Under the Heading: Truth Stranger than fiction, Brother Steve sent along the following article from GoLaurens.com:
A North Carolina woman found out the hard way on Tuesday that crashing a funeral where one of the pallbearers is the Sheriff is not the best idea. Nicole Leonard, 25, of Candler, NC, was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct and disrupting a funeral.
According to reports filed with the Laurens County Sheriff’s Office, Leonard, a massage therapist, was traveling from North Carolina to Florida when she spotted the funeral at the Laurens County church where the incident occurred.
Not knowing anyone involved with neither the service nor the deceased, Leonard proceeded to enter the church and went to the front of the sanctuary where she began reading from a book behind the pulpit and dancing near the casket. She then took the flowers off of the casket and threw them on the ground in the direction of the family.
Leonard then produced a “wand”, which Sheriff Ricky Chastain said resembled a car antenna, and started waving the object over the casket. After opening the lid of the casket, she struck the deceased in the head with the wand, prompting the funeral staff to escort her from the church.
Leonard left the church at that point, but LCSO deputies soon pulled her over on I-385 and arrested her. Upon arrest, investigators asked her about the incident and why she committed the crime, to which Leonard stated, “I felt that it was the right thing to do at the time.”
“She looked very distressed,” said Chastain, who was a relative of the deceased. “We actually thought she was part of the family at first.”
Leonard was booked at the Johnson Detention Center, but posted bail on Wednesday. She could face up to 30 days in jail for the disrupting a funeral misdemeanor charge.
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“I felt that it was the right thing to do at the time.”
Well, OK?
I didn’t know there was a specific crime known as "funeral disruption."
