Patterico's Pontifications

6/22/2010

It Was Nothing

Filed under: Crime — DRJ @ 7:23 pm



[Guest post by DRJ]

Some Houston children used the internet to help a 14-year-old give birth, and almost everyone claims they knew nothing.

— DRJ

24 Responses to “It Was Nothing”

  1. this place is dark

    happyfeet (19c1da)

  2. I’m feeling pretty dark about this story.

    DRJ (d43dcd)

  3. I can understand. I killed a little bird once when I was six and I can still see it there on the pavement and I try to be a better person but that little bird is gone forever.

    happyfeet (19c1da)

  4. I have raised two daughters so I can’t understand how this could happen. The parents were obviously not paying attention.

    PatAZ (9d1bb3)

  5. I cannot imagine … that is …

    JD (d55760)

  6. Is it really possible for parents not to notice that their 14 year old daughter is pregnant?

    “dark” is an understatement…

    kishnevi (bb4d18)

  7. DRJ, JD, my father has a theory about this. As a firefighter, he would see awful things—much as police officers do—quite often. They took a toll on him.

    My father told me that, nowadays, there were many more bodies than there were souls. And that explained some of the awful behavior he would see, and not always from “bad” families. It sounds silly, but then you read a story like this….

    My father was brought up LDS, but never talked about it with me (I was raised Methodist for some reason). I understand that there might be some aspects of that faith system in his theory.

    Incidentally, for my agnostic or atheistic friends, apologies for bringing up theological issues. All hail Dawkins (pbuh).

    Eric Blair (02a138)

  8. These days it seems like the school would have sent the kid off to a Planned Parenthood abortion mill. What’s wrong with those teachers!

    daleyrocks (1d0d98)

  9. The indifference of these kids shown toward the newborn is stunning, the callousness of the adult neighbor who put the baby in a trash bag is unbelievable. I really can’t wrap my mind around this.

    Parents who pay attention know when their daughter is pregnant – perhaps not in the first trimester, maybe even the second, but certainly by the time delivery is at hand. Everyone is too busy, or too tired, or too uninterested to pay attention to their children. We all lose.

    Dana (1e5ad4)

  10. “Instead, after the infant died, the group wrapped him in a plastic bag and called an adult neighbor, who told police he put the baby in a large trash bin at the apartment complex. The group also threw out the bed linens, clothing and the bed.”

    “The garbage had been taken to a landfill by the time investigators learned about the death. They said the landfill was too big to search.”

    Too darn much trouble to recover the body, eh? Might take officers off of soething important like speed trap duty, I guess.

    “The neighbor has not been charged, but the “possibility exists,” Abbey said.”

    The possibility exists???

    Remind me to stay out of Houston. Sounds like a total craphole.

    Dave Surls (d93895)

  11. Houston is fun they have three Dave & Buster’s plus also you can go to the Galleria!

    happyfeet (19c1da)

  12. “…the newborn never cried…” and was “…alive for some time…”
    Crap.
    I gotta get back to watching a “Jersey Shore” rerun…or something. Just wonderful

    Andrew (057d27)

  13. Thank You, happyfeet. Really, you brought a needed smile to the proceedings.

    6.Is it really possible for parents not to notice that their 14 year old daughter is pregnant?
    — When the parents (or single parent, hint hint) are uninvolved in their child’s life, and maybe the kid was a bit overweight to begin with, then yeah.

    Icy Texan (31a5d5)

  14. …more bodies than souls…
    Were truer words ever spoken?

    We have sowed the wind, and we shall reap the whirlwind.

    IHTFP!

    AD - RtR/OS! (2480c8)

  15. nk absence is
    very suspicious ’cause of
    previous heart bleed

    Icy Texan (31a5d5)

  16. Is it really possible for parents not to notice that their 14 year old daughter is pregnant?

    Is their last name Schultz?

    Blacque Jacques Shellacque (b7066f)

  17. What’s there to say about this? If Texas has a concealing death of infant statute, the neighbor should be charged. The children are better off in the custody of the juvenile authorities than the custody of their parents.

    nk (db4a41)

  18. Actually, the neighbor was doubly wrong for not calling the police and not calling for an ambulance for the girl.

    nk (db4a41)

  19. This is unutterably sad.

    Worse, it seems like some people would be more likely to condemn these parents for giving the kids a Happy Meal than for neglecting them like this.

    Gesundheit (cfa313)

  20. Crud. And I’ve got a week-long meeting in Houston in just a couple of weeks. Never been there – any ideas what I should see or avoid downtown in the evenings?

    Gesundheit (cfa313)

  21. Downtown Houston in the evening is deserted. Everyone leaves. Imagine New York City level skyscrapers, streets twice as wide, and no people. Maybe a couple of bars around Enron Field and the Montrose area is fairly nice. Overall I’d rate Houston as a depressing, boring craphole, with slovenly unfriendly people. Terrible city. Austin and San Antonio are far and away better.

    SPC Jack Klompus (ab3f97)

  22. Well… that settles that. Thanks for the warning. I’ll be sure to take the Kindle.

    Of course, it’s not just Houston. And it doesn’t take a hell-hole or a “sin city” anymore for these kinds of things to take place. Just as these kids Googled “how to deliver a baby at home”, they probably learned a lot of other things many years before they ought to, while their parents were leaving them to raise themselves.

    Gesundheit (cfa313)

  23. “Of course, it’s not just Houston.”

    Maybe you’re right. I’d like to think that in my town if the body of an infant was thrown in a trash dump, that the authorities would make some effort to recover the body and give it a decent burial, but America is pretty far gone. Maybe it’s like that everywhere. Babies that no one want aren’t human beings…just garbage to be disposed of.

    Toss a dead baby in a garbage bin and the authorities will CONSIDER charging you. Throw a candy wrapper out your car window in Texas, and you just bought yourself a $500 dollar fine.

    Dave Surls (9821fb)

  24. In downtown LA, the only people on the street at night are asleep.

    Mike K (82f374)


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