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Its a sad state of affairs when someone can not even just make a 911 call - in the event that there might be an issue. I live in a neighborhood where we all know what we look like - no strangers are just pulling up to a house without someone asking what the heck? Were not all friends or hang out on the weekends - just a group of people just being decent... and this is why I have not left this place.

doc.lonestar wrote:Its a sad state of affairs when someone can not even just make a 911 call - in the event that there might be an issue. I live in a neighborhood where we all know what we look like - no strangers are just pulling up to a house without someone asking what the heck? Were not all friends or hang out on the weekends - just a group of people just being decent... and this is why I have not left this place.

Thats what my old neighborhood looked like when I lived with my parents, I hated living in apartments because the only people you know are your next door neighbors, leaving 100 other apartments filled with people you know nothing about, not saying they were bad people but that I had no idea if they were supposed to be there or not. Our apartment complex was gated but I have very little faith in those gates, they are broken half the time.

Sad, but nothing new. Jesus was telling parables about this 2000 years ago. CHL does not make us cops, but I think we are all expected to be good neighbors, and many folks these days are not.

chasfm11 wrote:I suspect that this is not Mr. Onark's first DUI. If that is true, 2-10 years is not enough for this one, IMHO. Why wouldn't this be vehicular manslaughter?

The initial charges are just for holding purposes to put him in jail. They likely will be upgraded to something like what you suggest once the investigation is finished and all the circumstances are fully understood and evaluated against the elements of the various potential charges..

Just work in an ER for a while. You'll see enough examples of callous disregard to last you a life—particularly toward children and the elderly.

The Annoyed Man wrote:Just work in an ER for a while. You'll see enough examples of callous disregard to last you a life—particularly toward children and the elderly.

My wife worked in the ER at Children's in New Orleans years ago. During Mardi Gras parents would come in and lie about their child's systems in order to get them admitted. They would leave them there for 2 or 3 days and then come pick them up. Child care on the tax payer's dime.
Some times they would never come back to get the kids. One of the nurses aides was a foster parent and had a house full of kids that were never picked up from the hospital. If people will do this to their own kids just imagine how they would treat strangers.

jmra wrote:

The Annoyed Man wrote:Just work in an ER for a while. You'll see enough examples of callous disregard to last you a life—particularly toward children and the elderly.

My wife worked in the ER at Children's in New Orleans years ago. During Mardi Gras parents would come in and lie about their child's systems in order to get them admitted. They would leave them there for 2 or 3 days and then come pick them up. Child care on the tax payer's dime.
Some times they would never come back to get the kids. One of the nurses aides was a foster parent and had a house full of kids that were never picked up from the hospital. If people will do this to their own kids just imagine how they would treat strangers.

I presume "systems" <- "symptoms"?

Sounds like she was running a human "lost and found".

At least they left their kids in a hospital.

Tuesday around 3 a.m., near Sweetwater (Abilene area), a 22-year-old sperm donor threw his 4-year-old son into a stand of cactus at the side of I-20.

The boy was rescued by a citizen and had some 500 cactus spines removed.

The "father" claimed to have a religious revelation. He is facing felony charges.

http://www.reporternews.com/news/2011/j ... left-on-i/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

- Jim

seamusTX wrote:At least they left their kids in a hospital.

Tuesday around 3 a.m., near Sweetwater (Abilene area), a 22-year-old sperm donor threw his 4-year-old son into a stand of cactus at the side of I-20.

The boy was rescued by a citizen and had some 500 cactus spines removed.

The "father" claimed to have a religious revelation. He is facing felony charges.

http://www.reporternews.com/news/2011/j ... left-on-i/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

- Jim

I saw that on the local news last night, and I thought about this thread.

Child abuse, neglect, and murder weren't exactly what I had in mind when I started this thread. Sad to say, those crimes are so common that they aren't news unless they are uniquely heinous.

Back in the 1990s, the Chicago Tribune printed a photo and brief account of every child that was intentionally killed in the city during the previous year. It went on for pages. Most were killed by mothers' "boyfriends" or other household or family members. Most were killed by beating, asphyxiation, or other hands-on violence. A few were killed by starvation, thirst, or other neglect. It was heartbreaking.

Also the average actual prison time served by killers of children was in the range of three years—less than they would have served for selling dope.

P.S.: At the risk of hijacking my own thread, this is a report on actual prison time served in Illinois: http://www.idoc.state.il.us/subsections ... art2.shtml" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Except for murder, the average time served is less than five years.
A class X felony in Illinois is the most serious type of violent felony short of murder—attempted murder, aggravated assault, rape, kidnapping, etc.

Child killers often are convicted of less serious violations such as negligent homicide, abuse, neglect, or endangerment.

With this thread, I was more struck by the casual disregard of people stepping over corpses, or, as in the recent case, driving around with a corpse in their front seat. (I'm surprised the cops didn't catch the guy driving in the car-pool lane.)

- Jim

seamusTX wrote:Child abuse, neglect, and murder weren't exactly what I had in mind when I started this thread. Sad to say, those crimes are so common that they aren't news unless they are uniquely heinous.

Back in the 1990s, the Chicago Tribune printed a photo and brief account of every child that was intentionally killed in the city during the previous year. It went on for pages. Most were killed by mothers' "boyfriends" or other household or family members. Most were killed by beating, asphyxiation, or other hands-on violence. A few were killed by starvation, thirst, or other neglect. It was heartbreaking.

Also the average actual prison time served by killers of children was in the range of three years—less than they would have served for selling dope.

I once did CPR on a 6 year old child whose parents brought him. He had been dead long enough that rigor mortis had already set in, but CPR was already started as we lifted him out of the car onto the gurney, in the ambulance bay. We had to continue for 2 or 3 minutes until we got him into a trauma room and a doctor could call an end to resuscitation and call the time of death.

He had been beating with a belt, and most of the skin and flesh had been stripped off his back. He died slowly. As I was helping lift the poor kid out of the car, I and several of my coworkers heard the step father confess that "he done something wrong earlier today, and I whupped him for it....now he won't wake up." I kept getting subpoenas to the step father's trial, which kept getting continuations. He finally plead guilty and it went straight to sentencing. He got five years of prison. The boy's mother got 2 years of probation.

No sir. You do that, and you don't get to plead ignorance or anything like that. On Planet TAM, men like that go straight to the hangman.

No more ER work for me. After 5-6 years of that, I've done my time.

P.S.: I don't know two words of Vietnamese, but this is the same story:
http://vietnamnet.vn/vn/quoc-te/28237/c ... o-toc.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Now the Vietnamese (at least those who have Internet connections) can shake their heads about what idiots Americans are.

- Jim

seamusTX wrote:Also the average actual prison time served by killers of children was in the range of three years—less than they would have served for selling dope.

That is a big part problem right there. Our priorities as a nation are so screwed up.

sjfcontrol wrote:

jmra wrote:

The Annoyed Man wrote:Just work in an ER for a while. You'll see enough examples of callous disregard to last you a life—particularly toward children and the elderly.

My wife worked in the ER at Children's in New Orleans years ago. During Mardi Gras parents would come in and lie about their child's systems in order to get them admitted. They would leave them there for 2 or 3 days and then come pick them up. Child care on the tax payer's dime.
Some times they would never come back to get the kids. One of the nurses aides was a foster parent and had a house full of kids that were never picked up from the hospital. If people will do this to their own kids just imagine how they would treat strangers.

I presume "systems" <- "symptoms"?

Sounds like she was running a human "lost and found".

Yes - auto correct on IPhone.
But the parents did know how to work the "system".

I've said this before but it bears repeating...it rips my heart out reading what people will do to their own children.