Amateur US Divers Show Their Stuff

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

Perhaps they were just gearing up for a chance of getting into the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, or maybe they wanted to become YouTube stars by showing off their athleticism.  Whatever their motivations, two high-spirited amateurs from opposite sides of the country made the news this week while displaying their unique diving skills.

On Wednesday a young man in Las Vegas, Nevada, was in the Clark County District Court where he was standing in front of a female judge who was about to pronounce sentence on him for his conviction of "attempted battery with substantial bodily harm."   The defendant was apparently expecting to be placed on probation for his crime, but the judge had a different plan and denied his request for probation.  As soon as she said that, the man ran toward the judge and literally dove across the bench and grabbed the judge by her hair and pulled her to the floor.  It took three people to pull him off of the judge, and one of the three wound up being taken to the hospital for medical care.  The judge suffered minor injuries and was able to return to work the following day.

That was Wednesday in Las Vegas, but what happened in Vegas definitely did not stay in Vegas. The man's dive at the judge was executed flawlessly with his entire body in the air as he sailed over the judge's bench.  His flight across the bench was captured on video and quickly made its way onto YouTube.

The defendant has been scheduled for another court appearance where he will face thirteen new charges.

On Thursday another amateur diver made the national news, this time at the Bass Pro Shop in Leeds, Alabama.  It was around closing time when the 42-year-old man drove his car into a pole in the parking lot of the local Bass Pro Shop.  After he hit the pole, the man jumped out of his car, stripped naked, and ran into the store where he made his way to the large aquarium and did a "cannonball" into the water.  Once in the gigantic aquarium he displayed his swimming abilities to the store's customers for about five minutes before he climbed out of the gigantic glass container and fell to the concrete floor where he knocked himself out.   Police arrived, the man was revived, a Good Samaritan tossed him a blanket, and he was arrested.

Police took the cannonballing skinny-dipper to a local hospital for a mental evaluation and he was then taken to the county jail.  The charges against him include public lewdness, disorderly conduct, resisting arrest, assault on a police officer, two counts of first-degree criminal mischief, and two-counts of reckless endangerment.  

But on the positive side of the ledger, he did make it onto YouTube!   

(I wonder how many of the store's customers shouted Ray Stevens' famous lyric - "Don't look, Ethel!" - while the naked man was frightening the fish!)

There is currently no diving category for "cannonballing" in the Olympics, so perhaps this individual was honing his skills as a "synchronized swimmer" - or maybe it was just another Thursday night in Alabama!