Sunday, May 1, 2016

The Scales Of Justice Weigh Heavy At The Semi Weekly Meeting Of The Newmentia Lunch Time Think Tank

Justice was verbally doled out Wednesday at the Semi Weekly Meeting of the Newmentia Lunch Time Think Tank.

The gavel was pounded by the man in charge, who read from his phone about a local case being touted on a big city news station. Very local. In fact, right in Mrs. Hillbilly Mom's neck of the woods. On the very pig trail she follows into and out of town each day. The lettered blacktop highway, specifically the section by some apartments and and just before the hill that brings you into town proper.

Here are the specifics.

An 8-year-old boy on a bicycle was struck by a red sedan Sunday evening. The driver stopped. The boy said he was okay. The driver left. Police responded to the child's home, and reported that he did not appear to have any major injuries, just some scrapes and a bump on his head. The boy's mother took him to the local emergency room later, which sent him to Children's Hospital in an ambulance with a left orbital fracture. He was released the next day.

Opinion in the comments of the local article is divided. It seems to be between the family of the child, and everybody else. The family feels that the driver should be punished for leaving the scene of an accident. The boy was interviewed on the news. He said the driver stopped and he said he was okay, then he ran off. He said the driver should be punished for hitting a kid. The mother says her boy was just trying to cross the road, when that car came speeding out of nowhere and hit him because she wasn't paying attention. She feels the driver should have walked the boy home (several blocks) in case he passed out on the way. Another thinks the police should have asked the kid what happened, and not take the word of somebody standing along the side of the road.

Here are pertinent facts from the police report.

That same day, before the accident, an officer was dispatched to that area for a report of boys on bicycles playing chicken in the middle of the highway, and stopping a car and refusing to let it by.

The driver's friends saw the incident on the news Tuesday night, and called her to tell her the police wanted to talk to her, and that she should turn herself in. Shortly after 9:00 p.m. on the day of the news broadcast, the driver called the police to see what she needed to do. They told her to come in Wednesday and give a statement, which she did. She stated that she had stopped and asked the boy if he was okay, then both boys took off. She did not know where they went, and was freaked out and didn't know what to do. Since the boy had said he was okay, she went home to the city.

Here is something that may have come into play.

The woman is a minority that does not have a large population in this area. Five miles down the road is the town where a hate group handed out flyers on the street a couple years ago in a bid to recruit new members.

The jury composed of Newmentia Lunch Time Think Tankers votes not to convict the driver. Unanimously. Seasoned educators, all of them.

Sometimes, a case is black and white.

4 comments:

Sioux Roslawski said...

oK, oK, oK... we get the picture. It looked like you and your colleagues are a just group.

Hillbilly Mom said...

Sioux,
And we know that sometimes kids can be little...um...not-heavenions. Which doesn't mean they should be run down in the middle of the street. But stopping and trying to see if everything is okay does not, in my opinion, equate to leaving the scene of an accident.

Kathy's Klothesline said...

I am on the side of the driver, and where was the mother of the eight year old child with a bike in the middle of the road?

Hillbilly Mom said...

Kathy,
Uh huh. It seems to me like the mother is after a settlement. Just the wording she uses, like "speeding out of nowhere" and "wasn't paying attention." The mother is the one who wasn't paying attention. How would she know what happened? She was blocks away.