PCP makes rare appearances in the Valley crime blotters, but when it does turn up, there's usually a story behind it.
Take the most alleged case of Valley PCP craziness, in which the cops say John Brigham was found to have the drug in his system after being arrested for running naked around the streets of Scottsdale, before he stole a Toyota Prius
and crashed into a bunch of cars, injuring several people.
According to court documents obtained by New Times, Brigham ran into two cars Friday afternoon after blowing through a red light, then shed his clothes and jumped on top of one of the cars he'd crashed into and started
"chanting unknown statements."
Police say Brigham -- a former high school teacher -- then made it onto Hayden Road and carjacked a woman driving a Toyota Prius. After
making it onto Shea Boulevard and heading toward the Loop 101 entrance,
Brigham hopped the median and crashed into three more cars, while the
Prius flipped a few times.
Brigham kept going, as police say he
tried to "forcibly enter" three other cars that were stopped on Shea
before officers showed up and arrested him.
One of the people he
hit on Shea was a woman who sustained two broken legs from the crash.
She's also eight months' pregnant, according to the documents.
The last time we heard of a real head-scratching PCP case was more than a year ago, when Eugene Gimzelberg loaded up on PCP and mushrooms before hopping in a Gilbert sewer to rescue his children.
The children, of course, weren't actually in the sewer -- where he got stuck for 36 hours.
Police told New Times at the time that firefighters found Gimzelberg naked, except for one shoe, at the bottom of the sewer hole.
Gimzelberg told firefighters that his clothes had been ripped off by the water current in the sewer, but a Gilbert fire spokesman told us that there was less than an inch of water there.
Then he used the story about searching for his kids, but police had already checked on his youngsters, and they were fine.
Telling the cops and firefighters that he -- a naked 32-year-old man -- was 40 feet deep in a sewer looking for kids could be seen as a red flag for cops, but police said he later recanted that story.
Gimzelberg was treated at a hospital before he was arrested, and went on to be arrested later that summer after being pegged as a serial graffiti artist.
That said, whose PCP trip was worse: Eugene Gimzelberg or John Brigham?
Cast your vote below:
