TX_master

Wait till that kid gets the bill for those bikes.

CliffordK

Which will be the cheapest part of the incident.

Lawyer bills.
Lifeflight Bills
Ambulance Bills
Any ICU bills?
Doctor bills
Hospital bills
PT / OT bills.
Lost time at work bills.
Pain and Suffering.

And then it depends on whether the victims, say 99% recover... or not. If any are paralyzed, then the bills could keep coming and coming. Home health care? Special wheelchairs, vehicles, housing, etc.

And, of course everything is multiplied.

6 people hit and damaged bikes.
4 people sent to hospital
2 people lifeflighted to hospital (and likely have the hardest recovery ahead).

chancelucky

Normally, you don't appoint a special prosecutor in a case like this unless there's some serious conflict of interest. It makes me
wonder if the kid wasn't arrested because the parents are connected in some way. One parent could be a police officer, a district
attorney, a city official etc.

JoeyBike

CliffordK

The parents apparently showed up to the accident site awfully quickly.

Was the kid given a drug and alcohol test on scene?

DangerousDanR

Hopefully Texas has some law that allows this kid to be charged with "First Degree Felony Dumb Ass." That is where maybe there is a suspended sentence and probation until he turns 25, and one mess-up (DUII, reckless driving, bar fight, littering, what ever) before then and this becomes felony assault with grave bodily harm.

And as others have pointed out, there is going to be a huge monetary cost. And maybe even someone in the EPA will see this and hit them for even more for the modified pickup...

DangerousDanR

Well, Paul, I am not from Texas or anywhere in the American South. But this kind of thing happens everywhere. And not just in the USA. And not just for the wealthy. I mean it helps to be rich and famous (OJ, Epstein, Cosby, etc ), but it is not a requirement.

I was formerly a firefighter medic in a very liberal county in a very liberal state. I have seen this kind of <expletive> far too many times. Driver drunker than a skunk, Whiskey bottles on the ground by the car, no charges. The Sherriff's Office and the DA felt sorry for him. He had multiple spinal fractures and he could only walk because (according to the surgeon who put Humpty Dumpty back together again) the fire crew was using a back-boarding technique that was developed for athletic trainers that stabilizes the spine while moving the patient. Yes, he was messed up. So charge him and give him a suspended sentence and allow the charges to go away if he stays sober for 5 years.

Or maybe fire in living room, empty can of accelerant, smell of accelerant, pour pattern on floor, only one person over two years of age present in house when fire started, no <expletive>ing charges!

The Deputies "felt sorry" for the person who started the fire!? She was poor, she was mentally ill, she had other problems... I really didn't give a <expletive> what they "felt." She poured accelerant on the living room floor in a house where small children were sleeping and lit it on fire because, hell yes, she was nuts and desperate and wanted someone to pay attention! Again, suspended sentence with charges going away with maybe five years of good behavior. Not nothing.

livedarklions

One who's going out and making public statements.

I-Like-To-Bike

Perhaps you missed the part where Paul posted that he imagined the entire scenario Redneck Sherriff and good buddy scenario and its applicability to this incident is just a fabrication. The only evidence presented was the poster's predilections for negative stereotypes. Just like the various posters who "wondered", "assumed" and otherwise are completely guessing about what actually occurred and the reasons for actions/inactions by the various law enforcement organizations involved.

Seems very similar to the technique used by some well known people who are fond of prefacing their own prejudices, fabrications and sometimes outright lies with statements like "People are saying..." or "It has been reported that..." or "some people believe..." or "I read some where... " and think that using such weaselly qualifiers make the stated prejudices, fabrications and sometimes outright lies any more true, cute, or humorous.

I-Like-To-Bike

I am not a lawyer.
Is that considered unethical among the legal profession?

livedarklions

No, they got themselves a lawyer who is known for handling high profile murder cases, and is already doing a bit of a media blitz on this case. It suggests to this lawyer that the parents backed up the money truck.

DangerousDanR

The kid's lawyer is a Rick Detoto who seems to be a guy who specializes in defending DWI cases ( Rick Detoto Law Firm). The "Special Prosecutor" Warren Diepraam is the one with the murder, including vehicular homicide.

According to the Houston Chronicle: "Warren Diepraam became the first Texas prosecutor to bring felony murder charges against a drunken driver involved in a fatal wreck. Mark Wayne Lomax, then 35, was sentenced to 55 years in prison in March, 2003, after being convicted of murder in a car wreck that led to the death of a 5-year-old girl. Lomax had a blood-alcohol content of 0.23 percent at the time of the crash in March 2002, when Diepraam was an assistant district attorney in Harris County."

Sounds to me like this kid needs a real good attorney, not just a hack who tries to help DWI cases slither out under the door.

livedarklions

Google better--the guy seems to specialize in kids who kill:

https://www.yahoo.com/now/texts-show...03t7GVWtybwTtS

curbtender

Have you had some discussions with him before? Just wondering where you got these theories of his intent.

I-Like-To-Bike

If I, or any other poster, posted an "imaginary" scenario with a fabricated relationship to the subject that included blatantly bigoted memes of stereotypical characters and description of racist or biased behavior that may (or may not) have been considered "acceptable" in the past among civilized people, but now is most definitely not, would you want to know my intent for such an inflammatory post before condemning such a post?

I-Like-To-Bike

Is anybody on this list opposed to an accused person being represented by competent legal counsel? Or that guilt or innocence should be determined by the facts of the case and those facts do not include guesswork based on Internet trolling, imagined scenarios and biases of people nursing grudges over previous unresolved incidents that do not involve the accused?

livedarklions

Stretch the definition of "blatantly bigoted" the tiniest bit more and it will snap.

Inflammatory? Seriously?!

DangerousDanR

LDL:
my mistake. Missed that. His business web page lists him as a specialist in DWI, drug related cases, sex crimes, domestic violence, and Federal Felonies. He seems to be the stereotype of a sleazy attorney... or an aggressive defender of the falsely accused.

The case you mentioned is still tied up in court after 5 years... Sounds like the kind of guy who will defend you until there is no more money.

I-Like-To-Bike

I suppose unrelated imaginary rhetoric and images that ARE blatantly bigoted, and inflammatory are not so, if the target is considered fair game for the PC crowd.

livedarklions

Well, now that you put ARE in all-caps, I'm now convinced you have a point.

Nope, not buying the false equivalency here, at worst this is just bad parody, not the kind of pernicious stereotyping you're trying to portray it as.

I-Like-To-Bike

Stereotype of a "Sleazy Attorney"? What would that be?

I wonder how our lawyer friends feel about responses that included gratuitous imaginary negative scenarios of "sleazy lawyer stereotypes" whenever mention is made of an attorney involved in a bicycling incident?

livedarklions

Anyone suggested that opposition here? All I suggested is that this has all of the hallmarks of a very expensive criminal defense, and if you want to deny that relatively rich people stand a better chance of walking in the American criminal justice system than poorer people, knock yourself out.

I'm disgusted by the facts of the case as they have been reported and, while I get that this guy is owed a presumption of innocence in a trial, I don't think I'm "imagining" this scenario, guessworking, or succumbing to trolling when I say if he really did do what is being reported, he needs to be punished severely. We're getting awfully jaded about people wielding these deadly weapons cavalierly for this to be considered merely a "prank gone wrong".
This really is in the "I was aiming the bullet right next to his head for laughs" category of recklessness.

venturi95

People are saying that bicyclists don't like being run over by pick up trucks

I-Like-To-Bike

"Some people say" quite different things; read the comments from "some people" who post idiotic negative crap about stereotypes on various news media and social media sites after just those kind of incidents.

I doubt anyone here would be mollified if "some people" posted those kind of offensive remarks here, knowing the remarks were offensive but thought they would be acceptable if prefaced with an apologies provisio in advance to anyone offended.

Maybe liking suggestions about lynching is considered acceptable here if the victim is not protected by the A&S Conventional Wisdom.

livedarklions

I don't bloody care because unlike you, I'm not trying to manufacture imaginary grievances to blather on about.