Girl killed while looking for help after surviving dad's drunk-driving crash

[SummerMadness]

Girl killed while looking for help after surviving dad's drunk-driving crash, police say

Police say a 7-year-old girl was struck and killed as she tried to get help after her father drunkenly crashed into an abandoned vehicle on an interstate in suburban Detroit. State police spokesman Lt. Mike Shaw says DeSandra Thomas sent text messages to police about her father's crash before she was struck on I-94 near Detroit Metropolitan Airport in Romulus early Sunday. She died instantly.

Shaw says a driver called state police to say she might have hit a pedestrian.

 

[Karin12414]

Girl killed while looking for help after surviving dad's drunk-driving crash, police say

Oh my goodness.. That is so heartbreaking... I don't know what else to say... but praying for the family and for the guilt that father is about to endure.... That poor little angel...

 

[Dave-W]

I don't understand why the driver is not being charged. Michigan still charges involuntary manslaughter.

 

[Goonie]

I don't understand why the driver is not being charged. Michigan still charges involuntary manslaughter.

Not charged, yet..... the article does not say he will not be charged.

 

[miamited]

I don't understand why the driver is not being charged. Michigan still charges involuntary manslaughter.

Hi dave,

Actually, I think the person most culpable for the girl's death is her father. As a parent, you must know that you can't let a 7yo walk around loose on an interstate highway at night. They aren't nearly able to comprehend or understand the danger that surrounds them. They don't understand that cars are traveling at a rate of speed where they cannot stop. So, whether or not the driver may carry some responsibility is going to depend on how much warning they had that a 7yo child was standing in front of their car.

I know that I can go down to Interstate 85 that runs near my town and walk out in front of vehicles in a manner that would surely cause my death, even if the driver is a born again believer who follows all the Scriptures and drives obeying all traffic laws. Would that be the driver's fault?

If anyone goes to jail for this, it should be the child's father and the charge would be reckless endangerment. Along with driving under the influence. Drunks on the roadways kill people, it's a fairly well proven fact. This death just happens to be as a secondary result of the father's drunk driving.

God bless,
In Christ, ted

 

[Dave-W]

If anyone goes to jail for this, it should be the child's father and the charge would be reckless endangerment. Along with driving under the influence. Drunks on the roadways kill people, it's a fairly well proven fact. This death just happens to be as a secondary result of the father's drunk driving.

I agree the dad should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. I have been on both I 94 and I 96 in and around Detroit. (And Chicago in I 94) and it is surely bad.

But killing someone under ANY condition should also be prosecuted.

 

[miamited]

I agree the dad should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. I have been on both I 94 and I 96 in and around Detroit. (And Chicago in I 94) and it is surely bad.

But killing someone under ANY condition should also be prosecuted.

Hi dave,

I agree that killing should be prosecuted under most circumstances, but I'd want the person most responsible for the death to be the one prosecuted. The one responsible for putting that little girl loose walking around on a deadly interstate highway is the father. If you put someone into a basket of poisonous vipers, do we prosecute the vipers for the resultant death or the one who put the person in with the vipers? The vipers just do what vipers do, just as cars whizzing by on an interstate highway are going to do what cars whizzing by on an interstate highway do.

Pray that God never puts you in a circumstance where you'll find out that it's not always possible to stop when someone walks in front of your car. When you have to label yourself a murderer for something that was pretty much beyond your control.

BTW, even the Scriptures allow for forgiveness in causing someone's death if it was accidental.

God bless,
In Christ, ted

 

[Dave-W]

Pray that God never puts you in a circumstance where you'll find out that it's not always possible to stop when someone walks in front of your car. When you have to label yourself a murderer for something that was pretty much beyond your control.

I have thought about that from time to time.

I think I would have to get my things in order and then off myself if that ever happened. We do not have "cities of refuge" like ancient Israel had for the accidental manslayer to flee to.

 

[miamited]

I have thought about that from time to time.

I think I would have to get my things in order and then off myself if that ever happened. We do not have "cities of refuge" like ancient Israel had for the accidental manslayer to flee to.

Hi dave,

So now, maybe you have some empathy for the poor driver who couldn't stop in time. Likely didn't even know what it was until it was too late to do anything about it, if they had any advance warning at all. It's 4 in the morning and it's dark out and suddenly this 7yo child walks in front of your car 200' in front of you. What do you do? What can you do? Even braking tests show that it takes about a 200' to stop your vehicle at 65. That's actually brake applied time. To that you must add recognition and response time. That's generally an additional second which would add another 20-30' to the stopping distance, depending on the individual's response time. So, the driver involved would have had to have seen and recognized the danger about 225' before reaching the girl. That's 2.3 football fields!

So, o dark thirty in the morning that driver's got to be searching beyond the reach of their headlights. The NHTSA says that standard low beam headlights will illuminate the roadway approximately 160' in front of your vehicle. So, let's figure out the equation. At best, the driver would have been about 200' from the girl when she first saw and recognized that a little 7yo girl had just wandered out on the highway at o dark thirty in the morning where one would surely not expect to see such a thing. Then in that 200' they've got to bring their vehicle to a stop before hitting the girl. That's likely to be a feat that no human can accomplish.

But, why was this 7yo girl out walking in the travel lanes of an interstate highway at o dark thirty in the morning? It isn't the driver's fault! The little 7yo girl doesn't comprehend that it's going to take a vehicle 2-3 hundred feet to stop. She just thinks she can walk out on the roadway and put up her hands and some nice person's going to stop and help her poor drunk dad out. It isn't the driver's fault!

God bless,
In Christ, ted

edit: corrected some stopping distance measurement.

 

[Goonie]

I agree the dad should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. I have been on both I 94 and I 96 in and around Detroit. (And Chicago in I 94) and it is surely bad.

But killing someone under ANY condition should also be prosecuted.

Depends do you prosecute for road accidents? Any killing must be investigated, was the driver drunk, reckless? It’s 4am and a driver hits something on the road, what is the lighting like, was it a deer? They did report the incident to the police, It is the father who is in serious legal trouble.

 

[Nithavela]

I don't understand why the driver is not being charged. Michigan still charges involuntary manslaughter.

If evidence shows that the driver had no chance in avoiding the accident, why should he be charged? Just to waste taxpayer money?

Involuntary manslaughter is defined as being caused by recklessness or negligence. I doubt they can prove either if the driver wasn't driving under the influence.

 

[Dave-W]

Involuntary manslaughter is defined as being caused by recklessness or negligence. I doubt they can prove either if the driver wasn't driving under the influence.

I do not believe that is how Michigan defines it.

Every state defines it their own way.

 

[Nithavela]

I do not believe that is how Michigan defines it.

https://statelaws.findlaw.com/michigan-law/michigan-involuntary-manslaughter-law.html

 

[Dave-W]

https://statelaws.findlaw.com/michigan-law/michigan-involuntary-manslaughter-law.html

Then they have changed the law since we moved from there.

 

[Nithavela]

Then they have changed the law since we moved from there.

That law is from 1920.

https://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3774&context=jclc

 

[miamited]

Hi all,

True story! I was driving from my home in SC to Florida for a vacation with the family all in the vehicle. Driving on state rd 15 just coming in to Race Pond Ga. Probably about 2-3 in the morning. Everyone in the car sober and straight, although the kids were asleep. I was doing about 65-70 on a two lane rural road with probably 30' of grassy area between the road and the treeline. Just minding my own business when suddenly I see this bear coming straight on to the roadway and I didn't have time to do anything but swerve slightly. I wound up punching the bear in the nose and he turned tail and ran back into the woods. If the bear had made it another foot or two onto the roadway, I'd have probably had to get a hotel room for the night and rent a care to continue my journey the next day.

About 10 miles down the road we came to one of those big canopied gas stations and I pulled in to check out my car. As I'm checking it out an 18 wheel trucker pulls up along side and asks, "Was that a bear you hit back there?" I replied that it did appear to be and he said that he had seen it scamper off into the woods and that it didn't seem to be particularly injured. I told him that it looked like I just grazed his nose.

The point being that a 7yo girl, as far as understanding the dangers of a highway, wouldn't be a lot different than that bear. She may have not even understood that the lights she saw 300' down the road would be on her within 5 seconds and stepped out thinking the immediate area was safe. I can't imagine any responsible parent allowing their child to walk about on an interstate highway at anytime of day, but most certainly not in the dark. So, their is some negligence involved here, but it isn't the driver that struck the girl. They were likely driving reasonably responsibly and did immediately notify the highway patrol that there had been a possible accident. We don't even know that this girl didn't just run right out into the path of that vehicle thinking that it was just somebody that she could get to help. She may well have been standing in front of the wrecked vehicle and saw this car coming and thinking nothing of the physics of what it takes to stop a car, just ran on the roadway to get help for her father.

Now, something that no one has mentioned is where the father was in all of this. Was he injured to the point that he didn't know his little girl was getting out of the car? Or, was he so inebriated that it didn't register that his little girl was getting out of the car and the dangers that would open her up to? He had, after all, just run into a stalled vehicle which I must presume was off to the side of the road. One has to be pretty loaded to run into a vehicle in that manner. It obviously wasn't so bad of an accident that the little girl was incapacitated. So, where was the father during all of this going on? How sad it would be that his little daughter is laying dead on the highway and the police opened his door and had to wake him to tell him that she was dead.

Of course, all of that is conjecture on my part, but if we're going to assign blame wouldn't it be good to have all the facts?

God bless,
In Christ, ted

 

[miamited]

Then they have changed the law since we moved from there.

Hi dave,

Well, what was the law when you lived there? Maybe a quick google search would verify that.

God bless,
In Christ, ted

 

[miamited]

That law is from 1920.

https://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3774&context=jclc

Hi nithavela,

Dave's a lot older than he looks. When he speaks of moving 'from there' he probably means being carried as sperm in his father's sack. Ok, ok don't shoot me! LOL!

God bless,
In Christ, ted

 

[Dave-W]

Hi dave,

Well, what was the law when you lived there? Maybe a quick google search would verify that.

God bless,
In Christ, ted

As it was explained in drivers Ed, if you are behind the wheel and someone dies when you are driving, you will spend years behind bars, even if it was unavoidable.

There was a case (non traffic) where a person was killed by an unseen stone kicked up by a lawnmower blade, as his neighbor was mowing the lawn. He did 5 years.

 

[Nithavela]

As it was explained in drivers Ed, if you are behind the wheel and someone dies when you are driving, you will spend years behind bars, even if it was unavoidable.

There was a case (non traffic) where a person was killed by an unseen stone kicked up by a lawnmower blade, as his neighbor was mowing the lawn. He did 5 years.

Well, someone has to stamp those license plates and clean those hospital sheets.

But that was propably before the war on drugs kicked in.