More details on deadly Harlem shopping cart assault
I only get around to posting a portion of the stories of black and Hispanic violence that are published each day and that readers send me, partly because the repetition becomes sickening, and partly because I run out (or feel I’m running out) of things to say about it. But
here is the latest on a terrible story we’ve covered before, about the two boys who deliberately pushed a shopping cart off a fourth floor walkway in an East Harlem shopping mall and struck down Marion Hedges, a do-gooder who had just purchased candy for disadvantaged children and was walking through the mall with her son. (See
“Another white victim of minority mayhem,” and
“Mother of homicidal shopping cart hurler thinks her son, ’ a good kid,’ should go free.”) As we now learn from a video shown in court today, a third boy tried to talk the two perpetrators out of lifting the cart over the barrier:
But the third kid apparently gives up and the video shows him suddenly running away. Seconds later, Rosario and Hernandez hoist the cart up on to the walkway railing, where it teeters dramatically, its wheels caught on the railing.
Finally, one of the boys gives it a final shove, and it topples down.
Here’s the article:
Judge screens video of boys’ near fatal cart-toss prank
By LAURA ITALIANO
December 19, 2011, 3:27 p.m.
Shocking surveillance video was played in a Manhattan courtroom today showing two boys dropping a shopping cart four stories down onto a philanthropist mom at an East Harlem shopping mall.
In the silent, wide-angle color footage, taken at dusk on the night before Halloween, victim Marion Hedges is just a small, vague black figure walking across a cross-walk toward a parking ticket machine.
Suddenly, a steel and red plastic Target shopping cart plummets down into the frame and to the ground on top of Hedges, who appears to be thrown forward face down. The impact is hard enough to break a piece of the cart’s plastic off.
Hedges appears to lie motionless next to the cart until, about ten second later, she is surrounded by horrified pedestrians, and security guards begin running to the scene.
The footage was screened today by Manhattan Family Court Justice Susan Larabee, as part of a series of hearings she is holding in determining what sentence to give the two boys, Jiovanni Rosario and Raymond Hernandez, who were both just 12 years old at the time of the near-fatal prank.
The boys remain held in juvenile facilities following their guilty pleas in November. Larabee can give them as little as no jail with probation. Or she can decide to keep them in custody for long as their 18th birthdays.
Hedges — who was at the mall buying bulk Halloween candy for disadvantaged kids, her own 13-year-old son at her side — remains seriously brain damaged and in rehabilitation, officials have said.
The footage screened today — which is not being made public — shows from a separate angle how Rosario and Hernandez struggled with a third kid for control of the cart on a fourth-story walkway.
The third kid had been trying to talk Rosario and Hernandez out of throwing the cart, officials have said. But the third kid apparently gives up and the video shows him suddenly running away. Seconds later, Rosario and Hernandez hoist the cart up on to the walkway railing, where it teeters dramatically, its wheels caught on the railing.
Finally, one of the boys gives it a final shove, and it topples down.
Rosario’s eventual sentencing was the topic of today’s hearing, and the judge read aloud from a report prepared by the minimum security Bronx group home where he is in custody. He has shown a steady decline in behavior, the judge said, including “signs of aggression toward staff members.”
“His behavior toward other kids has improved a little, but there shouldn’t be any aggression, much less more aggression,” the judge said.
Rosario is back in court Jan. 10 for further sentencing proceedings. Hernandez is due before the judge tomorrow.
Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/judge_screens_video_of_boys_near_eDozdSMAxunMvuc7PB0i4M#ixzz1h1pipyGW
Posted by Lawrence Auster at December 19, 2011 06:56 PM | Send