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Southern oddities and entities making news:

• A man dressed as a leprechaun and another man were shot dead in an exchange of gunfire with police after a St. Patrick’s Day bank robbery in Gallatin, Tennessee.   Police said they weren’t sure if the leprechaun was killed by police or his partner or by a self-inflicted gunshot, according to The News Examiner.

• The body of a woman missing for six weeks was found  inside a bed frame at a Budget Lodge motel in Memphis, Tennessee.  Since the woman vanished after checking into the room, it was rented out five times and regularly cleaned before a member of the cleaning crew noticed that something didn’t smell right.

• Before Georgia Tech lost to Duke, hats and T-shirts declaring Tech — and Duke — ACC champion were already in Greensboro Coliseum.  Duke players wore theirs on TV after the game.  So what happened to the Tech hats and shirts?  The ACC donates the loser wear to World Vision, an international aid organization, and the hats and T-shirts are likely headed to earthquake victims in Haiti.

• Some people think bank executives should be in prison for bringing down the economy, and in Florida some may yet wind up there.  Federal authorities in Miami have filed criminal charges against Wachovia Bank, alleging it failed to block Mexican currency exchange houses from laundering $110 million in drug proceeds through the bank.

• The Tennessee Department of Health has terminated its contract with State Medical Examiner Dr. Bruce Levy after his arrest on marijuana charges.

• Toyota may have stared down that guy in California who says his Prius took off on its own at more than 90 mph, but can the company make liars of the Henrico County, Virginia, police department? The department has  grounded a number of its Toyota Camry vehicles after one of the cars apparently accelerated independently as an officer merged onto an area interstate earlier this month — after the vehicle had been checked and repaired as part of a nationwide recall.

• Your legislatin’ dollars at work: Florida state Rep. Mike Horner introduced a bill making it illegal to  “require an adoptive parent or prospective adoptive parent to disclose information relating to a person’s lawful possession, storage, or use of a firearm or ammunition as a condition to adopt” … Tennessee senators voted 30-1 to allow barbershops to display live fish and birds, but a House panel failed to approve a bill that would prohibit implanting microchips into people without their permission.

Check out our News and Opinion Feeds for a lot more Southern happenings.

Ron Taylor

Ron Taylor was born and raised in Georgia and worked more than 40 years at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution as a reporter and editor and as an online producer for ajc.com and AccessAtlanta. He served for a time as the newspaper's regional editor, overseeing coverage of the South. He is co-author, with Dr. Leonard Ray Teel, of Into the Newsroom:  An Introduction to Journalism and has conducted workshops in the Middle East on feature writing.

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