Say what now? Let's remember some of the weirdest news stories in East Tennessee this year – Knoxville News Sentinel
Thanks to the coronavirus pandemic, almost nothing about this year was normal.
But let’s set COVID-19 aside for a moment and remember a few of the stories unrelated to the virus that were weird or absurd in East Tennessee this year.
In what might have been the most perfect weird news story of 2020, Knoxville lost its collective mind for a week over a tiger that might have never really existed.
The story began the night of Sept. 9, when off-duty Knox County Sheriff’s Office deputy Andy Wilson swore he saw a tiger come out of the French Broad River while he was working a side job at a business in Knoxville’s Forks of the River Industrial Park. Authorities scoured the area for hours, even flying a helicopter overhead to light the way, but found no sign of the animal. (Unfortunately, Wilson’s body camera was off.)
The sheriff’s office wrote about the sighting in a Facebook post that quickly racked up thousands of shares. Others soon began calling in to report that they, too, had seen the tiger. One caller reported, without a trace of irony, that she’d heard thirdhand about a tiger sighting. Another woman who called 911 seemed unable to suppress her laughter.
Neither the local zoo nor the tiger sanctuary was missing a big cat, and no one was boasting publicly about losing an animal that is illegal to own in Tennessee.
The internet did what it usually does when faced with such news and generated a slew of jokes, songs and memes. The story of the Knoxville tiger seemed for some to be a bright spot, however brief, in an otherwise difficult year.
About a week after the initial sighting, a number of TV stations produced stories saying the case of the Knoxville tiger actually was a case of mistaken identity. Their proof? A wildlife official said authorities who responded to a reported tiger sighting in Kingsport — 100 miles away from Knoxville — found a bobcat instead.
Is it more likely that the cat in Knoxville was a bobcat and not a tiger? Sure, but we’ve not seen any convincing evidence of that. For now, anyway, we’ll choose to believe.
File this one under “you don’t see that every day.”
A small plane made an emergency landing on Interstate 640 East near Washington Pike in Knoxville. Amazingly, no vehicles were hit and no one was hurt.
Authorities shut down two lanes of eastbound traffic before the plane took to the skies once again. The Knoxville Police Department shared a head-scratching video of the plane taking off from the interstate’s fast lane while flanked by three officers riding motorcycles. It’s the kind of video that makes you think, “What did I just watch?”
Police said the plane made the emergency landing after running out of gas. That’s not supposed to happen, but it seems no one asked too many questions.
The story made a weird week weirder: It happened the same day the tiger saga began.
Sinkholes occur where soft rock beneath the ground’s surface is dissolved by water. When there’s no longer enough support for the weight on the surface, it collapses.
Due to the geology of the region, sinkholes are a fact of life in East Tennessee. But it’s not often that we see one open up on the University of Tennessee’s campus.
The morning of Feb. 28, the ground opened up along Middle Drive near the Hill and Neyland Stadium, between Ferris Hall, Perkins Hall and the Science Engineering and Research Facility.
School officials called the chasm a “drop-out,” not a sinkhole, because it was caused by a water main break and not purely natural factors. Regardless, readers definitely were drawn to images of the gaping hole on campus.
Crews filled the hole with gravel and patched it up. The work took about five days.
Unhinged conspiracy theories flourish on social media after all sorts of tragedies and disasters. It’s the nature of the internet and the world we live in today.
On Memorial Day, widely shared video showed George Floyd gasping for air as two Minneapolis policemen held him down, a third, Derek Chauvin, knelt on his neck and a fourth stood by watching. Floyd’s death spurred protests against racism and police brutality across the country.
In Scott County, Tennessee, an experienced drug agent at the sheriff’s office, Kris Lewallen, saw a conspiracy theory about Floyd’s death on Facebook and decided he should share it on his own page. The post was bizarre, even for conspiracy theory standards: It suggested Chauvin was not a real person and was instead portrayed in the viral video by Ben Bailey, the comedian who hosts the TV game show “Cash Cab.”
The bogus theory was based on the fact that Chauvin and Bailey are both white men with similar hairlines, and that Chauvin had a profile on the movie and television database IMDb. That doesn’t mean he’s an actor, however: The profile was made after Floyd’s death, and the only “credits” listed were shows that discussed the case.
Lewallen and the Scott County Sheriff’s Office received severe backlash over the post. He ultimately apologized, and the sheriff’s office issued a statement that one legal expert said seemed crafted to protect Lewallen so he could not legally be fired.
Knoxville Center Mall, also known as East Towne Mall, closed its doors Jan. 31 after suffering a slow and steady decline for years. (Plans now are moving forward to turn the property into an e-commerce fulfillment warehouse.)
A hodgepodge of folks showed up to the mall to pay their respects on its last day. Kids explored vacant storefronts. Dedicated mall walkers completed their final laps. Store owners packed up their things and left the building one last time. And those who cherished the mall in its heyday took a moment to reminisce about the good times.
To prepare for the mall’s closure, JD’s Realty & Auction auctioned off remnants of the building: restaurant equipment, office furniture, game store goods and more. The most talked about item, however, had to be giant, 15-foot-tall Power T that hung from the mall’s ceiling.
How much did the Power T go for you ask? Oh, just a cool $11,100.
Visitors to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park on Sept. 19 reported finding a black bear head and pelt draped over a park sign along with a message.
Warren Bielenberg, a retired park ranger who reported the vandalism, said the pelt appeared to be that of “a freshly skinned bear. It had the skull and fluid dripping off the side of it.”
“We’re glad we reported it early and that the rangers caught it early,” he added, “so not many people saw it in place.”
Park Superintendent Cassius Cash, who is Black, acknowledged that some disagreed about whether whether the message was intended to be racist or a statement about the park’s management of bears. Either way, he called the vandalism “a despicable act.”
“Regardless of what you believe from these two positions, both are both harmful to all; both are offensive to all; and, both do not stand for what the (National Park Service) stands for,” Cash wrote in a letter to employees.
Park officials searching for the person or group responsible asked the public for tips and offered a $5,000 reward for information. Authorities have not announced charges in the case.
