21h ago

North Carolina parents are charged with involuntary manslaughter after their son, 7, is killed a car accident while walking home, driver that murdered a child gets no charges

www.nbcnews.com

Parents are charged after their son, 7, is struck dead in a car accident

Not the first time this has happened either, here's another similar case in Atlanta: https://abcnews.go.com/US/mother-boy-killed-hit-run-driver-probation-community/story?id=14158040

Fuck Cars @lemmy.world

HiddenLayer555 @lemmy.ml

20h ago

North Carolina parents are charged with involuntary manslaughter after their son, 7, is killed a car accident while walking home, driver that murdered a child gets no charges

www.nbcnews.com /news/rcna210918

59 comments

The thing is, once car-centrism is established and normalized, it's so hard to explain to people what the real problem is. Clearly the kid did a stupid thing and ran into the road when it shouldn't. Clearly the driver had no bad intentions.
But somehow the thought never occurs to people that kids (and adults) will always be stupid and we shouldn't strive to make a world where nobody makes mistakes. We should strive to make a world where making mistakes doesn't kill you.
- EDIT: Leaving this up for clarity, but I did in fact read the wrong link from the post. The above commenter is correct. Carry on and have a good day.
  Clearly the driver had no bad intentions.
  I hate to break it to you, but:
  Jerry Guy, the man who hit the family and never stopped, reportedly admitted drinking "a little" alcohol earlier in the day. He also admitted to being on painkillers and being partially blind in one eye.
  Guy had been convicted of two previous hit and run accidents. He pleaded guilty to the hit and run that took A.J.'s life and served six months in jail.
  In a world without cars this man wouldn’t have killed a child with his decisions. But this is still gross negligence, especially the multiple hit-and-run charges.
  I do agree that if anything this is a great case for pushing public transit and eliminating car centrism. But to not stop/pull over, multiple times, is its own level of selfishness.
  
  I agree that "intentions" is a very weak way to put it, but there's nothing indicating this driver did anything wrong either. It's horrendous that the parents got charged, but the child "went between crosswalks", which I take to mean going diagonally at an intersection. It's plausible that the driver was doing everything right by traffic law and didn't have enough time to react.
  (Note that the case Broadfern quoted is a different one, I guess to illustrate the point that "intentions" are beyond the point.)

after allowing him and his brother, 10, to walk home unaccompanied by an adult from a nearby grocery store.
Wtf, are kids 10 and 7 not old enough to walk by themselves to the grocery store now?
- Yeah, I remember when I was 7 I'd explore everywhere around my house for at least a few miles. There was a convenience store 2 miles out where I'd buy candy any time I'd scrounged up a few dollars of change.
  What happened was terrible, but it was an accident nevertheless. Nobody should have to serve time, especially not the grieving parents.
  
  Yeah, but that was just a few miles. These boys walked...
  Checks notes
  The Food Lion store is two blocks away from their home.
  
  Those who design american neighborhoods to be so car centric definitely should.
  
  It's fucking insane that anyone thought to charge them, let alone actually follow through with it. Multiple people have to have agreed for this to be reality. Another shit stain on humanity
  
  The CEO of the company that built the car should serve time
- Meanwhile all the boomers talk about how they have such find memories of walking around unsupervised until the streetlights came on or whatever lame Facebook nostalgia meme they're parroting
- I dunno does your 7 year old jump out into oncoming traffic often? Cuz this kid did.
  
  I think you're trying to make a pretty s***** implication. Remember that this is a situation where the parents got charged with a crime for being reckless. Are you insinuating that the parents knew that their 7 year old child was likely to jump out into the street, and that perhaps the child had a history of doing so, and that the parents nevertheless allowed the child to walk home from the store? It sounds like that's what you're claiming.

there is no evidence of speeding or wrongdoing on the part of the driver, therefore no charges have been filed.
I feel like Atlanta law enforcement might need a refresher on what "wrongdoing" means.
- @JSocial @HiddenLayer555
  I'm guessing white driver black kid.
  
  They are being real cagey with the deets about the driver. 😒
- This was in Gastonia North Carolina
  Edit: just saw the 2nd link, I am an idiot
- ... the... the unsupervised child ran into the street
  The fuck you mean?
  The driver didn't do a thing wrong, it's a busy 4 lane road, you aren't in the wrong if some random kid jumps onto the road in front of you.
  I get that this is the FuckCars lemmy but give me a break, this is clearly a case of parents being negligent.
  Don't let your fucking seven year old child go play unsupervised on 4 lane roads, that's not fuckin rocket science.
  This was a problem before cars existed, parents in the 1600s were smart enough to not let their kids go play unsupervised under the hooves of horses too.
  
  @pixxelkick @JSocial For most of history and in most societies today, it was and is absolutely routine for parents to let 7 and 10 year old siblings walk a few blocks together. When my mom was 7, she was responsible for walking her 5 year old brother to school and that wasn't at all unusual in their neighborhood. The problem is the number and size of cars and stroads, not a lack of helicopter parenting.
  
  I mean, I guess running over a kid could be considered doing nothing wrong. I could also guess what kind of "person" you are.

I have watched children be bussed across a stroad rather than making it safe for kids to cross
- more than one place i've lived at had a busy road be the 'line' separating bus vs walk to school. where i am now some literally get bussed across the road and then another block to the school, while some who live up to a mile away on the 'same side' of that road as the school get to walk.
  
  The neighborhood I grew up in let kids walk to school but now parents pick their kids up in cars just across the street from the school instead of making them walk all the way home.
  (Though some may be skirting residency requirements so I’m not too mad.)
  Then again, back in my day they didn’t have padlocks on the fences.
- @SemiHemiDemigod @HiddenLayer555 And sadly many US residents including those employed as traffic engineers or school facilities planners and transportation officials don't see that as unusual or inappropriate.

That's fucked up.

WhY DOn'T kiDs PLAY OUtdiDe AnymOre!!!!

@HiddenLayer555 This is a messed up era. When I was a kid from kindergarten and up I walked to school alone. It wasn't a super long distance, about six blocks each way but it was unsupervised, and that was the norm back then. What has happened that it has become so dangerous that kids need to be bussed to school even if they're three blocks from the school?
- Have you been to an American school recently? The elementary next to my house could be confused for a prison at first glance. It hasn't gotten bad, if anything it's actually safer than when we went to school. They have promoted a society of individuals ruled by fear.
  
  Our most recent school levy addressed basically nothing but turning the schools into jails by wanting to hire a bunch of cops, I dark metal detectors and a bunch of other “security measures” and this is a rural small district, we have zero need for that stuff, why not propose paying teachers better, buying updated textbooks or funding after school care, something but I’m not and never will vote to turn our schools into prisons

That 76 year old man will live with his choice to drive at age 76 for the rest of his life.
- Which, for a man in North Carolina, will on average be -4 years
- He's gonna live with the fact that some mom let her 7 year old run out into traffic... that's not exactly his fault. He's probably fuckin traumatized now because she was a terrible parent.
  Let's start with maybe, I dunno, not letting 7 year old kids go out and play near 4 lane busy roads or something? Maybe supervise your fucking kids though?
  Driver did nothing wrong, the kid jumped into the road, the fuck is he supposed to do there.
  
  That's not the point, pixeldick
  Cars have always been fucking death machines since their adoption, killing pedestrians at especially high rates. Since their introduction, this has always pissed people off with any real common sense.
  We give up our streets entirely to them, put up with infrastructure increasingly hostile towards foot and cycle travel, scarcely enforce traffic laws, and treat driving like it's a constitutional right.
  We are long overdue for reworking our approach to transportation. Instead we're stuck with incompetent lawmakers who are corrupted by industry bribes, and propped up by dipshits like you with your heads jammed up your asses.

I read it. I can't believe there were even charges against her. This is the second round of court as she was given the option of an offer to retrial. Which is extremely unorthodox.
She and her kids were crossing a street at a non crosswalk at night. A driver who had been drinking hit them (her, her daughter, and her son) and her son lost his life. Driver took off. Driver served 6 mo.
The crosswalk closest to her was 1/3 mile away, her house was just across the street from the bus stop.
- ...I think you read a very different article, nothing you said matches the story of the article at all?
  You just making shit up? Or are you just a bot hallucinating llm garbage?
  Nothing you wrote matches the articles story at all, what in the disinformation bullshit is this.
  Also why the fuck do you have thirteen up votes?
  Nome of you idiots read the story and just upvoted this hallucinated garbage? What is wrong with people.
  The kids weren't with their mom, the article doesn't mention time of day, it doesn't say a crosswalk was 1/3 of a mile away, they were unsupervised, THE DRIVER DIDNT SERVE ANY TIME AND ISNT CHARGED, THE DRIVER DIDNT RAKE OFF, THERE WAS NO DAIGHTER, IT WAS TWO BOYS...
  Seriously people, what the fuck, why are you upvoting this blatant disinformation?
  
  I realize the issue. You read the posted article and I read the link in the description. They are indeed different articles.

I'm pretty confident this lemmy is overrun with bots spouting hallucinated LLM garbage.
Several posters here are citing shit not remotely true about this case, and somehow you all are just eating it up and upvoting them like crazy, clearly having not read the article yourselves or you'd realize how out to lunch the posts are.
Literally making up random facts that are extremely wrong. One talks about daughters, despite there being zero daughters mentioned, only sons. Others bringing up some random dude from 2011
And when called out they backpedal with more random garbage that doesn't even make sense.
Yall, you get the fact these are obviously bots, right? Read the fucking article and stop upvoting obviously wrong statements, what us wrong with you?
- Hello friend, I think the confusion may be that there are two articles in this post that are about two separate incidents.
- the ever wonderful irony of people losing their mind about bots when in fact they missed something obvious
  sure sounds like something a bot would do
- The second article linked in the body of the post is about an incident in 2011 wherein a mother, one of her daughters, and her son were hit.

59 comments