Peculiar Mayor

In a heart-warming demonstration of classic small town Americana, a man who is both the police commissioner and the temporary mayor of a town named Peculiar has been arrested for drunkenly mowing three people down at a tractor pull.

According to reports, 41-year-old Mark Wansing – who, in addition to his police and mayoral responsibilities, is also an alderman – was driving someone else's truck at the event on Saturday, in Peculiar, Missouri.

(Peculiar, Missouri has its own MySpace page, in case you're interested. It is a straight, 69-year-old female town, and one of its heroes is Mark Wansing. Apparently.)

While driving, Wansing lost control of the truck, sending it crashing into another vehicle, with the upshot that a 19-year-old man was trapped under a tractor and a 32-year-old mother and her 5-year-old daughter were injured.

None of them were life-threatening injuries.

When Wansing – who had apparently been helping to prepare the truck he was driving for the event – was tested, he was found to have twice the legal blood alcohol limit, according to authorities.

'I've been authorized not to make any comments at this time,' Wansing helpfully told locally KCTV5 News. Because you wouldn't want someone not making a comment without authorisation.