What happened to a Good Samaritan who failed to heed John Derbyshire’s “racist” warning

Of all the counsels John Derbyshire gave in his justly admired and unjustly reviled article, “The Talk: Nonblack Version,” the one that was most reviled was:

(10h) Do not act the Good Samaritan to blacks in apparent distress, e.g., on the highway.

Of course Derbyshire had prefaced that and other points with this:

(10) Thus, while always attentive to the particular qualities of individuals, on the many occasions where you have nothing to guide you but knowledge of those mean differences, use statistical common sense.

So he was not saying never to help blacks in apparent distress, but he was certainly indicating that caution should be employed.

But many people, including conservatives (e.g., Andrew McCarthy), thought that any notion of not helping blacks in apparent distress on a highway or elsewhere, because they are black, was cruel, un-Christian, un-human, and that Derbyshire deserved to dismissed from National Review over it.

Here, reported by NBC Philadelphia, is what happened this past Saturday to a woman who, if she had read “The Talk” and the surrounding controversy, would have agreed with Derbyshire’s kind, humane, non-racist, Christian critics and rejected his warning as unworthy of a decent person.

Robbers Fake Accident, Attack Woman: Cops
Police say a man attacked a 65-year-old woman with a knife and ripped the earrings from her body.

Police are investigating the robbery and attack of a woman who they say tried to help a person who she believed to be the victim of a car accident.

It happened Saturday at 9:45 p.m. in Galloway Township. Police say a 65-year-old woman was driving home on Old Port Republic Road when two vehicles began to follow her. The woman told police one of the vehicles passed her and appeared to race up the road in front of her. Seconds later she found what appeared to be the same vehicle sideways across the road in front of her car, forcing her to stop, according to investigators.

The woman claims she saw a person “slumped” over the wheel. Police say she rolled her window down to ask if the person needed help. Suddenly, police say, the driver of the second vehicle that remained behind her approached her with a stocking covering his face and a knife in his hand. The suspect allegedly demanded money and jewelry. Police say the suspect cut the woman on her arm and ripped her earrings from her body. Both vehicles then fled South on Old Port Republic Road back towards US Route 9.

Police have not released a description of the suspects or vehicles that they used. If you have any information on this incident, please call the Galloway Township Police Department at 609-652-3705.

James P., who sent the article, writes:

Police have not released a description of the suspects or vehicles that they used.”—gee, why do you think that is?

LA writes:

In the interests of disclosure, I must confess that when I read “The Talk,” and came to point (10h), I instantly thought: “Of course.”

Take me all in all: that’s what I thought and what I still think.

- end of initial entry -

Larry T. writes:

A couple days ago a childhood friend came out here to California for a visit from New Mexico. I was telling him about some of the incidents being chronicled at VFR. He then reminded me of an incident that occurred to him about fifteen years ago, when he was taking care of his elderly parents and temporarily living in Los Angeles.

He was driving on a freeway late at night, and a vehicle bumped his car from behind. Being a good citizen he pulled over to the side of the road and stopped and got out of his car and stood by its rear. The other car stopped behind his, and a black female and a black male approached him. The female walked directly up to him and immediately stuck a knife into his abdomen. Quickly they took his wallet and his car keys and departed, leaving him standing there in the dark without a cell phone, bleeding.

He said he’d never forget the hard dark eyes of the woman, as she looked into his eyes and stabbed him.

LA replies:

Since the other car bumped his from behind, I don’t understand why your friend felt he needed to stop.

Like the woman in the Philadelphia incident, who should have realized that she was obviously the target of a set-up, your friend went beyond ordinary Good Samaritan behavior.

Yet, at the same time, to listen to Derbyshire’s critics, there is no boundary to Good Samaritan behavior. They don’t condemn him over the fine points of his advice; they say the very idea of advising people to be cautious toward blacks is immoral.

Larry T. replies to LA:

You wrote:

Since the other car bumped his from behind, I don’t understand why your friend felt he needed to stop.

My reply:

My friend pulled over and stopped in order to exchange insurance information, so that he didn’t have to pay for his car’s repairs. Plus, it was night and he wasn’t able to see the occupants of the other vehicle.

You wrote:

Like the woman in the Philadelphia incident, who should have realized that she was obviously the target of a set-up, your friend went beyond ordinary Good Samaritan behavior.

My reply:

Agreed. However, I believe that it is required by law to stop and exchange insurance information after an accident in California. I sometimes see people doing this in ridiculously dangerous traffic situations on freeways. I believe my friend would have had to break the law to avoid this incident. He was a straight-laced fellow and it probably never occurred to him not to stop. Eloi-ism?

However, he’s not quite so straight-laced now! He learned his lesson the hard way.

Laws be damned!

John Dempsey writes:

About thirty years ago a friend and I were fishing off the old Dumbarton Bridge on San Francisco Bay, or a half-mile portion of what remained of the old draw bridge. When we were leaving for the night around 2:00am, I spotted a person lying in the middle of the road as we approached him in our vehicle. I began to slow down. Immediately, my friend told me “don’t stop”. Afraid that I might not be able to avoid hitting the person, I began to slow down anyway. I then spotted three black men come up from the side of the bridge and onto the road from where they had presumably been hiding. As I sped up the person in the middle of the road did a barrel roll out of my path.

My friend had lived in the area for a number of years and knew well Derbyshire’s point (10h). Myself, a young man from small town USA, might well have ended up bloodied and beaten, or worse, were it not for his savvy. The lesson of that evening went unlearned as I remained a clueless liberal for almost another twenty years. It required 9/11 to awaken me to reality.

LA replies:

Hah. And I thought you were one of the original conservatives.

Professor Woland writes:

What Larry T. just described is extremely common in South Africa. In fact, locals do not even stop at stop signs or lights, particularly at night. If you do stop, people will jump out of the shadows and shove a gun in your face. A friend of mine spent a month in Johannesburg. While driving around on his first or second day there he did what any courteous driver would do and came to a complete stop at a red light. His passenger, an Afrikaner, immediately screamed at him not to stop and then gave him a stern lecture. After the shock wore off he realized just how stupid he was.

The next day he learned what a safe room is.

Andrew W. writes:

There’s a 1991 murder case in North Carolina that’s been getting a good deal of media attention in the past few days because a (black) judge has commuted the (black) killer’s death sentence to life in prison based on the judge’s claim that the death penalty was given as a result of racial discrimination.

The victim in the case was a white high school senior named Erik Tornblom. On July 21, 1991, on his way home from the restaurant where he worked, the two killers, who had planned the crime in advance, asked him for a ride, and he consented. Once in the car they pulled a shotgun on the victim and ordered him to drive to a field where one of the blacks shot him in the face.

Here is the account from Murderpedia:

On the morning of July 21, 1991, seventeen-year-old Erik Tornblom did not return home from Chi Chi’s restaurant, where he was employed. Erik was a rising senior at Douglas Byrd High School and worked at Chi Chi’s from approximately 6:00 pm until midnight.

His body was discovered later that day, having been shot in the face with a shotgun. A witness testified at trial that he observed a black male drive Erik’s car to the location where it was later recovered, get out of the vehicle and wipe off the steering wheel and door handle.

The black male was identified as Roderick Williams and was thereafter arrested and named Marcus Robinson as the person involved with him in the murder of Erik Tornblom.

Robinson was thereafter taken into custody and properly advised of his Miranda rights, which he waived. After initially denying any involvement in the murder, Robinson admitted that he and Williams had watched Erik Tornblom enter a store.

While Tornblom was in the store, Robinson pulled out a sawed-off shotgun, which had been concealed in his clothes, and gave it to Williams. As Erik left the store, Robinson and Williams asked for a ride.

As soon as they entered the car, Williams put the gun to the back of Erik Tornblom’s neck and forced him to drive to a location that Robinson and Williams ordered.

In his confession, Robinson stated that “the boy kept begging and pleading for us not to hurt him, because he didn’t have any money.” After ordering Tornblom out of the car, he was made to lie down. According to Robinson, Williams then shot Tornblom in the face with the shotgun.

Robinson then took Tornblom’s wallet and split the money with Williams. Robinson led police to where he had hidden the shotgun and also showed them where the spent shotgun shell was ejected. Both the gun and the spent shell were recovered by the police. Other evidence tended to show, two days prior to the murder, that Robinson told Williams’ aunt that “he was going to burn him a whitey”.

On the morning of the murder, Robinson obtained the shotgun from a friend, who heard Robinson tell Williams that he wanted to rob a QuikStop or “do” a white boy. After the murder, Robinson told a friend that he had robbed a guy the night before and shot him in the head.

At the time of these events, Robinson had just turned eighteen years old and only eleven days earlier had been released from prison.

Robinson and Williams were indicted by a North Carolina jury on August 5, 1991, and charged with one count of first-degree murder, one count of first-degree kidnapping, one count of robbery with a dangerous weapon, once count of possession of a weapon of mass destruction, one count of felonious larceny, and one count of possession of a stolen vehicle.

Robinson’s trial began on July 13, 1994. On the second day of trial, Robinson pleaded guilty to all of the offenses except for the first degree murder charge. That charge was tried to the jury on two different theories: felony murder and murder with malice, deliberation, and premeditation (premeditated murder).

The jury convicted Robinson, by special verdict, of first-degree murder under each theory. Specifically, the jury found as aggravating circumstances that the murder was committed while Robinson was robbing Tornblom and that the murder was “especially heinous, atrocious or cruel.”

The jury found mitigating circumstances in Robinson’s lack of criminal history, age, history of childhood abuse, childhood head injury, and behavioral or mental problems. The jury unanimously found that the mitigating circumstances were insufficient to outweigh the aggravating circumstances and that the aggravating circumstances were sufficiently substantial to warrant the death penalty.

A reader writes:

A Czech friend told me that Gypsies will place a baby on the road, then attack any vehicle that stops.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at April 23, 2012 01:46 PM | Send