From
www.lukeford.net:
An 86-year old man, Russell Weller, drove into the outdoor farmers market in Santa Monica 7/16/03, killing at least nine people.
Talkshow host Dennis Prager, still shaking with fury: It's not right that this old man got to go home and sleep in his bed after killing so many people. I understand the people who wanted to beat him up after pulling him his car, even though that would've been wrong.
``Mr. Weller and his family want to express their deepest sympathies to the victims and their families of the tragic accident earlier today,'' Weller family attorney Jim Bianco said in a statement Wednesday. ``This was an unintentional and unfortunate accident.''
Why did his family have their lawyer make a statement regretting what happened? Why didn't anyone from the family face the music?
This wasn't an accident. An accident implies no one is at fault. The man didn't have a heart attack. This was negligence on the man's part. Negligence means not doing what normal prudent people would do.
Killings are a big deal, even if they are negligent rather than intentional. You shouldn't be able to kill nine people and then nothing happen to you. It's not right that people are killed and then society goes on as if nothing happened.
Prager linked his arguments into the Torah's teachings on non-intentional killings.
Dennis says he got into an argument with his wife Fran over this. She says Dennis is being harsh. We don't know enough.
DP: It's not about blaming this man. It's about taking killing of the innocent seriously. When innocent people are killed, do we do nothing to the person who killed them?
We should be careful about making it difficult for the elderly to drive. No car is the equivalent of house imprisonment.