The boy, Jonathan Benko, and a group of about 12 to 15 other students from Parkland Middle School in El Paso decided not to participate in the walkout, and instead left the campus to visit a park on the other side of Loop 375, a busy highway that surrounds parts of the city, officials said.
Jonathan, a sixth grader and the last one to try to cross, was struck by a Ford F-150 pickup truck, Officer Darrel Petry, a spokesman for the El Paso Police Department, said on Saturday.
April 22, 2018
"An 11-year-old boy in El Paso died on Friday after getting hit by a pickup truck while his school held a walkout to protest gun violence."
The NYT reports.
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98 comments:
Somebody has to say it. If stopping these walkouts will save even one life, that’s what we have to do.
The compound negligence of Parkland authorities is truly astounding across the original shooting and the incident at this protest clearly intended to deflect from the district's earlier negligence.
Worse, the boy's mother worked at the hospital where he was taken and died.
We're going to need a super-sized "using children in politics" tag over here!
Lawsuit against the school for allowing him to leave school during the day. Millions in damages. Teachers and principal not personally liable. Taxpayers and insurance companies pay for Leftwing stupidity.
Do you get the sense from the NYT article that they're trying to blame the 11 year-old for not fully participating in the walkout?
Ban pickup trucks. They are killers !
Very sad. 12 year old boys do dangerous stuff like this everyday throughout the US.
These school walkouts are vapid. Progressive Pep Rallies run by government workers and organized by Dem Party apparatchiks. They are a disgrace.
But the school isn’t legally responsible for the boy’s death. They are only responsible for using their school to further political ends. They should be fired for that.
About 6 kids a day are killed in car accidents and
about 6 kids a year are killed in school mass shootings since 1999.
Probably had a gun in the pickup.
This poor child's blood is on Hogg's hands, by the standards Hogg claims against the NRA and others.
mccullough said...
But the school isn’t legally responsible for the boy’s death.
The hell they're not.
Picking on pickups because it’s the Times elite city schtick again.
If he had been hit by a Prius ...
EDH said...
"Do you get the sense from the NYT article that they're trying to blame the 11 year-old for not fully participating in the walkout?"
No, I think they are leaning more toward blaming "assault rifles" for his getting hit by a truck. Mostly, they just don't want anyone thinking that handing your kids over to the teachers' unions to use as political props might not be a great idea.
Imagine being the last boy in the group. All the others have crossed. You are afraid and you know it's a bad idea, but it seems you have to do it now. You've just got to go. Your only life is on the other side of that road and you've got to get to it or you have no life.
EDH said...
Do you get the sense from the NYT article that they're trying to blame the 11 year-old for not fully participating in the walkout?
Yes. First thing that I thought of.
Very sad. The school should veer back towards teaching kids, not promoting political causes.
Ann Althouse said...
Imagine being the last boy in the group. All the others have crossed. You are afraid and you know it's a bad idea, but it seems you have to do it now.
What a perfect metaphor for the school sanctioned "protest movement" itself.
That is not a road you want to cross. For the most part, a freeway. The adults responsible should pay a big price professionally although just feeling horrible is probably as much as will happen.
What an unnecessary tragedy.
Do we dare ask if the driver was an illegal alien?
Why is an eleven year old participating in a protest? As mentioned above, the camera Hogg kid has blood on his hands.
If this had happened to a kid in the walkout we'd have heard a lot more of this. And would anyone doubt the school was responsible?
The school officials are responsible, they shirked their duty of care and did it for political reasons. They should be fired and I would like it if they could be charged with criminal negligence.
I agree. Camera Hogg has blood on his hands.
Blogger SayAahh said...
Picking on pickups because it’s the Times elite city schtick again.
If he had been hit by a Prius ...
If he had the Prius would have been totaled and the kid would be in class.
"The middle school had placed additional supervision at the back and front of the school, but the group of students left the school grounds on the east side, Mr. De La Torres said.
The school’s safety and security “is unparalleled,” he said, but when students choose to leave campus “it becomes more and more difficult to guarantee their safety.”"
That's the NYT. Here's CNN:
"This group of students, in a separate, isolated incident, who decided not to participate in the walkout but instead decided to use it perhaps as a way to get off the premises and go meet at the park,” said De La Torre.
De La Torre sure seems to be trying to draw a bright line between the "Good" walk outters and the "Bad" walk outters.
Jupiter nails it.
No, I think they are leaning more toward blaming "assault rifles" for his getting hit by a truck. Mostly, they just don't want anyone thinking that handing your kids over to the teachers' unions to use as political props might not be a great idea.
"Do you get the sense from the NYT article that they're trying to blame the 11 year-old for not fully participating in the walkout?"
Well, yes. Anything but holding the adults who are responsible for his safety accountable is now the goal, because the teachers leading this protest got this kid killed have the Correct Politics. So, the actions of those leading to this kids death will not be brought up.
F-150 is a military-grade truck. NOBODY needs an F-150. Nobody! (fist raised)
If he'd just stayed herded with the others and joined the protest, he still be safe is the message I'm getting from the story. I'd say that was the intent.
Honestly, the excuse is that the kids were too wily and managed to sneak out one of the exits they couldn't watch.
Also: Wasn't March 14 the National School Walkout? Or are they just going to keep having these disruptions?
“What we’ve come to understand is that there are students out there that are very vocal, that are going to be our future leaders that are going to insist upon walking out,” he said. “And what we try to do is help them understand that they can still have a voice and that they can still have a presence and demonstrate their recognition and honor of some of the things that have happened in this country without leaving the premises.”
-- Mr. De La Torres needs to realize that this kid died because his school thought it was more important to virtue signal that they're on the same page about guns as their liberal friends than to *have staff standing at doors to keep kids from playing hooky.*
I wonder if there were any girls among the small group who crossed the highway.
Meh. Kids get hit by cars every day in America. Is it really that important that it happened during a school walkout?
You mean to tell me that some students would use the "day of protest" to secure an afternoon off from school?
"Kids get hit by cars every day in America. Is it really that important that it happened during a school walkout?"
-- Yeah, it kind of is important that this time the kid that got hit wouldn't have if the adult authorities *did their damn job.*
They've ruined not only the family's life, but the motorist who hit the kid's life will probably never be the same either.
But, hey. They got to let people know they hate guns too.
Youth mental bubble box: 'So if I hold this sign that says "no more guns" I get to go outside and play?'
"You mean to tell me that some students would use the "day of protest" to secure an afternoon off from school?"
What are you rebelling against?
This is as much a dereliction of duty as the officers that wouldn't engage the shooter during the shooting. Official inaction and negligence caused a kid to die.
Anyone who has seen the “technicals” used by insurgents in numerous wars knows that pickups are “Assault Vehicles”, or at least “Assault Style” vehicles.
Also: Wasn't March 14 the National School Walkout? Or are they just going to keep having these disruptions?
4/22/18, 10:57 AM
That's what I wondered. Is one day a month now designated as Anti-Gun Walkout Day? What about other causes? What about school walkout days to protest bullying, sexism, racism, homophobia, and global warming? Let's do it. After all, American students rank so highly when it comes to STEM that we can afford to cut back on the time they spend in the classroom. The important thing is to turn them into activists for left wing causes.
I'm certain this will be added to the "gun related death" statistic.
Also: Wasn't March 14 the National School Walkout? Or are they just going to keep having these disruptions?
I think Soros money is "use it or lose it."
Matthew @ 11:04. Perfect.
The truant child, without adult supervision, was picked-up by the pick up.
Don't be picking-up kids playing hooky in your pick up.
I used to be an A student
I never used to complain
I used to be a truant
But I'm still the same
Bad bad brain
Bad bad brain
Something similar happened to a college student at UCSD last year. She was part of a protest group that went onto the freeway and she got hit by a car. She survived and is suing the University because she claims that they didn't do enough to keep the group from walking onto the freeway.
http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/courts/sd-me-protester-lawsuit-20171129-story.html
it kind of is important that this time the kid that got hit wouldn't have if the adult authorities *did their damn job.*
From your reading comprehension, I see you skipped more than a few days of school yourself. The student killed wasn't part of the protest; he was an ordinary truant headed for a park. He just as easily could have been hit by a car on his way home from school.
As Althouse says (except when she doesn't, like today), stop using kids as political surrogates.
"The student killed wasn't part of the protest; he was an ordinary truant headed for a park."
-- Did you read the part where the reason kids were getting out was because of the protest? Torres even makes it clear that they weren't watching all the exits, despite knowing a walk out was planned.
The 11 year old was following a peer group, during an official day of protest. Heading home from school is benign, not without dangers, but usually without that level stress and pressure.
Id like to propose pickup trucks be pressed into service to transport Amazon Prime packages that have gotten misrouted on their first leg.
At the moment, once it's off the contracted 2-day path, it lingers several days at each point it winds up at in what must be a 4th class postal mode, movement on a space-available basis.
My 4 days late DVD has been in Pittsburgh for 2 days now, after a misrouted trip to NYC and delay there.
It's mostly interstates so kids will probably not be hit much.
If there is any consolation, the pick-up was made of aluminum, and probably suffered as much as the kid.
Cry for your pick up, cry for your love, cry for the waxing.
All ruined by a juvenile delinquent.
Imagine an army of bullyboy Hoggs stressing out and bullying your classmates. eee gads.
No wonder parents want to home school.
@Ernie P., Matthew’s reading comprehension is not wrong; it’s your own comprehension of adult responsibility that is deficient. A good first step is to fire every member of the school’s administration except for the support staff (what we used to call secretaries back in the day). Also the child’s teacher. For starters.
Time to sue a school for being negligent in their duties.
However, the libs will want to sue the manufacturer of pickup trucks.
Imagine if it had been an SUV ...
Blogger Earnest Prole said...
The student killed wasn't part of the protest; he was an ordinary truant headed for a park
As opposed to a school-sanctioned truant heading for a school-approved liberal protest.
Did you read the part where the reason kids were getting out was because of the protest? Torres even makes it clear that they weren't watching all the exits, despite knowing a walk out was planned.
A school isn't a prison. If kids want to skip classes, they will.
ARM: "Probably had a gun in the pickup"
Why go only halfway down the Stupidity Path ARM? Go all the way.....
The gun was probably driving the truck!
If they had not neen having a "day of protest" he would hsve neen in school. Fire all the administration and staff.
Can't they make the case day off protest IS educational
That is sad.
On these protests: It's time to get back to class. Enough meandering around under some banner.
If kids want to skip classes, they will.
Sure, and the fact that, with school approval, numerous other kids were encouraged to leave campus had no bearing on the kid's decision. Sure. Sure.
"The student killed wasn't part of the protest; he was an ordinary truant headed for a park."
Viewpoint discrimination.
Either the kids were allowed to leave based on their own conscience or they were not. The desire to enjoy the park is as good as the desire to participate in a protest. Either the school is holding the students within its compelled education program or it is not. In my opinion, no one should have been allowed to leave, but I don't see the basis for preferring one activity over another. I'm not saying this is a legal opinion.
In fact, there is the old "released time" case — Zorach — where students were given leave from the school premises to go to religious education while the students who didn't do that were kept in study hall and that was accepted by the Supreme Court.
I like Justice Jackson's dissent:
"... Stripped to its essentials, the plan has two stages: first, that the State compel each student to yield a large part of his time for public secular education; and, second, that some of it be "released" to him on condition that he devote it to sectarian religious purposes.... The greater effectiveness of this system over voluntary attendance after school hours is due to the truant officer who, if the youngster fails to go to the Church school, dogs him back to the public school room. Here schooling is more or less suspended during the "released time" so the nonreligious attendants will not forge ahead of the churchgoing absentees. But it serves as a temporary jail for a pupil who will not go to Church...."
Why aren't the protests held after school or on a weekend day? The mechanism of compulsory schooling is used to organize and facilitate attendance. The students who don't participate are deprived of their freedom for no educational reason.
If he had been hit by a Prius ...
The kid would've been fine and the car totaled.
Matthew Sablan said...
"The student killed wasn't part of the protest; he was an ordinary truant headed for a park."
-- Did you read the part where the reason kids were getting out was because of the protest? Torres even makes it clear that they weren't watching all the exits, despite knowing a walk out was planned.
4/22/18, 11:38 AM
Indeed, Matt. Earnest is a destructive prick of the first water, but I never suspected that he was merely unintelligent. The whole post is, "See what happens when you use children as political surrogates!"
As for the handwaving with truancy, THEY'RE ALL TRUANTS!!! There aren't righteous truants and wicked truants. That's why you don't let kids have walkouts! That's why you sanction them if they do! That's why you have truant officers! If they want to stick it to the Man, they can just as easily write their Homeworks from an El Paso Jail" from the safety of a holding cell. Peaceful resistance is where it's at, right?
Drago seems a bit testy today.
Crap. Michael K. beat me to it.
First, this is a tragedy for all involved.
Second, the school is responsible for the kid's safety for that period of time, and should be held accountable.
Third, don't they teach kids not to fool around in the street anymore? I guess not.
Maybe this is the reason:
The United States is the only advanced economy in the world expected to have its debt burden get worse over the next five years.
Blogger Dickin'Bimbos@Home said...
The 11 year old was following a peer group, during an official day of protest. Heading home from school is benign, not without dangers, but usually without that level stress and pressure.
4/22/18, 11:39 AM
Yes, speaking of "no life," imagine the pressure to conform to the walkout! If he chickened out from crossing the highway, he might have been the temporary goat of five other boys of his clique, might have walked away from it with a nickname.
If he dissented from the walkout, he would have been dead meat in that school by the end of the week. An unperson.
Perhaps going east and away from the protesting maniacs was his own form of dissent. Which was not protected, and which was punished by Death.
Rhhardin, you don't want to conscript the pickup trucks, you want to conscript the drivers. I guess we know where your libertarianism begins and ends.
When my kids leave the school grounds for a field trip, I have to sign all sorts of paperwork.
How is it that the school can just decide to let them out for a "protest"? Don't the parents have to consent to that?
Don't the parents have to consent to that?
Are you one of those guys who used to be a school crossing guard or a hall monitor?
Are you a Fink?
There's always one in every school - "...always adhering and following the rules than understanding the reasons for them?"
I like Justice Jackson's dissent.
I'm with you and Jackson on the school policy question, and my Second Amendment absolutism is second to none. My aversion is to squeezing politics out of a tragic accident that just as easily could have occurred on any other day.
When my kids leave the school grounds for a field trip, I have to sign all sorts of paperwork.
How is it that the school can just decide to let them out for a "protest"? Don't the parents have to consent to that?
The busiest corner in Tucson, Ina and Oracle, was crowded with demonstrating teachers and students last week. All had red shirts on and were agitating to get more then the 20% raise the Governor promised. It is ll run by a DNC organizer.
They were hanging over the street and there must have been 100 of them.
I wonder how many kids in TUSD are ESL students?
Are you one of those guys who used to be a school crossing guard or a hall monitor?
I was a crossing guard and it allowed us to be a little late for class.
I was also an altar boy and we used to drink the sacrificial wine.
Stay in school. God plays the Saint's against the Sinner's, and always gets a no-hitter.
Soon we’ll reach the silver river,
Soon our pilgrimage will cease;
Soon our happy hearts will quiver
With the melody of peace.
Zorach continues to be in force? it was in '81-'82 when (for my sins) I had to teach catechism classes-- the poor kids were released from public school for the hour. We none of us were very highly motivated, alas. There were two or three week periods at the beginning of each term when surprising numbers of pages with parental permission signatures were blown away by the prairie winds.
>>Are you one of those guys who used to be a school crossing guard or a hall monitor?
I expect the school to keep my 12 year old in class, and not let her wander off across a busy highway.
And no, I was not a school crossing guard. Or a hall monitor. Or a fink.
I was the guy that would kick your ass if you said something rude about one of my sisters.
So, as you might imagine, I'm a bit protective of my children, too.
"Imagine being the last boy in the group. All the others have crossed. You are afraid and you know it's a bad idea, but it seems you have to do it now. You've just got to go. Your only life is on the other side of that road and you've got to get to it or you have no life."
This, like ties into yesterday's post on chicks and sex cults and shit.
What Althouse is describing is the Cult of Boys. When you're a boy-dude you gotta keep up with the other boy-dudes, or you're a pussy. I don't mean any disrespect to women by saying 'pussy', I just mean it in the way a boy-dude says it before he, like, gets older and gets the urge to put his dick in pussies. Because at that point he now means 'pussies' as chicks' lunch-boxes, he doesn't mean 'pussy' as meaning 'gay' like when he was younger. No offense to gay dudes, either, I should've used another word, like one that means 'fag' if you were still able to say 'fag', which you're not.
Anyway, being a boy is like being in a cult, you do stupid shit to make sure the other boy-dudes in the cult still like you and shit. Chicks do stupid stuff when they're in a cult, too, but their stupid shit usually involves, like, sucking cocks and getting banged in the ass, boy-dudes do shit that usually involves just getting hit in the balls and shit like that.
I mean, sometimes with boy-dudes it gets out-of-hand and goes all 'Lord of the Flies', but usually it just ends up with some boy-dude's arm getting broken and then everyone writes shit on his cast, which was cool.
When the boy-dude becomes a man-dude he still is part of the cult, it's just that pretty much all the straight guys are in it, so there's no fancy passage shit. Like, if there was a secret-passage phrase to this cult it would probably just be 'hold my beer'.
Adult chicks, though, they don't have as many friend chicks that they trust, because chicks talk shit about each other, like, a lot. And they never got empowered by, like, jumping off the roof and breaking your arm and having all your friends say it was pretty bad-ass, so if the chicks have daddy issues a sex cult looks pretty good to them.
I mean, boy-dudes can have daddy issues too, I guess, but for a boy-dude the daddy issue is if, after breaking your arm after jumping off the roof, did you, like, cry and shit like a pussy. Because if you didn't cry like a little bitch then you were now pretty much a man-dude, and that was cool, too.
But I guess the easiest difference to see between a dude cult and a chick cult is that, in the dude cult, the dude never says 'hold my beer' so that someone can fuck him in the ass or make him suck their cock.
I post my shit here.
ARM: "Drago seems a bit testy today."
I dont blame you for wanting to sprint away from your previous comment and change the subject.
I dont blame you at all.
As I said, you seem unusually humorless today. I was simply trying to find some causal basis, not sprinting.
Earnest is a destructive prick
Funny story: His mother said the same thing, but she had a smile on her face when she said it.
Story #1: School teachers go on strike and walk out demanding more pay.
Story #2: School teachers fail at basic responsibility that 12 year old babysitters can do.
Darwin says, "Don't walk on the highway, kids. It's a dumb way to die."
Sadly, another victim of the liberal Pied Pipers, leading children to their doom.
EDH said...
The compound negligence of Parkland authorities is truly astounding across the original shooting and the incident at this protest clearly intended to deflect from the district's earlier negligence.
It should be noted that the dead youngster attended Parkland Middle School in El Paso, Texas, not Parkland High School in Broward County, Florida. Similar names, but hundreds of miles apart. While the Broward County school district deserves a lot of opprobrium, in this case, it's not their fault.
Dickin'Bimbos@Home said...
You mean to tell me that some students would use the "day of protest" to secure an afternoon off from school?
Hell, it was 4/20! They were probably sneaking over to the park to spark up.
The slow die young. This kid was lagging behind.
But while I'm thinking about that I saw a sign in Cantebury England that said "Slow Children Crossing". I don't know whether that was an admonition to slow down, or a comment on the types of children who used that crosswalk.
ARM: " I was simply trying to find some causal basis, not sprinting"
Oh, in that case the truck might very well have been driven by an illegal alien felon who was released by the dems.
That happens alot these days.
Which represents a win-win for dems. The illegal remains in the country and possibly voting illegally for the left while whacking American citizens.
"Why aren't the protests held after school or on a weekend day?"
I'm sure this was meant rhetorically, 'cause i'm sure we all know how many kids would have showed up after school or on a weekend
Another gun deficit event today: 4 dead in Waffle House near Nashville. This is more great news for the NRA as the nation sees more evidence that we need to lower the price and ease of access to AR-15's.
Howard said...
Another gun deficit event today: 4 dead in Waffle House near Nashville. This is more great news for the NRA as the nation sees more evidence that we need to lower the price and ease of access to AR-15's.
You jest, but this is exactly what they are thinking. If there had only been more armed citizens none of this would have happened.
Thanks ARM, now I don't get my Soro's check
If it makes you feel any better i get two for my 'reasonable' act, which really slays them down at Soros HQ.
It wasn't just as easy for it to happen on any other day. These kids weren't skipping class. They skipped a protest. If the protest didn't happen they would have been in class.
Michael K said...
Blogger SayAahh said...
Picking on pickups because it’s the Times elite city schtick again.
If he had been hit by a Prius ...
If he had the Prius would have been totaled and the kid would be in class.
Prius's are actually heavier and more solid than other cars by a fair amount. There is a lot of extra weight for batteries and the extra motor components.
Althouse said:Imagine being the last boy in the group. All the others have crossed. You are afraid and you know it's a bad idea, but it seems you have to do it now. You've just got to go. Your only life is on the other side of that road and you've got to get to it or you have no life.
You're crazier than help. Eleven year old doesn't have surgical instincts that override peer pressure?
"hell", "survival". Stupid phone!
Blogger Ann Althouse ( channeling Carnac the Magnificent ) said...
Imagine being the last... in the group. All the others have crossed. You are afraid and you know it's a bad idea, but it seems you have to do it now. You've just got to go. Your only life is on the other side of that road and you've got to get to it or you have no life.
*opens envelope containing question*
Why did the chicken cross the road?
The kids do better on a percentage basis than the adults :
https://www.dallasnews.com/news/accidental-death/2018/04/23/ut-southwestern-professor-dies-trying-cross-35e-foot
And he, a biology professor!
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