lol @ American law enforcement

[laklak]

Shit, man, you just took me home! OK, not.

Somebody ought to Google-map this thing. If it weren't bedtime and my g'friend weren't waiting, I'd do it. But reality being what it is...

I did, the directions are accurate. Well, I made the assumption they were walking down the east side of US 301 when I said they'd have to cross a 6 lane highway. My nephew owns a rental house about 4 blocks from where they were killed and our house is a couple of miles away (but on the right side of the tracks). The bar where they were photographed, Smokin Joes, is our local (well, one of them) when we're home, and the other bar, the Gator, is where we go to listen to blues and shoot pool. I've eaten at that IHOP several times late at night. If they'd left an hour earlier they could have eaten at Mattison's, which is right across the street from the Gator and serves a great late night menu but they stop seating at 2 AM. I'll admit my description of the neighborhood was a slight exaggeration, the gangbangers aren't on every street corner, they're on probably 3 out of 4. The main drag through Newtown is Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd, as a black friend of ours said, ain't nothing good happens on any street named Martin Luther King. These guys were either a) very very drunk or b) very very stupid or c) both or d) looking for something other than a a short stack and eggs. I'll probably be in Smokin Joes on Sunday night, I'll report what the yokels think of the whole mess.

@.Morticia - yeah, it was a 16 year old kid who ws out on bail for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. He'd fired a gun at a rival gangmember's car but the rival didn't turn up at the hearing so they cut him loose. Here he is, likely looking lad, isn't he?



Edit I'm reliably informed that Mattison's stops seating at 1 AM and closes at 2. I stand corrected. SWMBO is right as usual. Sorry - always. I meant to say "right as always".

[.Morticia.]

Shit, man, you just took me home! OK, not.

Somebody ought to Google-map this thing. If it weren't bedtime and my g'friend weren't waiting, I'd do it. But reality being what it is...

I did, the directions are accurate. Well, I made the assumption they were walking down the east side of US 301 when I said they'd have to cross a 6 lane highway. My nephew owns a rental house about 4 blocks from where they were killed and our house is a couple of miles away (but on the right side of the tracks). The bar where they were photographed, Smokin Joes, is our local (well, one of them) when we're home, and the other bar, the Gator, is where we go to listen to blues and shoot pool. I've eaten at that IHOP several times late at night. If they'd left an hour earlier they could have eaten at Mattison's, which is right across the street from the Gator and serves a great late night menu but they stop seating at 2 AM. I'll admit my description of the neighborhood was a slight exaggeration, the gangbangers aren't on every street corner, they're on probably 3 out of 4. The main drag through Newtown is Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd, as a black friend of ours said, ain't nothing good happens on any street named Martin Luther King. These guys were either a) very very drunk or b) very very stupid or c) both or d) looking for something other than a a short stack and eggs. I'll probably be in Smokin Joes on Sunday night, I'll report what the yokels think of the whole mess.

@.Morticia - yeah, it was a 16 year old kid who ws out on bail for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. He'd fired a gun at a rival gangmember's car but the rival didn't turn up at the hearing so they cut him loose. Here he is, likely looking lad, isn't he?

And it's getting tetchy out there the past year.

Where I once felt safe in most of downtown detroit I now feel a bit nervous. Lots of new faces here , displaced people from the suburbs, and we have lost that neighbourhood feeling where everyone knew us white folk that lived here. Now I'm just another white person and no longer a sister.

And Irish has gone, always felt safe with him , He carries. I can't in Michigan, I'm a foreigner.

[PsychoSerenity]

Here's the thing - if they were really looking for the IHOP and got lost, they would have had to literally walk past a brightly lit restaurant that's full of cars at 3 AM, with a huge sign and at a major intersection. Then walk almost a mile past it, made a left across a 6 lane highway into an obvious ghetto area, walk several more blocks through a rapidly deteriorating urban area, make another left turn down a much smaller two lane residential street, then make yet another left turn into a cul-de-sac clearly marked with a "No Outlet" or "Dead End" sign. The area they went through is an absolute shithole. There are literally burned out cars and piles of garbage in the streets, houses are falling down, the streets are full of potholes, even at 3 Am gangs of black "youths" are hanging on street corners, and if all that wasn't enough, damn near every house has a pimped out 84 Cadillac on 30 inch rims parked out front.

Unless they went the route shown in the article, in which case it's an easy mistake to make.

[MrJonno]

Apparently when I went to Atlanta I was walking in places where I shouldnt be (then again perhaps there is nowhere you should go walking in Atlanta). My dad was pulled over in LA for the crime of err walking, apparently its just not something people do there. I really can't think of anywhere in the UK were two men on foot is too dangerous to go even at night, for a single woman its different but even then the fear factor is a lot greater than the risk. I suppose there are different risks of random punch ups in city centres but thats more unpleasant than fatal

Its still a possibility there were just dumb tourists,

[hadespussercats]

Here's what confuses me-- are we Americans supposed to think we have the only country where drunk tourists who wander around lost end up being the victims of violent crime?

IMHO, that's, well, retarded.

[.Morticia.]

Here's what confuses me-- are we Americans supposed to think we have the only country where drunk tourists who wander around lost end up being the victims of violent crime?

IMHO, that's, well, retarded.

Barcelona comes to mind.

That's one nasty place.

[Santa_Claus]

I'm burning an American flag in protest at the American Cops executing these 2 Nuns.

But I'm cool with them frying da Nigga for it.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Here's the thing - if they were really looking for the IHOP and got lost, they would have had to literally walk past a brightly lit restaurant that's full of cars at 3 AM, with a huge sign and at a major intersection. Then walk almost a mile past it, made a left across a 6 lane highway into an obvious ghetto area, walk several more blocks through a rapidly deteriorating urban area, make another left turn down a much smaller two lane residential street, then make yet another left turn into a cul-de-sac clearly marked with a "No Outlet" or "Dead End" sign. The area they went through is an absolute shithole. There are literally burned out cars and piles of garbage in the streets, houses are falling down, the streets are full of potholes, even at 3 Am gangs of black "youths" are hanging on street corners, and if all that wasn't enough, damn near every house has a pimped out 84 Cadillac on 30 inch rims parked out front.

But they weren't looking for crack. Nope. Now way.

[laklak]

Unless they went the route shown in the article, in which case it's an easy mistake to make.

There's something wrong with that route, it looks like they're taking Osprey Avenue north. If you go east from The Gator as shown, the next intersection is Osprey, where they made their turn to the north. But Osprey doesn't go all the way through to 12th street where they would turn to get to the IHOP, it ends at a T-junction at 10th 2 blocks earlier (numbers increase as you head out of downtown). It must be Osprey, because it is two blocks west of 301, which is the large north-south route where the IHOP is. You can't see where Osprey hits the T-junction because their route is superimposed on it. You can see it on Mapquest or Google, but I can't figure out how to copy a segment of the map.

If you look at the road almost directly under the text "turning to the IHOP", that's 10th street (I'm pretty sure). They would have to turn either west or east at that point, directly north is an industrial area with no streets. If they turned east they'd hit 301 in two blocks and would have seen the IHOP, you couldn't miss it two blocks away. However, if they turned WEST the next north-south road is Orange Avenue, and it does go through. If they did that then I can see how they could make that mistake, They'd have been pretty far from their destination, drunk, and transposing "12" into "21" is easy to do.

[.Morticia.]

when I first went to florida as a foreign tourist I found the road signs very confusing and got lost frequently

especially at major intersections

[Gallstones]

And this is the cops' fault how? Drunks get in trouble the world over.

Except they only get riddled with bullets by blacks with special needs in the great US of A.

Son, you ever been to Lebanon, say in the '70s? Or Somalia when the warlords ruled the streets? The only reason you don't have chavs doing battle with machine guns there is the guns laws, which acknowledge that Brits shouldn't have guns because they'd kill each other with them.

yes. we would. Like all the other humans that kill eachother with them!! That's why we wisely decided not to have them. It's called wisdom and self awareness. Try it!!

I have three rifles.
Many of the people I know have many rifles and some handguns.
My rifles never speak to me and try to convince me to take them out and shoot someone.

No wisdom or self awareness needed. Just common sense.
Perhaps Brits lack common sense?

[laklak]

Nope, I'm wrong. I did a bit more checking and the route the paper is showing actually is Orange Avenue, I was wrong on the cross street at Gator's bar. So they could pretty easily have made that mistake. Wandering up Orange Avenue, which is mostly residential and not particularly well lit when you get out of downtown, and drunk on top of it, they could easily have missed "12th" and taken "21st" instead. I transpose numbers all the time. Right into the worst shithole neighborhood in the whole town, where some punk was waiting with a gun (WTF was he doing out there strapped at 3 AM anyway?). Poor sods, talk about bad luck, eh? They must have pissed off some god or another.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

The IHOP was four blocks from them. If they'd been looking around, they'd have seen it, I'm thinking.

[laklak]

Wasn't very far. Looks like they realized they were lost and were trying to cut through the residential streets. The original reports said they were in a cul-de-sac, but it actually isn't one. The "A" is Gator's where they started, blue is where they wanted to be, red is where they ended up. Red route is what they presumably took, blue route is the turn they missed.

[PsychoSerenity]

Nope, I'm wrong. I did a bit more checking and the route the paper is showing actually is Orange Avenue, I was wrong on the cross street at Gator's bar. So they could pretty easily have made that mistake. Wandering up Orange Avenue, which is mostly residential and not particularly well lit when you get out of downtown, and drunk on top of it, they could easily have missed "12th" and taken "21st" instead. I transpose numbers all the time. Right into the worst shithole neighborhood in the whole town, where some punk was waiting with a gun (WTF was he doing out there strapped at 3 AM anyway?). Poor sods, talk about bad luck, eh? They must have pissed off some god or another.

Yeah I just looked again and was about to correct you. One long road all the way up. To someone who doesn't know the area it looks the same at every junction, no obvious signs they had gone too far. Not far to far either, just over a quarter mile, which is nothing to people who walk a lot. Looks like a tragic mistake on their part.
As for why that kid shot them, that's another question altogether.