Who knew?: The unassuming town of Greensburg, Pa. (pop. 16,000, just east of Pittsburgh), was the site of two high-profile arrests recently. In July, James Kilpatrick, 21, was suspected as the man responsible for several toe-kissing incidents, including one underneath a public library table, when he allegedly kissed the feet of a 12-year-old girl and asked if he could kiss her liver. In September, Robert Domasky, 48, who cross-dresses as “Kelly,” was charged with trespassing (and suspected of identity theft) after “Kelly” was found outside the girls’ locker room at Greensburg Salem High School looking for the cheerleading coach. The 200-pound Domasky said he merely wanted her to teach him some cheers. In Domasky’s apartment, police found cheerleader magazines and uniforms, pompoms, and photos of “Kelly” in cheerleader garb.
Nuanced family values: Self-described conservative Republican Larry Schwarz, formerly a legislator and parole board member in Colorado, was profiled in the Rocky Mountain News in August for his successful new career as warehouse manager and bookkeeper for his stepdaughter’s pornography business. The stepdaughter had retired as a porn actress (name: “Jewel DeNyle”) and formed Platinum X Pictures, Canoga Park, Calif., also employing her mother. Schwarz said he still believes in the Republican ideals of self-reliance, lower taxes and individual freedom, and believes also that he is perfectly well demonstrating “family values.”
People who believe: In July, a group of 52 breast cancer patients filed a lawsuit against the Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science in Chicago for the school’s having discontinued an experimental vaccine program. Even though the school cut the program because it had shown no clinical benefit, patients continue to demand their “vaccine.”
Police blotter: Acting on a drug informant’s tip in 2003, detectives in Waterloo, Iowa, had a police dog “search” a car. The dog started to sniff, and then abandoned his post, but police took the car to the station anyway, where another dog sniffed it and signaled drugs. A search warrant was obtained, and owner Kirk Sallis was arrested for cocaine possession. In June 2004, however, a judge dismissed the charge, ruling that the impound was illegal, in that the first dog never “completed” the initial search, since the dog, part-way through the search, had run off to chase a cat.From the police column of The Union (Grass Valley, Calif.), June 25, 2004: “A [caller] reported that he heard someone screaming and went outside to find a woman lying in the street. When he asked her if she was all right, the man reported, she started yelling at him, ran inside a residence and appeared to be smashing things inside. Police contacted the woman, who said she was just having an argument with herself.”
The litigious society: LaTonya Finney and her boyfriend, Adrian Howard, somehow managed to become intimate while they were jailed, separately, in 2002 on robbery charges in Crawford County, Georgia, with the result being the birth of a daughter, Adrianna. Raising the child has fallen to LaTonya’s parents, Ronnie and Patricia Finney, who petitioned the county in July 2004 for financial support for Adrianna because they say the sheriff should have kept Finney and Howard far enough apart to prevent their mating.In July 2003, Russell Weller, 88, made national news when he froze, with his foot on the accelerator, in Santa Monica, Calif., and plowed through a farmer’s market, killing 10 people and injuring 63, in the worst of a recent spate of incidents in which senior citizens momentarily confuse the gas and brake pedals. In July 2004, families of two of the dead and nine of the injured beat the statute of limitations by filing lawsuits. Weller is named, but the main targets are the farmer’s market, a local farmers’ association, the Los Angeles County agriculture commissioner, the city of Santa Monica, and the state of California, all of whom were supposedly careless in allowing Weller to crash into the victims.
2004 CHUCK SHEPHERD
This article appears in Sep 29 – Oct 5, 2004.
