Posted on 06/07/2008 4:14:53 AM PDT by SLB
I was not planning to post until Monday because I have relatives visiting until Sunday.
However, after first learning of this awfully horrific accident and the callous nature in which a 78-year-old man was the victim of a hit and run and left to lay in the street like dog - I was sickened.
Not one person called 9ll. The only reason this man received help was because a passing officer was on a call for another incident. Had this officer not come by when he did, this man who is now in critical condition fighting for his life just may have died right there where he was left lying helpless.
A 78-year-old man is tossed like a rag doll by a hit-and-run driver and lies motionless on a busy city street as car after car goes by. Pedestrians gawk but do nothing. One driver stops briefly but then pulls back into traffic. A man on a scooter slowly circles the victim before zipping away.
The chilling scene - captured on video by a streetlight surveillance camera - has touched off a round of soul-searching in Hartford, with the capital city’s biggest newspaper blaring “SO INHUMANE” on the front page and the police chief lamenting: “We no longer have a moral compass.”
“We have no regard for each other,” said Chief Daryl Roberts, who released the video this week in hopes of making an arrest in the daylight accident last Friday that left Angel Arce Torres in critical condition.
The hit-and-run took place about 5:45 p.m. in a working-class neighborhood close to downtown in this city of 125,000.
In the video, Torres walks in the two-way street just blocks from the state Capitol after buying milk at a grocery. A tan Toyota and a dark Honda that is apparently chasing it cross the center line, and Torres is struck by the Honda. Both cars then dart down a side street.
You can read this disgusting article depicting the inhumanity of American people by clicking on the above source. The article states that one individual passing by stated that they felt UNCOMFORTABLE STOPPING TO HELP THE VICTIM.
If you missed the story on the news live, then you can view the video here. America has become a people that are self-centered, selfish, ego-centric, and cold-hearted. I am ashamed.
I bet if this was a dog everyone would have run to the animals aid calling the inhumane society for help.
She worked triple time while there, being in spirit with the good people of Afghanistan. Of never giving up. No matter what.
Her home education had continued, far away and in another land.
Cool data! When I arrived in America, I perceived the Beach Boys welcoming us to our new home. Their music made me fall in love with California. :) The minute we touched down and got our bags at SFO, our parents presented my brothers and I with our very own transistor radios! Welcome to America!, our parents said to us. Music and radio have always played a huge part in our lives. We then travelled by train up to Washington. We had to have looked like the family of hearing impaired, as my brothers and I had these little bitty single ear pieces glued to our ears, our transistors in our shirt pockets, or in my case, tucked under my arm/on my lap; periodically clucking out, tune to AM XXX! and away we’d spin that dial.
Shocked, shocked, aren't we all shocked, lawsuit happy shocked! You're a man wanting to help a lost child at a shopping mall. Next thing you know, you're a "registered sexual offender". (They've got 53,000 of those in the sex obsessed capital of pornography, California.)
Would anyone of us try to help the man?
Thanks for that story. I have long admired the Afghan people.
Your homeschooler must be making you proud.
She's had this dream since she was so little. Little did we know, when she went away in May 2001 where she'd be within a year's time. Homeschooling prepared her well.
Your story sounds similar to mine. In 1964, when I turned 13, my mother gave me an AM transistor radio, telling me that it was what every teenager should have. I was soon tuned in to the two local rock blasters KRLA (then at 1110 kilocycles—a far cry from the “intelligent conservative talk radio” which KRLA, at 870 kc, has become today) and KFWB, which were soon joined by KHJ—”Boss Radio”—which switched from country western to rock in 1965.
Similar life story meet same: Our stations at that time were KSFO and 610 (I think it was KFRC) - and yes, for the music. KSFO became Hot Talk Radio (Lee Rogers, Melanie Morgan, Geoff Metcalf, Mike Savage, etc etc.). 'Course we then gradumalated to FM Radio. I still tune into a Shasta Radio Music station via net -- it plays my music! Full length, some rare issues most popular stations won't/don't play.
Heh. I was tuning into Intelligent Conservative Radio in LA and Sacto during the 90s, in addition to my SFrancisco stations. It was good to get an "overall" picture.
Here, now, for music, The Eagle (96.5 FM) 640 and 680 am for talk radio, classic (87.7); and whatever I can pick up.
I have two solar radios for when I garden. A radio in just about every room of my home. I have an emergency radio I keep in my car. I have two Baygen windups (with shortwave). I have an emergency radio (w/flares, crankup can energize my cell phone too, NOAA stations.) And of course, I have the mega amplifier with klips.
A haunted house with loud music blaring out Opera, Workout Rock (JEM), or Talk Radio.
I think I realized a long time ago, radios and me have a thing going on. :)
Video has never made even a single dent in Killing the Radio Star, for me.
I always wanted to learn to become a Ham Radio Operator.
yep...but try to explain that to someone under 40 who thinks everything has to be couched in race or gender perspective.
even here
Wouldn’t happen around here. If you have a flat tire, people will stop to see if they can be of help. Sure glad I don’t live in Hartford.
North Dakota has more than a fair share of great Americans. I spent a good amount of time working around Williston in 1968/69.
The culture has disintegrated.
Yes it has.
Society as we knew it even a short 10 or 20 years ago will never return.
In the mid-’60’s, my radio station of choice was KHJ, because it lived up to its slogan of playing “more music” than its rivals. However, my tastes changed, and beginning in 1967, I was listening to “oldies” played over KWIZ, a station in Santa Ana that aimed at an older audience in suburban Orange County.
In 1971 I got my first FM radio for Christmas and was soon spending my Sunday nights listening to Lane Quigley play “pre-Beatle oldies” on KUSC. He broadcast from a small studio in Hancock Hall at the University of Southern California. His audience was so small that listeners could call in and request a song, and if he had it, he would play it (my first request was for “Bazoom” by the Cheers, from 1954, and I was astonished to hear it played five minutes after I had phoned in the request).
Quigley left the air when KUSC went all-classical in 1973, but he now broadcasts over the Internet.
The tradition continued with my own kids -- they are fully tuned into the sounds of the 30s, 40s, 50s and forward. Know the lyrics to most all Led Zeppelin, for example.
There was a station I listened to in the 90s, 1320 on the am dial which carried this fascinating mix of tunes from the 40's up to the 70s. It was my favorite outdoor station. I'd be pruning or weeding, and some ole tune would bring back a full technicolor memory which took place when I was say, 5. I could see where I was, where the sun was, who was nearby, what we were doing. A memory fully associated with that song, at that time in my life. And with it, I'd actually re-experience the emotional/psychologic mindset of that age of my life -- the sheer wonder of innocence before experience and maturity set in. The safety of being a kid, knowing your parents were near by. The wonder of how big the sky was.
Radio, above all else, has always been my favorite listening medium.
This is especially true for me when I hear a tune I haven't heard in decades. For example, in 2000, I heard a recording of "Il Silenzio" by Nini Rosso on the Internet. This was a big hit in Europe in 1965, but virtually unknown in the US. Hearing it took me back to Eberstadterstrasse in Darmstadt, Germany, where I was living in the fall of 1965. Similarly, hearing "Amarillo" by Tony Christie or "Don't Let Him Touch You" by the Angellettes, both of which charted in Europe but not the US in the spring of 1972, evoked memories of my cramped dormitory room in Saarbruecken, Germany, where I was an exchange student.
Great story! Thank you for sharing that. I would say “right out of the movies”, but that would be giving Hollywood too much credit.
I got into an auto accident once and a kind soul not only stopped, but actually drove me home (1 hr. ride). I always try to stop unless the person seems to have well in hand (young guy changing a flat).
I know I would, because I have stopped to render aid after witnessing a car crash that saw a young lady driving a pretty heavy car knocked unconscious. In that incident there at least a dozen people who stopped, or came out of their houses, to help. One was a former Navy Medic, but he hung back. After the EMTs arrived, and I was speaking with him, and found out his past, I said "why the heck (well maybe not "heck") didn't you come up to help". His answer, I couldn't have done anything you weren't already doing. One person bought a blanket from her home to cover the possibly shockey girl. (She was moaning and bleeding from her ear, but not repsonsive to my questions.) She worked for the same company I did, by her badge, but in a different location. I never did find out how she came out. Must not have been too badly, since there was nothing in the paper about it later. That was about 1982.
About 1998, I witnessed another car wreck. This one a single car driver who lost control when changing lanes, crossed 6 or 8 lanes traffic, half of it coming in the opposite direction, then flipping end for end, and twisting, to land upside down. By the time I got stopped, there quite a few folks running to help him. I stayed long enough to see him unbuckle his seat belt and drop onto the roof, and then crawl out of the vehicle. By that time there was someone in scrubs with a black bag attending him. There was another that stopped, it's driver getting an orange traffic vest out of his trunk and proceeding to direct traffic. (He was a current or former officer in another jurisdiction at least 10 miles away.
So yes, people will stop. In Texas, but apparently not in Hartford CN.
Excellent posts. Thank you for your stories, and for aiding our fellow man in a time of need.
I feel privileged just to be on the same forum as you two good people.
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