Public safety 'This universe can end,' said driver in video posted on day he mowed down family on b

[MosheFeingold]

Source: Tampa Bay Tribune

By: Josh Fiallo

Published: June 25, 2018
Updated: June 25, 2018 at 03:19 PM

TAMPA — Pedro Aguerreberry pedaled along New Tampa Boulevard on Sunday pulling his son Bennett in a trailer as his other son Lucas rode alongside them. As father and sons headed east on a paved bike path, a former star track and field athlete named Mikese Morse drove west in a Dodge sedan, Tampa police say. Morse didn’t know the family, but he decided at that moment to make the trio his target, police allege. Morse, 30, spun the Dodge around, crossed a lane of traffic, tore across a grassy easement and then sped up just before slamming into the father and two sons, according to police.

All three were taken to local hospitals. Pedro Aguerreberry, 42, was pronounced dead a short time later. Bennett, 8, was treated for a broken leg, and Lucas, 3, had minor injuries. Morse fled the scene of the mid-day Sunday collision and was arrested later on charges including premeditated first-degree murder and leaving the scene of a crash with death. He was held without bail at the Hillsborough County Jail.

Tampa Police Chief Brian Dugan said an account from a witness who saw Morse make the U-turn indicates that he intentionally mowed them down. But investigators were still working to answer a critical question: Why? "What type of person would purposely run over a family that was just bicycling down a bike path?" Dugan said at a Monday news conference. He said Morse seemed "disturbed" after he was detained, admitted to the attack but didn’t offer "a complete explanation" for his motive. Videos and other posts on Morse’s Instagram page — some of them apparently posted near the time of the crash and later that day — paint a portrait of a man unraveling, fixated on what he claimed to be the devil’s power over him. "I still will kill every single one of y’all on that motherf-----’s head right now," Morse said in a video posted Sunday. He appears to be walking along the edge of a wooded area while recording with his phone.

(More at link)

Read more: http://www.tampabay.com/news/publicsafety/crime/Driver-deliberately-struck-family-riding-on-New-Tampa-bike-path-killing-father-police-say_169452923

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This appears to be a random attack by a man with known spiraling mental problems.

This time he chose a Dodge Avenger as his weapon, instead of a gun, but the end effect is the same.

In today's political climate there are very few areas of agreement, but this is the time we could get Republicans to spend more money on public mental health services, more money to make mental institutions decent places (as much as they can be), and more reasonable laws so dangerous people can be detained for their own and others safety.

I don't know if others remember, but our current practice of drugging the mentally ill and then setting them out in public with the false hope they take their medicine came about because of a bad combination of events in the 70s:

1. Drug companies with new drugs that lied about how effective they would be, to make money;
2. Republicans refusing to spend the money to make mental institutions humane places;
3. Scaremongering TV from idiots (chiefly Geraldo Rivera, believe it or not) that made the bad mental institutions look like horror novels;
4. Well-meaning, but misguided, public activists who filed lawsuits to get people out of terrible mental institutions (supported by money and fake experts from not-well-meaning drug companies).

We now know better; and this is literally the ONLY thing I think we can get Republicans to act reasonably about.

[JI7]

1. He should have killed himself

[MosheFeingold]

3. We should have given him help

And locked his ass up. He was involuntarily committed, and released.

He should not have been released. The law and standards (and the conditions of how people are detained) need to be greatly improved.

It's inhumane to everyone to drug disturbed people up and then cast them out.

It's one of the most despicable things we do as a people to vulnerable people.

AND THERE IS POLITICAL WILL TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT. THIS IS THE TIME.

[MosheFeingold]

4. I don't disagree Trump is an idiot

This perp was, however, a black guy with clear mental problems who killed (what appears from the surname to be) a Hispanic family.

I doubt he could distinguish Trump from little green men from Betelgeuse.

[heaven05]

5. I assumed and am wrong

just the times.......

[MosheFeingold]

10. Happens n/t

[braddy]

6. Legislation signed in 1963 is what emptied the mental hospitals.

[MosheFeingold]

8. Sure

And it continued in force through the 1980s.

Couple of clunker US Supreme Court opinions in there, too.

The laws need to be changed. And right now, because of all the violent loons out there, we can actually get Repugs to do the right thing -- pretty much on this and nothing else.

[braddy]

16. Yep, I worked in a mental hospital in 1974 and think that it is wicked to have people

who should be patients, instead living and mumbling on our sidewalks and in our alleys and doorways.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

7. Was he a member of MS-13? Should we be very afraid?

[MosheFeingold]

9. Is your post helpful? n/t

[Bernardo de La Paz]

11. Yes.

I am pointing out the absurdity of Trump's focus on small numbers of MS-13 compared to the larger issue of mental health and his various efforts to strangle it and to thwart gun control by enabling sufferers to buy guns, among other nonsensical things he does.

Sorry. I was overly subtle.

[MosheFeingold]

13. Believe it or not, some things are not about Trump

This is one.

In fact, we can use his refusal to reasonably compromise on gun control, to force his hand and make him come along on mental health issues.

[marble falls]

12. The NRA spin on this will be surreal.

[Liberalagogo]

14. If we're going to blame any RW jackasses for this

try Reagan.

[MosheFeingold]

15. Yep

Reagan was a big part of shutting down reasonble mental care facilities.