First mentioned in today’s scanner, an out of control driver in a stolen vehicle went tearing up E. Columbia St. this afternoon, side-swiping one parked car and totaling another up the block.
I spoke to a witness who was heading southbound on 23rd when he saw a 4-door Suburu cross 23rd at Columbia, westbound, without stopping and going “at least 50 miles per hour.” The witness had to slam on his breaks to avoid a major collision in the intersection. Other witnesses said they saw the vehicle side-swipe a black Cadillac parked in the 2200 block of E. Columbia, fishtailing as it continued up the hill, until it had a head-on collision with a gray Chrysler LeBaron parked on E. Columbia between 21st & 22nd. A third witness said the vehicle was traveling so fast he could barely comprehend what it was, saying it just went by in a flash of red.
The driver and passenger quickly jumped out of the car and went southbound on 21st, where they evidently saw a friend who offered them an escape in a red Blazer SUV. One of the suspects ditched a handgun into a yard on the street before getting into the getaway vehicle.
The short, stocky suspect in the case was seen with a bad limp as he left the scene. The thought at the time was that it was a result of the impact in the crash, but now it appears that it may be from a gunshot wound. And that may be the root cause of the whole incident: kid shot somewhere east of 23rd, they take off in a panic in their stolen Suburu, and end up wrecking a few blocks away.
The descriptions of the suspects seemed to ring a bell with police at the scene, with one remarking that it sounded like “some kids that hang out at 28th & Jackson”.
The lucky thing here is that no one was hurt. A pedestrian could have easily been killed if they had been on the street at the time, and it could have caused a catastrophic wreck with other vehicles at any of the 2 intersections they breezed through.
But other than property damage, the real casualty may be the job of the owner of the parked car that took the brunt of the final collision. She told me that she had just gotten her “dream job”, but it requires a lengthy commute up north of the city. Her old LeBaron, built on her father’s birthday and originally owned by her mother who recently passed away, was her only means of getting there. Now she’s not sure if she’ll be able to find another way to get to the job and keep it.
Hi – appreciate your newsy posts very much. I have to take issue with your language from time to time and hope you take this in the spirit of open if not always comfortable community-type sharing. When you say “the lucky thing here is that no one was hurt,” you are implying that the man with the gunshot wound was not a person. This upsets all of us who love someone who might be in that situation, whether or not we believe they were behaving responsibly at that time. We all want safe neighborhoods, but we are not willing to experience dehumanization in the process.
The topic of the post is “Hit & Run”. The context of “the lucky thing here is that no one was hurt” is what is important. In this instance “here” is obviously referring to the action (and topic) of an out of control car. If the subject of the post was “shooting followed by hit and run” then I think you might have a valid point. Given the history of this site for being a proven resource for all people in the neighborhood and representing multiple viewpoints I think implying that they are in some way “dehumanizing” is pretty outlandish. I appreciate your point, but feel the criticism is unwarranted given the correct context and grammar of the post.
I accept that a shallow treatment of grammar leads to an understanding of the gunshot injury as outside the “subject” of the post. But the title of the post is “Hit & Run Takes Out Neighbor’s Job.” By positioning the hypothetical loss of someone’s job as more central to the incicent as the gunfire that catalyzed it, an obvious bias is displayed by the author.
I’m just sayin.’
Bias has a pretty high standard to meet to qualify as dehumanization. Hutus and Tutsis, Romans and Christians, Colonists and Slaves, Scott from Centraldistrictnews.com and irresponsible car jacker?
Your point is well taken, but I just feel that you too need to be careful with the language you choose.
Thanks Andrea – I definitely understand your point of view. And for a somewhat lame explanation, this was really caused by sloppy editing. Most of the article was written by the time we found out that the limping party from the car was suffering from a gunshot wound, so I just plopped that in there without going back and making changes to the overall theme of the story.
Scott, that certainly explains everything and I’m sorry if I was overly harsh/hypersensitive. And Jon, you are making sense to me as well. I suppose it’s always easier to sit back and flame somebody than to do the hard work of reporting in the first place.
Peace.