Kentuckian Harvey Westmoreland didn't want any trouble when he tried to sell his lawnmower to some friends. But trouble sure found him. What happened, Harvey? "[E]verything just went haywire... They cut my beard and forced me to eat it."

There are big stories, and then there are Big Stories, and Lexington, Kentucky's LEX 18 News has got one hell of a Big Story right here:

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So, in case you missed that: One night last year, Harvey went by to meet up with his brother Joseph and their friends Troy Holt and James Hill. Joseph, Troy, and James were already drunk, and Troy asked Harvey about his lawnmower:

"Troy offered to buy it from me for two hundred and fifty dollars. I paid twenty bucks for it. He thought I was trying to cheat him," Westmoreland said. "One thing led to another, and before I knew it, there were knives and guns and everything just went haywire."

Ha, right, of course, I was trying to sell my lawnmower, "one thing led to another," and all of a sudden a knife was being held to my brother's throat. Joseph escaped with a "mark." But Harvey wasn't so lucky:

"They cut my beard and forced me to eat it," he said.

As you can see from the picture above, his beard has grown back—though, Harvey says, it's not as long as it was before he ate it.

Hill and Holt both pled guilty to assault. But they're not without their supporters! What would a bizarre small-town crime story be in 2010 without agenda-enforcing anonymous internet comments, after all? Like this gem:

[Lex 18]