4 Year Old Shot in "extraordinary act of road rage" and Lives

Road Rage. Something you don't hear much about anymore, but that happens everyday.  The victims are the saddest thing about it. Many of them, like this one, are young, innocent children...

IN CLEVELAND

The bullet exploded from the gun’s barrel, spiraling through cool night air toward a  gray SUV’s back passenger-side window. Carter “Quis” Hill was perched in his car seat on the other side of the glass, and as it shattered all around him, the round burrowed into his head, an inch above the right temple. From the boy’s hand slipped a bright-red plastic Spider-Man mask he’d gotten for his 4th birthday, nine days earlier.

A white Pontiac blew past, disappearing into the distance. Carter’s mother, Cecelia Hill, knew it was the same car that had been chasing them for three miles before someone inside fired eight shots at her 2004 Volkswagen in what police would call an extraordinary act of road rage.

Now she shoved her foot against the brake, squealing to a stop in the middle of Interstate 90. In the back seat, her son and daughter snapped forward against their taut seat belts. Carter’s 7-year-old sister, Dahalia Bohles, looked over at him. Shards of glass speckled her dark hair, but she didn’t notice them at first.

“Mommy, Quis got blood on his head,” the second-grader said, then she reached over and began to wipe it away.

“Stop!” Hill screamed, turning to check on her son, who, just before midnight on Aug. 6, had become one of the nearly two dozen children shot — intentionally, accidentally or randomly — every day in the United States. What follows almost all of those incidents are frantic efforts to save the lives of kids wounded in homes and schools, on street corners and playgrounds, at movie theaters and shopping centers.

For Carter, his mother feared it might already be too late.

The bullet had driven through her boy’s skull and emerged from a hole in the center of his forehead. Blood trickled down over his eyes, along his nose, into his mouth.

“Mommy, Mommy,” he’d been shouting minutes earlier, as Hill had fled from the shooter, but now her irrepressible 36-pound preschooler, with his plum cheeks, button nose and deeply curious brown eyes, was silent. He stared at her.

She faced forward and punched the gas, pushing the speedometer past 100 mph. Hill veered off an exit, stopped and leapt out of the car. She rushed to the other side and unbuckled her son, then wrapped him in both arms and collapsed to her knees.

“Help,” he heard her yell into the night, over and over, until a passing driver pulled up and called 911.

“Please don’t let my son die,” prayed Hill, a 27-year-old housekeeper at a medical clinic who had raised her kids mostly alone. She squeezed Carter against her chest.

Hill wished he would cry or scream or speak, even one word, because when Carter was happy, he chattered without pause about the most important things in his life: bananas, or “nanas,” which he could eat for any meal of the day; growing up to be the Hulk, because smashing things sounded like the best job; his sister, who was Carter’s favorite friend, even though she wouldn’t let him play with her Barbies; fidget spinners, mostly because when his mom called them “finny” spinners, it made him laugh so hard that he would hold his stomach and fall to the floor.

But there, bleeding into Hill’s blue work shirt while sirens drew closer, he still hadn’t said anything.

“Is my baby going to be all right?” she asked the paramedics in the ambulance as it sped to the hospital, but they didn’t answer.

(For the rest of the story, click here.)

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On Duty Mailman Arrested; Only Crime I See Is "Working While Black"

When this first happened I thought about writing something on it, but I changed my mind because I thought it wouldn't go anywhere. Now I find it's getting a bit more interesting, so here goes.

On March 17, 2016, 27 year old Glenn Grays was delivering mail on his usual route in Brooklyn, New York. 

He stopped his truck on a narrow street, (as mail persons often do!), and as he was coming down the steps of the truck a car with four white men in jeans and sweatshirts in it came racing around the corner., nearly sideswiping Grays and causing him to jump back up into his truck to avoid being struck. As most drivers will, (especially in cities like New York) Mr. Grays yelled at the car and its occupants. He then turned back to the task at hand, which was delivering a package to the building he'd parked in front of. As he got to the door of the building however he was suddenly surrounded by the four occupants of the vehicle, two of whom caught him by the arms to prevent him from entering the building.  One of the men began asking him for his identification. He told them it was on the side of the truck at which point they began to pull him over to the truck to get it. Mr. Grays told them that he had mail to deliver, and stood there stiffly (IMO) trying to figure out what was going on. That's when things got ugly. The two men began to manhandle Mr. Grays; as you can see in the video below, they look like small (offensive? defensive?) tackles hanging on to a big burly quarterback who is driving down the field dragging them along with him. LOL (I'm not good with football allegories!)

So now we've got them trying to bully him into doing something to justify the way they're treating him; sort of like trying to create a crime to justify the punishment already being meted out! You can see around 44 seconds into the video one of them is screaming in his face "Stop resisting!" to which he replies "I'm not resisting! Now, the one behind him is handcuffing him,  so how is he resisting? And guess what the initial charge was reported to be for this incident? You got it, resisting arrest! (Here's the article, read the 10th paragraph!)

So this article is the latest I found on the case. It appears that when an officer is caught on camera beating a poor kid, or even killing someone,  the force rushes to defend by saying the officer was just following his training, but do something stupid (as they did in this case) and the department is going to do something to make it appear that they are punishing the officers! The lieutenant who supervised the 'arrest' has been stripped of duty; they took his gun and badge, and put him on "modified desk duty". (I think that means he's answering phones or something like that.) But what about the rest of them? Especially the two that swung him around like he was a Maypole or something, all the while trying to bully him into lashing out so they could charge him with assault on a police officer? What happens to them?

IMO, this will probably be the last we hear about this case. No one was hurt, so the boys in blue are just going to wait until it's forgotten, and that lieutenant will be right back on the street. Let's just hope he's learned something while he's gone!

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