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.
District Attorney Travis Page. Gaston County. Prosecutorial District 38. (704) 852-3113. Tell him your thoughts.
Anything to shift accountability away from drivers, huh? Cars and the people behind the wheel of them are just an unavoidable force of nature now?
76yo probably shouldnt be driving, wanna bet the driver could be well connected, alot of these wierd incidents magically disappears.
The us is so fucked. I’ve been letting my kid take the buss to the other side of town alone since she was 9. And traffic accidents are very rare despite most neighbourhoods not having sidewalks at all. Of course we drive a lot slower and it takes months of obligatory coursework to be eligible to take a driving test. https://www.vegvesen.no/en/driving-licences/driver-training/how-to-get-a-driving-licence/passenger-car--b/
I’m SO mad at this story. There is no reason to charge the parents. As others have stated, helicoptering kiddos is detrimental, and they need to be allowed to roam their environment – That can come at the cost of danger, but we cannot be expected to grow with 0 risk.
Sure, as a parent, you can state: ‘don’t go there’, and ‘always look both ways’, but kids are kids and there’s only so much you can enforce without being overbearing. In this scenario, without video evidence, there’s no clear conclusion about fault for either the driver or the child.
I’m okay with letting the driver off (criminally, let insurance pay the family but don’t put the driver in jail) and acknowledging this as an accidental death, especially since he stuck around and is complying. Charging the parents for negligence, though, is just fucking brutal when they are suffering the loss of a child, not to mention the impact on the older son, who probably is feeling an unreasonable amount unreasonable of guilt: “I could have held his hand; I could have reminded him of the road…” (not his quotes, my presumed internal dialog). Again, as others have stated, this is a city planning problem, not a parental one: If there was a way to walk to a grocery store that didn’t cross a 4-lane road, that’d be a better option, but there are plenty of places where that is not possible.
These parents do NOT need the extra burden of being held legally liable for an accident and anyone blaming them for this without knowing them personally and being able to describe other aspects of their parent as negligent is just an asshole.
it’s ghoulish.
My sister and I played outside until it was dark. Then my dad would blow a whistle so loud that the entire neighborhood would hear it and come home.
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
but they want people to have more kids. lolwtf
Never blame the asshole in the car. Always blame someone else.
Did you read the article? The kid ran out into the street. The driver wasn’t speeding or impaired. They did nothing wrong so what exactly do you want them to be blamed for and why are they the asshole in this situation?
No he did not read. People here do not read and just go for “oh the poor kid” without knowing the whole story. Also they want to stop a vehicle going 45mph to 0 in a dime. Literally these commentator have never driven a car.
In Netherland, max speed is usually 30 kph (about 20mph) when there’s any chance of interacting with other traffic (bikes or pedestrians). The idea of walking along a busy road where cars go 45 mph is ridiculous. Separate the traffic streams and give them crosswalk with traffic lights, or slow down the cars.
The idea of infrastructure which is not hostile to humans seems to be totally alien to some people.
You’re right. There’s nothing insinuating the driver is at fault in the article. That being said with him being 76 I’d fucking loooove to see if he could pass a driver’s test.
The fact theyre charging the parents is fucking ridiculous.
If a 76 year old passes a drivers test, there is something seriously wrong with the test. I have never met anyone above 70 with good reaction times.
@Alaik @Aragaren It’s quite possible the driver was following all the rules and using the road exactly as intended and wasn’t able to stop in time because the road design and speed limit encouraged drivers of any age to travel at speeds incompatible with child pedestrian traffic despite being in a populated area surrounded by homes and stores. It’s also possible they wanted to retire from driving but were thwarted by the same demonic traffic engineers and land use planners.
I read the article. Did you? Did you notice what it didn’t say? We can quickly infer that the man is local and these were local streets. What kind of crazy mother f***** would drive 25 in a 25 when there’s kids right next to them? I know what kind of crazy mother f*****, the kind who wouldn’t care if they struck those kids and killed them. The rest of us would show common sense, we would see the kids, and we would slow down to 15 miles an hour because we know that little kids might step out into the street accidentally and care about the lives of children.
Let me put it simply. If you see a kid near the road, slow the f*** down, you aggressive m***********.
Driving a killing machine. You don’t point a gun at anything you don’t want to kill. You dont drive a car without willingness to kill.
Streets should not be a place its just okay to murder children.
I would argue, and i know this is kind of radical and lots of you will disagree, that we should not have places where its okay to murder children.
You don’t drive a car without willingness to kill
It has been a while since I’ve come across a statement that leaves me wondering how anyone came to such a disconnect with reality. Watching these mental gymnastics is making me sea sick.
I drive a car with a willingness to get from where I am to where I’m going, quickly. A comparison to a gun is just retarded: guns are killing machines because that is their sole purpose. The purpose of cars is fast transport of people and cargo.
Now, “murder” needs to show intent, and it sounds like you’re concluding anyone who is killed by a car is murdered because drivers must intend on killing someone simply because they got behind the wheel. I’m going to go ahead and assume you either a) don’t have any friends or family who drive, or, more likely, b) don’t have any friends and don’t talk to your family.
willingness to get where im going quickly
And a willingness to kill to get that done, if necessary, or you’d be on a train or a bike.
I think you mean “involuntary manslaughter children” not “murder”.
Involuntary manslaughter just requires negligence, and cars and roads seem like tailor made environments for drivers to be negligent.
I know people here like to throw the ‘murder’ accusation around but it is a totally different level of intent and culpability - and it’d be hard to prove it beyond reasonable doubt.
In my country though there is special laws for drivers , death by dangerous driving, and death by careless driving - so as long as you use a car, the normal rules for manslaughter don’t directly apply.
I think , here, if you’ve killed someone it is hard to defend against a death by careless driving charge, as our highway code is very clear on duty of care towards vulnerable road users. But ultimately it’d be jury’s decision on “reasonableness”. I can’t see how no charges would be brought though - as the jury has to determine it, and any death must be taken seriously.
Prosecution should just need to show that there was a hazard (pedestrians, children, in this case the corpse should do the trick) and that a reasonable driver could have done more, say slow down to less than 20mph.
“no evidence of speeding” might be enough for some jurors, but that should be their call.Our problem over here is more on the punishment side. The punishment for death by careless driving seems lower than other forms of negligent killing. Many will get away with a small fine/community order and a 12 month ban from driving. So i think a lot of people probably plead guilty to avoid the fine and get away with a 1 year ban.
Weak punishment, but there’s at least an acknowledgement that they did something wrong.
Back to this case it seems crazy (to me) that there is not even a question for the court to determine whether the driver was negligent. Maybe the driver was reasonably attentive and had taken all reasonable measures to keep other road users safe, but surely they should be made to demonstrate that to the court.
Welll, part of the issue here is that americans are R strategists, and we must cull the weakest of our children pretty regularly.
Generally crimes committed with a car carry less/no penalty here, but it isn’t formalized.
You dont drive a car without willingness to kill.
eeeeh might be time for a break
Youre right. Im sorry i said that.
We absolutely need a place where its okay to kill children, and streets are far and away the best option for that.
I get a little stupid and udealistic sometimes when im high, but I’ve sobered up now.
you’re misreading my intent, deliberately. no one is suggesting those things.
cars are fucking this culture up. comments like this are pretty good evidence.
I think your high ping has caused you to be disconnected with reality, try rebooting your modem.
You’re right. I switched to a wired connection and im much more reasonable now.
Of course we need designated child killing zones. How else will we cull the weak, and keep america strong?
This feels like an origin story for a Punisher reboot.
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.
No but see we need designated zones where it’s okay to murder children.
Otherwise how will we get rid of the most annoying ones?
Schools fill that role apparently.
That just seems wasteful. Think of all the labor and cleaning products you’d need after every single kid!
Explain normal? If this was a street inside a subdivision, I would totally understand. Speed limit on that road is 45mph
- Either come up with engineering to stop from 45mph to 0mph in a dime
- Take care of your kids, watch the surrounding, be vigilant else don’t have kids
You should have learned in driver’s ed that the speed limit is the maximum possible speed you should ever go under ideal driving conditions. If there are children on the side of the road, anyone with half a brain knows that the speed limit is probably far too fast, and you should slow the hell down.
It’s all good to say that you’re following the law, but if you don’t use basic common sense, then it is your fault when you kill a small child. The driver isn’t going to be charged, but that doesn’t mean what they did is okay, and it’s really sad that you think it is.
Yeah, there just need to be places where its okay for anyone to murder children. These filthy fucking europeans just don’t understand, because of their low birth rates, but as proud r strategists, americans need to be able to kill some of their children, and must have robust mechanisms for culling the weak.
I walked two blocks between home and school every day when I was 7. This is insane.
Yeah, in first grade I’d walk several blocks to school and back
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.
I’m so disappointed that I don’t see these days coming back.
Half the kids in my school lived in town, they all walked home. A lot of our streets didn’t have proper sidewalks.
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.
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.
I bet it’s in a Republican shithole city in a Republican shithole state?
I don’t even have to check
Rural NC
Ive literally never heard a good news story out of 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.
Also, there are designated child culling zones.
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.
Look, americans are proud R strategists. Maybe you sluggish europeans dont know what that means, but we need ways to cull the weak before we waste too nany resources on useless eaters, so designated zones and tools, in/with which it’s considered okay to murder children are an absolute necessity. Doing it with our cars, integrqting it into our transit system, more than makes up for the loss of efficiency from not using trains and bikes. So how do YOU propose we murder children, then, huh?
Do you think we should just stop killing children on purpose? Fucking yankeephobic eurotrash.
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.
Is there dash cam? We are all just doing guess work at the moment.
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.
If I’m driving in an area where pedestrians can be present and my view of a walkway is obstructed, I slow down. A speed limit isn’t an obligation nor is it a right to travel at speeds that have the potential to be unsafe. I treat every blind spot as if there’s something behind it ready to jump out at a moment’s notice and I adjust my speed to anticipate it. I do that because I believe operating within legally defined parameters doesn’t exempt me from the responsibility of my actions causing harm to another person.
We as a society are far too lenient toward drivers who take for granted the fact that they’re in control of high-velocity heavy-machinery that can and do kill people on a daily basis. Traffic deaths aren’t an inevitability, in most cases they’re caused by overconfidence.
You see unaccompanied children, you take your foot off the gas and hover over the brake pedal.
How about parents hold hand of children? Maybe don’t have kids at all if letting free and roaming around.
What you’re advocating for is actually detrimental to kids development. Kids need increasing levels of independence in order to learn how to interact with the world and ultimately become better adjusted adults
In civilized countries it’s perfectly normal and safe to let your children walk to the fucking supermarket and back on their own. How indoctrinated with dystopian habits do you have to be to not realize there’s something deeply wrong here?
When you’re operating heavy machinery (like a car) it’s your job to ensure you’re not a danger to your surroundings. If you can’t do that you’re not fit to drive.
Physics says it does not care of civilized countries. U can’t stop a truck like tundra on a dime. Physics. And even with auto braking these day, no way.
A few things: 1) the speed limit is 45, 2) I went to the street on google maps, you could not hope for better visibility, 3) the driver was 76 years old.
No fucking shot you’re sitting here trying to say that, with great visibility and a speed limit of 45, this old fuck isn’t responsible for killing Legend. No, actually please confirm this, I’ve been feeling pent up and going off on a chud would really make me feel better.
Outside of listing out all things, u did not mention why the parents were not hold on to their kids specially in US. Why?
Also ask the question why a 76 years old is allowed to drive? May be no good public transportation system? Oh no now we let senile folks drive. And also how easy is it to get license here in US, my cat might legally drive
Then the speed needs to be reduced.
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.
Reasons why this community exists.
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
Sounds like trucks shouldn’t be so big and should prioritize visibility then
Only normal in America
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.
Oh, so you think we shouldnt have designated places and tools for murdering children?
Why do you hate america and freedom?
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!
