VEN (VIRGINIA) — On a beautiful sunny day, without a cloud in the sky,  a Falls Church woman was struck and killed by lightning Friday, while standing next to her attorney outside the Arlington County Courthouse, where she had just been convicted of forging her mother’s will.

“I never saw anything like it,” Bailiff Henry Daigle told VEN‘s Senior Fraud Correspondent Maxwell Anderson.  “Not a cloud anywhere and then BOOM this bolt of lightning hit her and she just kind of disappeared in a cloud of smoke or,  maybe — you know — melted like the Wicked Witch in the The Wizard of Oz.  It was weird!  There was nothing left but a little pile of ashes!”

Court stenographer Monica Breedlove contends that the woman Rhoda Penmark began smoldering inside the court-house at least twice,  forcing her attorney  to douse her with bottled water.

“I thought she was about to spontaneously combust!    And then a few minutes later to be hit by lightning!  It was almost biblical!”

Ms Penmark had just been convicted of forging her mother’s will, signing it My Mother, Christine Penmark, and using a pin to mimic a notary public stamp.  The forged will stipulated that Ms Penmark would get her brother’s autographed Milwaukee Braves 1957 World Series baseball and her sister’s penmanship award.

“That bolt of lightning saved the state of Virginia a lot of money,”  assistant district attorney Emory Wages explained to reporters.  “We were about to charge Ms Penmark with her mother’s murder.

“Apparently she was angry with her mother for displaying her sister’s penmanship award  — which she coveted — on the mantle above the fireplace,  so after burning her sister’s house down, she tied her mother to a chair and forced her to listen to Danny Boy for several days, until she lapsed into a coma and died.”

Authorities do not believe that Ms Penmark’s SSRI medications or her severe depression over not being able to realize her life dream of becoming a Chiropodist contributed to her erratic behavior.

Developing . . . .