[rant on]As a father of two I'm pissed. Drivers, sober or not, who drive like a-holes really anger me. [/Rant off] http://chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/4400792.html Toddler dies, 2 injured in fiery crash on Beltway 8 By JENNIFER LEAHY Copyright 2006 Houston Chronicle A 4-year-old girl was killed and her two siblings injured today after a traffic accident in north Houston where police said the driver of a vehicle traveling between 100 and 125 mph lost control and crashed. One of the siblings, a 2-year-old girl, was ejected from the car. She was taken by helicopter ambulance to Memorial Hermann Hospital, where she was in critical condition tonight with massive head injuries. Their 10-year-old brother was also injured. His condition could not be determined. None of the three children was properly restrained in the car, police said. Houston police tonight were questioning the driver, who they think is the uncle of the three children. The man, who police did not identify, failed a field sobriety test at the site of the accident, said HPD officer Jim Tippy. Police were giving the man, who is in his late 20s or early 30s, a blood test at police headquarters downtown. He could face charges of intoxication manslaughter, intoxication assault and endangering a child. Police said the man was on his way to the airport to pick up his sister — the mother of the three children — when the accident occurred about 4:30 p.m. on Beltway 8 between Aldine Westfield and JFK. The accident shut down eastbound traffic on the Beltway, resulting in traffic back-ups for several miles on the feeder roads and nearby streets. Witnesses, who said they were driving 75 mph, told police the driver was driving erratically, at speeds possibly reaching 100 to 125 mph. The driver left the Beltway, witnesses told police, then tried to get back on the freeway. His car clipped the metal guardrail, piercing the gas tank.The car then caught on fire. While on fire, the vehicle went airborne. It then landed and clipped a white pickup truck, causing that vehicle to go out of control. That truck struck three other vehicles. No major injuries were reported in those crashes. The driver of the truck was at the scene for a few minutes, but then left, witnesses said. The 4-year-old was trapped in the burning vehicle and could not be rescued.
Yeah. I just read that one too. Not only does he drive like a stupid f\/ck but he doesn't even buckle the kids in. Arggh.
Death penalty seems a little too easy for him.. I say let him have his nuts crushed in full consciousness because this guy does not deserve to have a child. DUI with small CHILDREN in your backseat?? If I was a jury I would not at all give this man any pity, give him full punishment allowable by law and then some. Put him in a cell with a Bubba.
If that was my brother and he did that to my kids (I don't have any, but still), I think I'd personally deliver the IV.
I saw the aftermath of this wreck probably about 20 min after it happened. Looked really really bad. What a POS.
What's interesting is there are some folks who don't understand that situations like *this* are why DWI's are so vigorously prosecuted. Think about it. Rewind the tape for a second and follow me on this. If this idiot had been pulled over BEFORE the kids had gotten in the car, BEFORE he had gotten on the Beltway, BEFORE he had started driving like a moron -- let's say he was pulled over by some cop while he was still in some subdivision on some random residential street going 35mph in a 30mph -- then *this* would've been a garden-variety DWI. No victims, no car accident. Just an arrest. And if the dude was a poster here lamenting about his situation alot of us would be wondering why the cops aren't policing "real" crimes and that the whole system is a "cash-grab" or things of that nature. And it's human nature to do so because it's so hard to prove a negative. We can't wrap our brains around the fact that by getting impaired drivers off the streets we could actually (unbeknownst to us at the time) be preventing tragic, horrifying situations like this from playing out. The inherent problem about crimes like DWI is that alot of us only want to punish after the fact. Because a bad result happened. And, of course, by then it's often too late and people's lives have been changed forever. Crap, I hate hearing about things like this. My prayers go out to the family of those kids.
Can you imagine the mother reaction after getting off of the plane expecting to see her kids that her brother was bringing to the airport to meet her?
The last thing the driver would do was to harm his own passengers. Unless he was driving with anger at them at the same time drunk. If we are to punish this guy by death, let us not do this solely to punish him but also to educate or remind everybody else that we take this kind of stupidity seriously. Be it known or highly publicise it national tv.
Could not have said it better myself. Yes, I have driven after some drinks a few times so no I'm not perfect, but I realize that every single one of those instances was an inexplicable mistake that I never should have let happen. That said, it bothers me to see how some people take it so lightly, almost dismissing the danger as they say "I'm perfectly fine to drive home after a few beers...I do it all the time". Once a year, under what might seem like justifiable circumstances at the moment is one thing, but to do it on the regular and shrug it off like nothing bad could ever happen as a result is just idiotic. I'm thankful for every cop that ever pulled someone over and given someone a DUI for being even the least bit over the legal limit. Who knows whose life they might have saved. Mine? Yours?
"Crazy drunk driver." Mo fo. What I am reading here is that he should stay alive, in a solitary cell with a picture of those kids, the mother, and the entire truck messed up? He won't have a chance to remove the photos. They will remind him every day? That would be real punishment.
This guy will get what's coming to him. MADD lobbies are crazy strong. It's horrible about those kids, though. Can we make a rule to only post funny stuff in the morning? Not a good thing to read before my coffee kicks in.
Don't worry. Someone will try to make a joke of this soon enough. My prayer's go out to this family. At 3 years old, my little brother's life was changed completely due some worthless scumbag that was driving under the influence of pot. He wasn't supposed to live, but made it through. Things like this just shouldn't happen. Living is a far worse punishment for this...there are no words to describe him.
