Police in Springfield, Massachusetts are looking for a man caught on camera who attempted to rob and then stabbed a mother outside of a store. I may be a bit judgmental on this one but the video shows the mother saving herself and her purse by running away from the man . . . while leaving her four-year-old daughter with the knife-wielding maniac. I realize that this is a panic situation, but it seems an odd reaction for a parent like a “Sophie’s Choice” without the second kid.
The video shows the man casing the store and looking for a victim when the mother gets out of the car.
The man grabbed the girl when the mother ran, but the girl soon broke away. The man then chased the woman, who to her credit appears not to have run far away from the child. However, she appears to then leave the child again to try to run into the safety of the store. He slams the door on the woman and then stabs her in the collar. Assuming the best, the mother may have felt that the man was really not threatening the child or at least, after the child broke free, the child was safe at a distance.
The image is sufficiently clear that the man will be found. He has an impressive array of potential charges that await him from attempted murder to aggravated assault to robbery. That should be enough to guarantee a life sentence and it should. The holding of the knife to the little girl’s throat should end the matter of where to put him on the sentence scale.
Source: WGGB as first seen on Reddit.
Hmmm. I know of some mothers (actually, 257 of them) who did everything they could to protect their children from harm that they had TIME to figure out and organize a defense against. 251 of those mothers were deprived of their children FOR having tried to defend them. The only one among them who was charged with a real crime looked forward to the trial because she would be able to present her defense (which, in the civil case that simply presumed her guilty, she had no opportunity to do) so the DA suddenly dropped all the charges and let her go in order to avoid the trial.* I cannot recommend attempts to protect one’s children in our culture. FROM the culture. In this particular video, there are no big morality tales. Perhaps, “don’t ever be victimized by anyone who means you any harm.”
* This case was fabulous for what it taught about “the merits.” The DA offered a plea deal where the mother would plead to a misdemeanor for time served (about 30 days) and she refused. Then the DA offered her a plea deal where she would simply agree never to do anything wrong again and have one meeting with a probation officer. She refused. Then the DA offered her a plea deal where she would simply “write an essay about not breaking the law” and she refused. Then the DA dropped the charges.
Anon, “the first sign of discomfort” might be different for y’all great big burly strong heroic perfect Y-chromosome types. Is she ignorant? Probably, but how did we get to be judging HER when she’s not the suspect in a crime that’s been reported? Is she arrogant? HUH? What makes you think she’s arrogant? I don’t see arrogance as an issue in this “how exactly would you like to be the victim of a crime?” issue. And cowardly? I dunno. I do know that someone once attacked me and held a knife to MY throat and I was pretty cowardly. I didn’t get roughed up on the web for it because there were no video cameras then and there was no web. But I’m willing to let this victim be cowardly if that’s the solemn judgment of the good anti-crime folks.
Whatevs, after transporting her kid illegally in a dangerous conveyance, she gave up that little kid at the first sign of discomfort.
You can white knight her all you wish, all I know is she comes off as the most ignorant, arrogant, and cowardly of mothers.
What’s with the gratuitous negative commentary on the conduct of the victim of this crime, huh? When she ran or didn’t run in whatever direction and for however many seconds and so forth, she was responding to a situation she had never been trained to respond to, in a way that ultimately did not harm others, and that was not unlawful or tortious or bad or unfit or any of the other crap that’s generally hurled at mothers who do not reach our insane expectations of the statute of liberty combined with the virgin Mary combined with Superman who changes clothes in a phone booth.
Not heroic enough for you? Where were YOU (or any of the other heroes) when this woman needed help? Not on your white steed, armed to the teeth, to save her from all harm so that she could devote herself singly and perfectly to the preservation of her (oh, forgot, they aren’t “hers,” they are someone else’s and she is charged with the care of those) young?
Frankly, nice ad hominem attack at the end. I prefer liberal judges in many cases, by the way, like in cases where they vote against allowing police to strip search people that they decide to arrest for any reason whatsoever. Unfortunately, the conservatives won that vote.
My point is, do you really think that she needs educated on how to more safely transport a child in a car? I’m sure she already knows these things. She may have just come from a few blocks away and didn’t bother to buckle up. When I was a kid, we routinely didn’t wear seatbelts. It wasn’t because we or our parents were uneducated. The very states that mandate seatbelt use in cars do not mandate seatbelt use for children in their own schoolbuses, streetcars, and city buses. These states are not uneducated. So why did you say that she needs educated on this? The woman was stabbed and you decide to comment on her ignorance of vehicle safety? Where did such a frame of mind come from if not from the nanny state? I doubt you would have said anything about it if there were not laws against transporting a child without a booster seat. Are you the type of person who always has her hands at 10 and 2 on the wheel, eyes scanning the road, never goes even a single mph over the speed limit, and stops completely at ever stop sign 100% of the time? I’m not, and I don’t need to be educated on driving habits. I simply don’t want to drive like that sometimes.
BK – of course IT see that as nanny stateism – everything that IT does not like is the nanny state attacking freedom! Its like how to identify a liberal judge – did they rule in a way you don’t like? Well then thats a liberal judge! Small minds see the world in ways normal people can only pity
importanttopics,
I didn’t advocate citing the woman. I advocated that she be educated on the safer way to transport her child. Do you see that as being an advocate of a nanny state?
Even if the police can’t find the man in the video, at least they can cite the woman for not having her daughter in a booster seat. Some of the people on here just love the nanny state.
I agree w/bettykath
1, May 7, 2012 at 11:05 am, but I would want to see the whole vid before commenting further.
After the zombie apocalypse I do not need to run faster than the zombies, I only need to run faster than the folks I am with. The little girls should just have tripped mom then she could have made a break for it while mom dealt with the guy with the knife!
Whatever the mother did, it worked. This creep needs to spend the rest of his life behind bars.
It is not unusual in the wild for a mother to move away from her young, feigning injury, in order to distract a predator. Perhaps this is what the mother was doing.
She needs some education on the proper placement of a child in the car. The child should have been fastened in a booster style seat in the back.
I love this ill save my own ass at your expense…..
A case of the Amydala in action.
Professor LeDoux has expanded our knowledge concerning the extent, or reach, of the Amygdala.
He has also showin that it rules over much more of our cognition, down under the covers, than originally thought.
Most of the activity we call knee-jerk, panic, or desperation result from, or are signals of the Amygdala, which gets all sensory input first, prior to our conscious mind getting a look at it.
The instance of the mother running away alone, leaving the child, is an example of the extreme power the Amygdala wields.
Propaganda plays to that power, and there are cases where mothers split with their kids based upon propaganda they hear, then act upon.