This week’s Weird and Wack Wednesdays legal roundup focuses on two of the strangest investigations I’ve heard about in weeks. The first is an alleged terroris hoax that was really borne of stupidity. The second is a liquor violation investigation that went horribly awry. Finally, we look at the sad outcome of a dispute in a high school cafeteria over a brownie.
Follow the link below and read more of the weirdest and wackiest legal cases of the week.
Worst Road Trip Ever
In what may be the dumbest and worst road trip ever, two Canadian men (boys, really) were charged with obstruction and committing a terrorist hoax. The terrorist hoax charge has since been dropped, and the men have been sentenced to time served for the obstruction charge.
The story goes like this. The two men purchased a 1967 Buick Skylark. They had no plates or insurance for it, but they wanted to drive it from their home in New Brunswick all the way to Mexico. No problem, they said. They would just drive straight without stopping, so that no one noticed. So they filled up 21 jugs of gas and put them in the back seat.
Oh, but they also did not have a GPS to get to Mexico. No problem, they said. They would just print paper maps. And what about identification and passports? They didn’t have those either. But that was no problem, as they planned to cross the border through an old road that did not have a border office at it. Except because they were using paper maps, they ended up at the Woodstock border crossing, one of the largest border crossings in the country.
You can see how this ended. As the two men approached the border, the CBSA came driving up. They froze. They sat in their car, with twenty one jugs of gasoline in the back seat, paper maps, and no ID, for six hours while all manner of law enforcement agencies surrounded them. Eventually, they slowly drove to the border and were arrested.
Brownie Battery
This case is both sad and wacky. It involves one of the mainstays of this blog series, assaults and attacks over food items. Unfortunately, unlike most of those cases, this one does not have a happy ending with one person in prison and the other recovering from a strange injury.
A Houston high school erupted in a brawl recently, which culminated in the stabbing of a fourteen-year-old student, in the eye. The student later died of his injuries. It appears that the fight took place in the school cafeteria and was over a brownie dessert.
It is unclear why or how the dispute over the brownie grew to such a degree, but the results of this are perhaps the saddest of any overreaction to a food that this blog has ever seen.
Liquor Sale Sting Stings
Most liquor stings are simple: an undercover agent goes into a liquor establishment. A sale is made to a person who is underage or who is posing as someone underage. The server is busted. There are fines or license suspensions. Easy evidence to give, and easy cases to prove.
Not so for this College Station, Texas investigation.
In Texas, there is a law that minors are permitted to be served alcohol in the presence of their parents. In this case, the teenaged person who purchased alcohol was standing next to the liquor investigator. The bartender asked the teenager if that was her father, and she stated that he was. He then handed the drink to the investigator, who then handed it to the teenager. Not an offence in Texas, apparently.
But when it came time for the investigation, the investigator left out the detail of pretending to be the girl’s father and passing the drink to her. He went so far as to take the stand in a trial and claim that the alcohol was served to the girl directly.
Security footage contradicted his testimony. And so now it is the liquor sting operator who has been stung.
