The grieving parents of a 7-year-old child who died hours after being hit by a car were charged with involuntary manslaughter after allowing him and his brother, 10, to walk home unaccompanied by an adult from a nearby grocery store.
This feels like an origin story for a Punisher reboot.
They got it backwards. I will hold the road planners, the city government, the driving license issuer, and the driver responsible. It start with poorly designed roads and ends with poor driver training. The parents are the victims here.
It’s the parents fault for birthing a child into this hellscape into the first place. We’ve built this inherently violent landscape and your letting your spawns roam free? /s
Never blame the asshole in the car. Always blame someone else.
Mountains of shame looking for someone to blame in the dum dum land of lowest common denominator. This Yankeeland, this imperialist empire, this empty vessel of lesser things, this pit of despair we lean into the Edward Bernays dreamland of sucking the tit of the rotton corpse of the rugged individualtic mother. Ohhhh the humanity. Ohhhhh the humanity thots and prayerzzzzzzz. Fascist are the useful idiots of empire and capitalism and fascism are like peas and carrots. The liberals are fascist. You call me negative and I think you are stupid. Welcome to the lords and ladies of the clown kingdumb. The leader is a follower ,the follower is a leader that is dead. If their is a hell it is inside your head. Nothing WILL EVER change in Yankeeland. It is like demanding for HBO in Alcatraz. You can not solve generational issues until the boomers in office finally die this won’t happen in your lifetime. This evil empire is gonna set the world on fire.
This is absolute bullshit, just because the US is incapable of making good walkable neighbourhoods doesn’t mean the parents are at fault of letting their childeren be normal.
I walked two blocks between home and school every day when I was 7. This is insane.
Half the kids in my school lived in town, they all walked home. A lot of our streets didn’t have proper sidewalks.
Back in the 60s, I walked to and from kindergarten in a school that was at least a mile away, starting when I was 5 years old. Once I could ride a bike, around 6 years old, a typical Saturdayor summer day meant hopping on my bike after breakfast, and disappearing for the day, with no phone, wallet, id, money, etc. My pockets would be literally empty. If I needed a drink of water, I would knock on a stranger’s door and ask for one. The only rule was be home by 5 for dinner.
Everybody was a free range kid back then.
5 blocks for me but it’s the same thing.
Glad I grew up when I did and in Canada.
About a Kilometer for me. Felt longer as a kid… My brother had to commute by bus at 8, because the school was fused together with the one in the next village.
The US are seriously weird.
Everything felt longer as a kid and I kinda miss it :')
Frankly, I hated it. I am happy that as an adult, I can now walk a two-digit amount of kilometers without having to take a break and being at peace with myself enough to not get bored. I do sometimes get nostalgic about school, but not because of the walk. It felt like forever. In addition, being an unpopular kid that got into fights meant there was a non-zero chance of getting my ass kicked at times.
Yes, it contributed to me being a self-sufficient person who is not afraid of physical activity or picking my own ways. Still, as a 7-year old in winter with a heavy bagpack, I hated it.
Was the driver driving a child-killing American truck? If so, both the driver and car company should be charged with voluntary manslaughter.
They knew this was going to happen, yet they still bought and produced the child-killing tank.
I bet it’s in a Republican shithole city in a Republican shithole state?
I don’t even have to check
Rural NC
This some serious bullshit not even the cops can’t be that heartless … Oh wait the parents are black … in North Carolina …
Racism explains a lot of court decisions in the US. Jim Crow laws never truly went away.
there is no evidence of speeding or wrongdoing on the part of the driver, therefore no charges have been filed.
He hit a pedestrian. If you cannot react to a pedestrian entering the road unexpectedly, especially at a crosswalk, you are, by definition, driving recklessly.
The article says they attempted to cross between the crosswalks. A witness said the younger child jumped into the street. There’s only so much reaction even the most alert driver can do.
Yep. U got this right. People here are just dumb. Kid jumps in from of the car that is going 45mph. Parents should be holding hand and not letting kids just do what the kids want to do.
Then the speed needs to be reduced.
It doesn’t matter where I’m from, you are supposed to be able to stop
45mph speed limit. No way u will stop in a dime.
Probably too high of a limit then
Double lane. Normal everywhere. We will be seeing stories like this everyday.
Also trucks these days are big. You can’t even see people 5 ft in front of the full size truck And I have a tundra. It’s massive
Fair point, it was indeed between crosswalks. But from the sound of it, the kids had been waiting to cross, and the younger kid jumped out on his own.
The older kid saw the danger, meaning the car should have been able to see at least one kid too. I maintain that if you can’t react safely to kids you can see jumping unexpectedly off the curb as you drive by, you have no business driving.
Without seeing the incident, it’s hard to say whether the driver should have reasonably been able to stop in time. Given what we know, it’s entirely possible that he could not.
Except not really. It’s a small town and from the article it sounds like the driver is an old person who has lived there for many years. They know what time kids are around, they know where kids usually hang out, and if they have half a brain they’ll drive 15 mph in those areas.
My regular commute takes me near an elementary school, and every morning when I see those kids I drop my speed very low because you never know what they’re going to do. It’s your basic moral responsibility to keep the speed down because you know that small children don’t have the experience and common sense to keep themselves out of the street.
The only way I can see the driver not being at fault is if he 1) could not see the kids near the road, and 2) had no reason to expect people might be in blind spots near the road.
Given that there were houses less than 2 blocks from the site of the incident, 2 seems unlikely - this sounds like either a suburban or urban neighborhood (multiple crosswalks within 2 blocks for a 4 lane road). No mention was made of any obstructions, which is not evidence in itself; but it’s the rare four lane road that hasn’t had obstructions cleared from the sides of the road (partly for this reason!), particularly in a non-rural area. At a glance, Gastonia seems to generally keep their roads clear.
I can certainly be convinced otherwise with more evidence, but the burden of vehicle safety absolutely lies on the driver. If you can’t respond fast enough to a seven year old running out in front of you from a place you can’t see; you are, by definition, driving too fast - regardless of the posted speed limit. And if you can see them, and aren’t driving in such a way as to be able to keep them safe should they run in front of you, you’re driving recklessly.
That would mean every driver on the highway is driving recklessly.
“yes! Now you see how carbrained society is”
counterpoint: society is to blame, not individual drivers.
Nah, highways tend have lots of visibility around them, you can see a person a long ways off. Though, if you do see a kid on the side (and don’t intend to stop), you should absolutely be slowing down and giving them a wide berth!
City makes walking on foot a death sentence, offloads responsibility on people foolish enough to produce life in a world that wants us to die.
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot…I was riding my bicycle alone at age 7.
“In such cases, adults must be held accountable for their responsibilities to ensure a safe environment for their children,” police said in a statement.
Okay, I get the rational behind it.
Gastonia police declined to comment to NBC News, but said in a statement that “there is no evidence of speeding or wrongdoing on the part of the driver, therefore no charges have been filed. The driver continues to be cooperative and the incident remains under active investigation by the Gastonia Police Department’s Traffic Division.”
Except when you drive a car, fuck it! You can do whatever you want. As a driver of a vehicle that can kill people, you don’t have be responsble for anything.
USA is the premiere shithole country.
edit: It’s kind of amazing how many people in here take NBC quoting cops as fact. The cops’ tale is obviously bullshit as usual. They’re just reciting whatever the old man said. Ofc he thinks the kid just jumped in front of him. The old coot probably had no idea what was even happening: “I was just driving along when this colored boy jumped under my truck…” Cops are like, “Yes, sir, we understand. It happens all the time. Best we can do is lock up the parents.” —> NBC.
edit2: Seriously tho, I feel bad for the driver too. This is a good example of how car dependency is not good for the elderly. Let’s get that driver out of a car and onto a train. Ok I gotta get on with my life…
Ahhhh, that makes sense now: the child was black.
Gotta get those black people in prison and give them records.
The maga agenda in action ❤️
