FRESNO, Calif. -- World champion bubble gum queen Susan Montgomery Williams went on trial Friday for popping her gum so loudly outside a murder trial courtroom that bailiffs claimed it sounded like a .38-caliber pistol going off.
'Me and my gum stick together,' Williams said outside the courtroom, insisting the two rookie bailiffs attempted to bully her when she refused to stop chewing her gum in a courtroom hallway Feb. 7. She was arrested for disturbing a court proceeding.
Williams, 29, a mother of two, holds the Guinness world record for a 22-inch diameter bubble blown in 1985.
'I've got no gumpetition' she wisecracked to reporters, adding she may petition Guinness for a world's loudest gum pop category.
Things got sticky for Williams last October during the Fresno Fair, when she bothered fairgoers at an outdoor concert by popping her gum and was arrested by police when she refused to stop popping.
Those charges were dropped Feb. 7 but while she was at the courthouse for that matter, bailiffs Dana Crittenden and Richard Wilhoite testified they repeatedly asked her to stop popping her gum in the hallway outside a courtroom where a jury was being selected in a murder case.
When she refused to spit her gum out and insisted there was no law against chewing gum in the hallways, Wilhoite slapped a pair of handcuffs on her. She was charged with disturbing a courtroom proceeding, which carries a potential penalty of six months in jail, a $1,000 fine or both.
Gun safety demonstration backfires
GREENWOOD, Ind. (UPI) -- A policewoman who slightly wounded a high school student while giving a firerarms safety demonstration was suspended for one day without pay.
Terri Gann, the Greenwood Police Department public relations officer, was giving a talk on handgun control Thursday in Greenwood High School when the accident happened, Police Chief Charles Henderson said.
Henderson said Gann thought the gun she was using was loaded with blanks, but she had inadvertently inserted a shell with a low gunpowder load and a plastic tip. The slug hit senior Phil Myers, raising a welt. He was treated at the high school nurse's office and later given a tetanus shot at a clinic.
Henderson said he was unaware a gun would be discharged as part of the demonstration by Gann. He said he had halted that practice and ordered Gann to take a safety course in firearms handling.
