery: Who is placing antennae with solar panels on public property? KSL-TV reported on Jan. 4 that a few of the devices were found about a year ago, but more have been discovered in recent months. The locked battery boxes, solar panels and antennae "have been bolted into different peaks and summits and ridges around the foothills," said Tyler Fonarow, the city's recreational trails manager. "It might be related to cryptocurrency and relaying networks and being able to make money off that," Fonarow speculated. He hopes to educate the public that items cannot be installed on public lands. "We want to stop it now before it becomes a dumping ground for dozens and dozens of more antennas." [KSL, 1/4/2023]

What's in a Name?

Scott Stallings of St. Simons Island, Georgia, is not THAT Scott Stallings -- which became all too clear when he received a FedEx invitation to the PGA Masters Tournament, the Associated Press reported. Stallings reached out to golfer Stallings, who is from Knoxville, Tennessee, on Instagram: "I'm (100 percent) sure this is NOT for me," he wrote. Golfer Stallings said he had been waiting for his invite and thought maybe his wife was pranking him. But Georgia's Stallings won't miss out altogether: "We're going to give him some practice-round tickets and take him to dinner on Monday night for doing the right thing," the PGA player said. [AP, 1/2/2023]

Oops

The Askern Medical Practice in Doncaster, United Kingdom, wins the award for most Scrooge-like holiday message, the BBC reported. On Dec. 23, the center accidentally sent texts to about 8,000 patients informing them that they have "aggressive lung cancer with metastases." About a half-hour later, recipients received a second text alerting them about the error. Patient Sarah Hargreaves said she "broke down" when she read the first message: "I had just had a mole removed and was awaiting a result from a biopsy ... so yes, I was very worried." Carl Chegwin was perplexed: "It's not often I go to the doctors ... I sat there scratching my head, thinking, 'I do smoke, do they know something I don't?' If it's one of their admins that's sent out a mass text, I wouldn't be trusting them to empty the bins." [BBC, 12/29/2022]

Blame It on the Devil

In Dorchester, Massachusetts, firefighters responded to a house fire on Dec. 27 at a three-story home around 11:30 a.m., MassLive reported. Police officers at the scene talked to a witness, who said a woman named Nikia Rivera had told them, "I'm sorry, I had to do it," before she left on foot. Later, Rivera, 45, told officers, "That house is haunted. I lit the house on fire. The devil made me do it, there are ghosts in my house." While no residents or firefighters were hurt in the fire, Rivera was charged with arson and ordered to undergo psychiatric evaluation. [MassLive, 12/28/2022]

Send your weird news items with subject line WEIRD NEWS to WeirdNewsTips@amuniversal.com.