In San Francisco yesteday a woman threw her 3 children, ages 6, 3 and 1, off a pier into the bay. What strikes me about the story is that NOBODY DID ANYTHING!?! They’ve got tons of quotes from tons of people who were all shocked and horrified having seen this happen. Besides the one guy who called 911, why weren’t there 4 stories about guys who jumped in the water or just as important, restraining the woman after she threw the first one in.

I know this pier, I’ve walked by it numerous times. It has a large railing and there is nothing about it that would make anyone think that jumping in the water is a normal thing. The water is 10-15 feet below the level of the dock, maybe as much as 20-25 from the railing to water at low tide. There is no nearby beaches and all the surrounding piers are industrial in nature. Additionally, it is a very busy place. Just as the article suggests, there are LOTS of people there on a regular basis, particularly at 5:30 PM in the evening as many people take a stroll down there after work. I suspect there were 10, maybe 20 people who were close enough to make a difference in stopping her and 50 people close enough to make a reasonable attempt at jumping in the water.

Point being, you can’t do this without raising enough eyebrows well before she could be stopped from at least throwing the third kid in. Add that to the fact that jumping the railing to go after the kids would have been my first instinct and I’m just amazed at the lack of a response. Waiting for the police is not a reasonable option when 3 naked kids who likely couldn’t swim were thrown in the 60 degree water.

Just mind boggling.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 20th, 2005 at 6:40 am and is filed under Catholicism, Catholicism - Morals. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.