DRIVE BY
Though everyone is undoubtedly tired of hearing about it by now, and while I try my hardest to avoid the overdone issue-of-the-week in my columns, this story out of Hartford, Connecticut, I couldn't let go without comment. It is not a happy story, but it speaks to a common theme that I have written about often. It speaks volumes about the coarsening of our culture, the same trend we see manifest itself in so many other ways, but in this case the callousness was so flagrant that it deserves a second, or even a third, fourth and fifth, look.
This past week in Hartford, and every American has seen the video by now, 78-year-old Angel Torres, a retired forklift operator, was crossing the street with a gallon of milk he had just bought at a corner grocery store. At that same time, two cars, one apparently chasing the other, swerved over the center line and one struck Torres, tossing him like a bag of beans into, and up, the street. He is currently in critical condition. The two cars quickly ducked down a side street, and the whole scene was captured on a streetlight security camera. It's not as though the standard hit-and-run isn't egregious enough, we've all just become used to the fact that barely anyone stops anymore after hitting a pedestrian, usually because the driver is impaired. But not always. Last year in Texas a nurse returning home from work struck a man, he came up and over her hood and through the windshield. She continued on, as though a mosquito had hit her windshield, put her car in the garage, closed the door and went inside. The man bled to death lodged in her windshield, in her garage.
In Connecticut, though, it was the passersby who won the "selfish-f**k" award. Folks on the sidewalk continued along, barely passing a glance. A man on a motorscooter actually slowed down and circled the 78-year-old as he lay in the street...and then drove off. Mostly, traffic continued on by with a handful of people actually displaying the heroic effort of slowing down and looking. Stunning. Says Police Chief Daryl Roberts, "we no longer have a moral compass. We have no regard for each other." That's an understatement. The city's largest newspaper ran the headline: "SO INHUMANE". Surprisingly, days later, everyone began to backtrack. Calixto Torres, a City Council member, lamented that we "moved too quickly", rushing to judgment, and that indeed, four people had dialed 911 within minutes of the accident. I would hope so. Still, nobody stopped to comfort the man, to ward off traffic so that he may not get run over two or three more times. Nobody bent down to even see if he was alive. Imagine if this were your son, or father, or any other loved one. Why are we so unable to personalize anything as a culture? We seem almost anxious to be cavalier about helping others, as though it is fashionable, in vogue, to be...well..a prick. "Like a dog they left him there", said Jose Cordero who lives nearby. Well, not actually, Jose. Had it been a dog, people would have been tripping over themselves to help. Cars would have been veering onto the sidewalk, so many people wanting to stop and rush to comfort the poor pet. PETA would be issuing an All-Points-Bulletin for those two cars.
There is no bigger wimp when it comes to blood and guts than me. Still, about 15 years ago, I had just picked up a set of blueprints in Hooksett, NH. I was on my way back on Rte. 3A and witnessed a head-on just ahead of me. Without thinking I pulled over and rushed over to the cars. In one car, a single older woman, clearly in shock. A crowd gathered in front of an apartment complex. A young man rushed over with me. He turned out to be an off-duty firefighter. We went to the other car. Two older people in front had hit the windshield. They were dead. As their seats went forward, a baby in the backseat(in a child-seat) had gone forward, under the back of the front seat, and was pinned under there when the front seat came back after the crash. Next to the baby, I assumed, was the mother. A young girl, very bloody, screaming and probably in shock. The police officer who showed up began directing traffic, and advised us to wait for the EMT's. I said no way. I had a tall iron bar, one of those heavy ones used for loosening ground, and I used it to get the back door open on the car. That baby was screaming, upside down, under the back of the front seat. Either car could have gone up in flames. I had a knife, and the two of us cut the seatbelt strapping, and got the baby out. Shortly after that, help arrived. I didn't hang around. The next day the paper announced that it had indeed been a double fatality, the mother and child were stable, and that two strangers had stopped and "quickly rescued the baby from the vehicle". I am proud to say that I was raised in such a way, that not trying to help never crossed my mind. The first thing I thought of when I saw that crash, was what it would be like if it were one of my children, or my parents in that car, and I was miles away, unaware. I would certainly hope that someone would stop and help.
Don't count on it anymore, though. What we all learned in Hartford last week is that if misfortune befalls you, you're most likely on your own. Given that it was an elderly person, left laying there as scooters circled and rubber-neckers drove on by, it's safe to assume that the response, or lack of it, would have been the same had it been a child. Maybe we should make it a crime to "not offer aid" in situations like that. Oh...wait a minute. Forgive me. I forgot, we can't even get our lawmakers to agree if raping a child warrants punishment. Maybe laying down in the street isn't such a bad idea.
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