As usual, the folks over in Mack-Dowell County are having more fun than you can shake a stick at. Check out these true stories, courtesy of the local newspaper.

Naked guy on the run

Mack-Dowell deputies arrested a naked guy standing in a field along U.S. 221 flashing folks.

The guy was standing in a field near a church making "hand gestures" at motorists, according to the poe-leece. Here's where the deputy work comes in - "Deputy Jerald Hicks found the field and followed a path of flattened grass to the residence where" the suspect lives with his parents.

From the story: "Alvin Clinton "Dink" Hollifield, 39, of U.S. 221 South was charged with two counts of indecent exposure."

I hope "Dink" isn't a comment on the size of the dude's manhood.

One drunk sumuvabitch

I can't tell it better than the local newspaper:

"Authorities responding to a domestic dispute early Monday morning had no trouble finding their suspect. They say he passed out on the bed during the attack, knife still in hand."

Police arrested the suspect after a 5 a.m. call to the home of the suspect's ex-girlfriend. The woman let her old boyfriend in the home "to talk" when he grabbed her by the neck and pushed her onto a bed and held a pocketknife to her throat.

Then he passed out. The cops found him with the knife still in his hand.

I think that's why the dude got dumped - he always passed out right when he was supposed to deliver the goods.

Stretching the local connection

Sounds like the reporters were stretching to find a local connection to the horrible bombings in London:

Marion man arrives in London an hour after blasts
"A Marion man began his vacation in London in the aftermath of the worst attack on the city since the blitz bombings of World War II."

I bet all that guy said was, "whew."

The beat goes on in crazy Mack-Dowell County, a breeding ground for news of the weird like you wouldn't believe. All this can be found at the local McDowell newspaper here.

Here's a sampling:

Thristy thief
Some dude who was apparently thirsty as hell stole a Sierra Mist van and led police on a chase through Marion this past week. Is driving while dry really a crime?

The van was reported stolen from an Ashvegas Ingles grocery store. City dispatchers notified the good folks in Marion, where Officer J.E. Lipe spotted the brightly colored van in town. He chased it all over creation until the thief couldn't go any further because of a train on the tracks on one Hankins Road.

Police busted 43-year-old Devlin Lorenzo Neal. Along with a bunch of driving infractions, the cops also found that he was wanted in connection with taking a home theater package from Wal-Mart.

At least the guy had good taste.

Potty break (in)
When McDowell County deputies responded to a break-in call at Nebo Elementary School, they did a quick search and found one of the suspects on a toilet in one of the bathrooms. Bad time for a potty break-in. The dumbass had his buddy waiting for him outside with an escape vehicle - a moped.

Driving while diabetic

All the fat diabetics running around the mountains are getting to be a pain in the ass for local police. For the second time in just a few weeks, the cops pulled over an erratic driver who turned out to be a diabetic having an attack.

The cops chased the crazy driver, who was blasting into construction barrels on Sugar Hill Road. Once they stopped him and figured out he was diabetic, a cop popped a lolly in the guy's mouth and he immediately started to come around.

A couple of weeks ago, deputies and State Highway Patrol troopers pepper-sprayed James "Big Daddy" Henry, 76, yanked him from his vehicle and pushed his face in the mud after they stopped him for erratic driving. Turns out he was diabetic and was wearing a diabetic's necklace to alert emergency workers.

Red light bandit?

A Fayette-nam firefighter was so hot about an alleged fender-bender that he tried to use his red light to stop a motorist on I-40 recently.
The State Highway Patrol got a call from a woman complaining about a possible "red light bandit." Cops stopped 22-year-old Edward Charles Henning, who was driving a Chevy Lumina, and charged him with the unlawful use of a red light. He said the woman hit his car, so he followed and flashed his lights to alert her that she had been involved in a wreck.

Punk.

Wife-swapping rednecks wanted
In an unusual pairing, the McDowell News has teamed up with a reality TV show "Wife Swap" to encourage some bored rednecks to sign up for the show.

The newspaper says the TV show contacted it. So the newspaper decided it was going to host its own contest, and started taking applications from families. The newspaper asked for a family photo and said it would do interviews, then readers would decide the "best" family to represent Mack-Dowell County.

The TV folks buttered up the newspaper crew, saying that a North Carolina family has yet to make the show, and that they liked Southerners:

"We love people from the South. They make for great TV," said Wendy Roth, executive producer of "Wife Swap," which is based in New York but films across the nation. "Southern families are spunky, and they speak their minds."

Read that to say: "We really love rednecks. They're losers and they don't know when the hell to shut their pieholes, so they make the best tee-vee."

We'll keep tabs on this one. Hell, we might even join up. Here's the story.

Folks, there is more craziness in Mack-Dowell County than you can shake a stick at. The county continues to produce the steadiest stream of madness out there. Check this shit out (I can't make this up, people):

Police Rx for diabetic 76-year-old: Mace in the face

It seems that McDowell County Sheriff's Department deputies have their own prescription for old men with major insulin needs - a faceful of mud and Mace.

On June 5, James "Big Daddy" Henry, 76, of West Marion of tooling his red Mustang down the road near the local steakhouse when he apparently had a diabetic seizure. A deputy said the 'Stang was running cars off the road and hit a bridge, ending up in a big muddy mess.

Deputies said they thought the driver was drunk. When they got to the car, they said Big Daddy wouldn't let go of the steering wheel. They ordered him to turn the car off, and instead, he gunned the engine and spun in the mudpit.

That's when the deputy whipped out the pepper-spray and hit Big Daddy full-blast. Then deputies, aided by State Highway Patrol troopers, yanked him out of the car and slammed his face into the mud.
Somewhere along the way, the cops realized they'd made a mistake. Maybe is was the diabetic's necklace he was wearing that is supposed to alert emergency workers to the fact that he's diabetic.

"Once they got him out of the car, they realized he wasn’t acting right," a police captain said.

When the cops realized their mistake, they washed Big Daddy's face and called an ambulance.
Big Daddy's daughter said her father had eaten right that day and taken his required shots. She'd see his blood sugar drop that drastically just once before.

The police said they hated the situation, but in classic copspeak added: "The officer acted in a reasonable manner with what information he had."

Here's the link to the newspaper story.

Man gets *15,000 for wife's missing breast

A McDowell County jury had sympathy for a woman who lost a portion of her left breast to a doctor who misdiagnosed cancer. The jury also gave the hubby some mammary money, too.

The boob of a doctor said he saw a something suspicious in a mammogram. He ordered a biopsy, then went in for more tissue and lymph nodes in the breast and armpit.
What happened? "The error in defendant’s original pathology report was based on his examination of a biopsy specimen from another patient." Ooops.

The jury awarded the woman in the civil case $275,000. Hubby also got a payment, $15,000 for "substantial loss of his wife’s services, love, companionship …"

Here's the link to the story.