remember crazy guy shot the cyclist?

[walkitout]

http://www.thesunnews.com/news/local/story/1176408.html

Backstory: firefighter (not on the job) shoots at dad of a family out riding bicycles. The firefighter thought that the dad was endangering the son's life by his route choice. Firefighter shot at dad as dad was walking away; bullet hit helmet but did not hit dad's head.

Ex-firefighter has pled guilty to assault with a deadly weapon and is now Doing Time.

So the next time you're thinking, There Ain't No Justice, well, just this once, maybe there was a little.

ETA:

Slightly better coverage. 120 days. Grand jury wouldn't indict on attempted murder because it was impulsive.

http://www.examiner.com/x-7204-Tulsa-Alternative-Transportation-Examiner~y2009m11d19-Former-North-Carolina-fireman-pleads-guilty-to-shooting-at-cyclist

ETAYA:

http://www.citizen-times.com/article/20091119/NEWS01/91119061

That's much better coverage. Guy was out in 2 days on $200K bond, so maybe there isn't even a little justice. Here's hoping he stays unemployed a long, long time -- he was fired about 2 weeks after the incident.

Comments

[volkhvoi.livejournal.com]

Wow, that's just....wow.

hard to come up with anything more, isn't it?

[walkitout]

In the US, there's a long history of ordinary citizens, and the juries they are called upon to serve, concluding that when a car hits (and kills) a bicyclist (including children), that the bicyclist is somehow responsible for having been in a place where the car could hit them. That includes on sidewalks and in their home driveway. Of course, these same ordinary citizens, and the juries they are called upon the serve, used to regularly conclude that being drunk was an excuse for killing other motorists and pedestrians, until activists changed that attitude and, eventually, the law.

I was quite surprised, initially, to discover that this Was Not So in other countries -- that other countries have a very different attitude towards drivers who kill pedestrians and cyclists. I hope that someday, perhaps through an organization similar to MADD, we'll see societal changes that encourage us all to stop blaming fragile humans for being in the path of cars, and start blaming the operators of those cars.

Some time _after_ that happens, we won't have to worry about jackasses like this guy any more.

Re: hard to come up with anything more, isn't it?

[(Anonymous)]

Oh, we will. He reads like someone looking for an excuse to lash out, and if the cyclist wasn't there, he'd have found some other target.

And there will still be people that will take into account the perp's social standing before making a decision about justice.