The Irresponsibility of Humans
I didn't quite know what to title this entry.
This morning, I was watching the Today Show, and they featured a story that just made me livid beyond words and I just felt the need to share it.
It's about a mother of two who was kidnapped, raped, and murdered.
She manged to get a cell phone line open to dispatchers, and another witness reported seeing an apparently kidnapped woman bound and struggling in a car. Seven minutes later, another woman saw the same thing and saw the car turning off on another interstate. She called dispatchers and let them know. But the mother still died, because the 911 dispatchers forgot to pass along the information from the last call.
Some of the content of the story is located under the cut
Denise Amber Lee was kidnapped at about 2:30 p.m. on Thursday, Jan. 17, from her home in North Port, Fla. At 6:14, she managed to use her kidnapper’s cell phone to call 911 and leave an open connection that allowed the Charlotte County Sheriff to know about the kidnapping. At 6:23 another 911 call from a witness reported a woman who might have been kidnapped in a dark green Camaro.
With police on the lookout for the car, another motorist saw a woman screaming and kicking and beating on the windows of a dark-colored Camaro on I-75. She called 911 at 6:30 and gave dispatchers an exact location of the vehicle and its direction of travel, but for a critical half-hour they “forgot” to pass the information along.
By 9 p.m., the driver of the Camaro, 36-year-old unemployed plumber Michael King, was in custody and a ring and hair that Denise Lee had left in the back seat connected him to the kidnapping. But by then, the 21-year-old wife and mother of two was lying in a shallow grave, stripped of her clothes and dead from a gunshot wound to the head. Her body was recovered two days later.
This story makes me sad and angry. She had two little boys, both so young they won't be able to remember her.
This is the opposite case of the Kitty Genovese murder. If you don't know about this, I have some basic information
This is a commonly cited example in psychology classes about how people often refuse to step up and take action, thinking that someone else will. In 1964, she was walking home when she was attacked. Some say that no one really saw what happened, but most reports show that neighbors heard her screaming for help as she was stabbed. Someone even looked out and yelled at the attacker. The attacker ran off, but no one went out to help Kitty. The attacker returned later, wearing a hat, and proceeded to rape and kill her.
The stories are so at odds with each other. In one, a woman is attacked and multiple people step up and do the right thing. In another, a woman's please for help are ignored as she is brutally murdered. And yet in both cases, the women ended up dead.
I'm sure that the dispatchers are wracked with guilt right now, and I am often a fairly forgiving person. But at this moment, I can't help but think they deserve to be haunted by this for the rest of their days.
Their jobs were to help people in need, and they didn't do it.
Though I guess I shouldn't be surprised considering our inability to aide those in dire need. We invade other countries without reason, yet allow genocide to occur in Darfur, Rwanda, and countless other nations.
I shouldn't be surprised, and yet I can't help wanting to cry.
This morning, I was watching the Today Show, and they featured a story that just made me livid beyond words and I just felt the need to share it.
It's about a mother of two who was kidnapped, raped, and murdered.
She manged to get a cell phone line open to dispatchers, and another witness reported seeing an apparently kidnapped woman bound and struggling in a car. Seven minutes later, another woman saw the same thing and saw the car turning off on another interstate. She called dispatchers and let them know. But the mother still died, because the 911 dispatchers forgot to pass along the information from the last call.
Some of the content of the story is located under the cut
Denise Amber Lee was kidnapped at about 2:30 p.m. on Thursday, Jan. 17, from her home in North Port, Fla. At 6:14, she managed to use her kidnapper’s cell phone to call 911 and leave an open connection that allowed the Charlotte County Sheriff to know about the kidnapping. At 6:23 another 911 call from a witness reported a woman who might have been kidnapped in a dark green Camaro.
With police on the lookout for the car, another motorist saw a woman screaming and kicking and beating on the windows of a dark-colored Camaro on I-75. She called 911 at 6:30 and gave dispatchers an exact location of the vehicle and its direction of travel, but for a critical half-hour they “forgot” to pass the information along.
By 9 p.m., the driver of the Camaro, 36-year-old unemployed plumber Michael King, was in custody and a ring and hair that Denise Lee had left in the back seat connected him to the kidnapping. But by then, the 21-year-old wife and mother of two was lying in a shallow grave, stripped of her clothes and dead from a gunshot wound to the head. Her body was recovered two days later.
This story makes me sad and angry. She had two little boys, both so young they won't be able to remember her.
This is the opposite case of the Kitty Genovese murder. If you don't know about this, I have some basic information
This is a commonly cited example in psychology classes about how people often refuse to step up and take action, thinking that someone else will. In 1964, she was walking home when she was attacked. Some say that no one really saw what happened, but most reports show that neighbors heard her screaming for help as she was stabbed. Someone even looked out and yelled at the attacker. The attacker ran off, but no one went out to help Kitty. The attacker returned later, wearing a hat, and proceeded to rape and kill her.
The stories are so at odds with each other. In one, a woman is attacked and multiple people step up and do the right thing. In another, a woman's please for help are ignored as she is brutally murdered. And yet in both cases, the women ended up dead.
I'm sure that the dispatchers are wracked with guilt right now, and I am often a fairly forgiving person. But at this moment, I can't help but think they deserve to be haunted by this for the rest of their days.
Their jobs were to help people in need, and they didn't do it.
Though I guess I shouldn't be surprised considering our inability to aide those in dire need. We invade other countries without reason, yet allow genocide to occur in Darfur, Rwanda, and countless other nations.
I shouldn't be surprised, and yet I can't help wanting to cry.