Heroic Citizen saves little girl.
 

Thanks to an Amber Alert and a quick-thinking citizen, an 8-year-old California girl was rescued today after a horrifying night.


Elisa Cardenas was playing with friends outside her house in Fresno, Calif. early Monday evening, when police say Gregorio Gonzales tried to lure the girls into a pickup truck.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/amber-alert...ry?id=11807128

Victor Perez saw her on the way to work in the morning, cut the gang banger off with his car and got the little girl back. Victor. You Rock!

"I thank God that he put me here to help out this little girl" said Perez. "I would not want anyone to do this to my family."

:up: Dude!

You guys do understand that 72 hours is about the life expectancy of a kidnap victim of this kind. Perez is cutting grapes for minimum wage. He's a carpenter, but got hurt by the economy. One hell of a brave man. Must have known he could have easily caught a cap.

It's just this sort of thing that restores my faith in human nature.

Prayers tonight for young Elisa and for Victor? No doubt.

I think this was a risky thing to do; cutting the vehicle off could have caused an accident, and I'm betting the kid wasn't wearing a seatbelt. He should have immediately called the police, and then continue to follow the car.

Very, very bad things can happen in the 5 or 10 minutes it takes cops to get there.

http://www.co.washington.or.us/Distr...ty-killers.cfm

One time, the cops showed up in 10 minutes. That would have been 8 minutes too late. According to "Dead of Night, the True Story of a Serial Killer" by Don Lasseter, someone :rolleyes: beat the shit out of Leonard Darcelle (Cesar's buddy). When Barone shot Martha Bryant, a witness noticed Darcelle was beat to hell. Hospital records led cops right to the dynamic duo. I'm glad *someone* stopped Darcelle from kidnapping a woman from a bar parking lot.

The detective on the case is now retired and lives across the street. Every time he sees me, he says "Be careful". It always seemed odd to me. I didn't actually understand why until I read this book ten years later. Hmmm....

I'm not big on seat belt or helmet laws either.

Rockouthippie for official Winamp Forums news anchor.

I just want to begin by saying to Roosevelt E. Roosevelt...what it is, what it shall be, what it was. Weather out there today is hot and shitty, with continued hot and shitty in the afternoon. Tomorrow, a chance of continued crappy weather, pissy weather, front coming down from the north. Basically, it's hotter than a snake's ass.....

Sure. And you can cite examples of such bad things happening. Then I can cite examples of the opposite happening.

What is the chance of something happening in those ten minutes? I would say the chance is not high.

Most relevant is, of course, the balance. What odds are better: the chance of something happening to the victim in the time the police need to respond, or the chance of dire consequences of vigilante policing? I think that, in the balance, the best chance of survival of the victim is to wait for the police.

Please do. I only know about cops catching bad guys after someone has been raped, killed, kidnapped or mugged.

While stranger abduction is the most uncommon, it is by far the most dangerous. Half of these children were sexually assaulted and 40% were killed.

http://www.suite101.com/content/stat...#ixzz11mCxwQcm

And in this case the intervenor acted after the child was kidnapped, right?

I am waiting for your example(s). We aren't talking about vigilantism.

Examples of kidnap victims who didn't get killed shortly after the police is called should be easy to find.

Here's one: http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/story?se...cal&id=7212066

(That said, about half of Google results including the word 'kidnap' refer to the story of this article.)

What does this case have to do with anything we are talking about here? Sure. Police can catch bad guys. That doesn't mean they always do. In this case, the victim resisted enough to wait for the cops. You would object if a citizen helped him?

What I am saying is that it may not be in the victim's best interest to act immediately. I think there is a greater chance of survival if you call in the police.

What experience do you have to back up that assertion? Hell, most of the time no one will even call a cop, much less intervene.

Cops only solve a little less than 2/3rds of murders in the US. I've called them on several occasions for burglary. How many times did they get my shit back?..... zero.

Another problem you have in this case is the amber alert. I'm sure everyone and their monkey was calling the cops with tips. It happened in the case here of Kyron Horman. So you call Johnny Law and you tell him you saw the asshole and the kid in a truck. I'm sure 500 other people did the same thing.

We don't know if this guy had a cell phone. I don't. So he pulls over, calls the cops and becomes just another one of the hundreds of sightings the cops dealt with that morning. All bogus.

I think what we have here is a guy that cared enough to act when he knew someone was in trouble. That's better than average. I hate to tell you, but overwhelming car wrecks are not fatal, even before commie busybodies decided we needed helmets and seat belts.

Stranger abductions of children are 40% fatal by comparison.

I don't understand how you could be critical of this guy or of anyone who sticks their neck out to save someones bacon.

If you look at some of the news reports, the cop who collared the gang banger expressed that it was the highlight of his career.

Why? Because shit like this usually doesn't have a happy ending. In the case of some serial killers and rapists, they sometimes have dozens of victims before they get caught. It's why I carry 12 pounds of locks on a 27lb bicycle.

In general terms, cops cut down crime by putting bad guys away. Really, I'm not even sure that works. That's a different argument. If you were counting on them for your personal safety or security, you're nuts.

You're probably right though, if I see you getting dragged into a car by your hair, I'll just order a beer and use the pay phone.

Yawn. :rolleyes:

none of us were there. In some cases it's better to call and wait but if there's just one asshole and you know you can do it yourself, go for it. It's always better to do something that to do nothing. Even if he had called the police, noone knows how long it would've taken them to get there.

or even if... Kyron Horman, here in Portland, has been missing for months. I'm sure 5000 people called to say they've seen him. I'm sure the cops checked up on a lot of those, but I doubt most. You can damn well bet it hasn't been in anything looking like real time. He's been seen in Walmart. The press reported they found his body once. ............... The press seems to be painting his mom as the culprit, but there is really no evidence of that.

?

But you cannot know that you won't be placing the victim in even greater risk of harm. In this case, the victim was exposed to considerable risk of a car accident.

If the intervenor had called the police, I suspect they would have followed him until he had stopped somewhere, and then proceed to intercept. That would have minimised the risk to the victim.

You correctly point out that at this stage it is academic. However, I don't think that the intervenor necessarily did the right thing, but it is probably true that it was better than doing absolutely nothing. It was mere good fortune that the victim didn't get hurt, though.

As compared to the danger of being raped, killed and tossed in a dumpster? That's about 50-40 on both of those happening.

Car wreck? Who cares..... RAMMING SPEED!

I don't think it is likely that all that will happen in the time it takes the police to respond, and certainly not while driving.

If you had a cell phone. If you could convince the cops that you weren't one of the zillion kooks that called them that morning.....

How long?

I think you have been watching too much CSI. Yeah, like you're gonna call em, and they'll just hop right out there.

Hell, I lived in some places in Chicago in the 80's where they wouldn't show up at all.... at night.. maybe in the morning :rolleyes:

Correct, the assumptions are a working cell phone and an efficient police response. But you could still call the police and continue to follow them. Then, you could still intervene if the police fail to show up in a reasonable time.

So, of course, nice lady, our discourse comes down to people of good conscience. Sometimes excrement hits the rotary oscillator. This would be one of those times.

"I thank God that he put me here to help out this little girl" said Perez. "I would not want anyone to do this to my family."

Yep.

Of course you can't; nobody can predict the future. I would suggest, however, that your chances of putting the victim in greater harm are not higher than any responding police doing the same.

My argument is exactly that I would expect the police to wait until the kidnapper parked his car and thus minimizing the risk of injury to the child.

Yeah right, the kidnapper is going to park the car and get out with his hands in the air.
You never hear about them resisting in any way, killing victims and police in the process.

Are you ever daft!!!

I never said anything about waiting until the kidnapper has exited the car with his hands in the air. I do think that the ideal moment to act is when the car is stopped.

So, the police are following the suspect, light and siren going. The suspect is going to park the car?

It looks to me more a recipe for disaster with a high speed car chase were lots of lives will be at risk, with the possibility of the police abandoning the chase because of the danger and the suspect getting away.

Sometimes the best action is action, not a passive "wait for the cops" time out.

That's obviously not my assumption. You can read in a previous post in this thread that I am assuming an efficient police force.

Anyway, even if the police were going in sirens and all, I don't see how it would be better for anyone involved to take action yourself.

That's because it is ingrained in you to let the government take care of everything, and don't do anything for yourself.

I was thinking the exact same thing.

Cops? What cops? Honestly the amount of shit that happens where I live. Law is taken into the citizens hands. There are cops here, (and the city that I usually hangout in is widely known as a undercover police training city) but still if you have a chance to do something (whilst the cops are coming or not) you should always take it.

Now saying that sounds a bit suicidal but seriously, ten feet away from anyone doing wrong doings, weapon's or not I'd run at their ass. The amount of pain you might feel after words would be well worth it.

Rats flee. They are afraid of their own shadow. Sort of like a beat dog.

Well thanks for refering to me as both a rat and a "gang banger" but when did I ever imply that I was?

I've had my far share of scraps, and I'm confident that I can take a person down if not hurt them enough to be remembered for a while. Get the fuck over your self. ;)

I wasn't talking about you at all Mike. We skipped a revised post. Rats live among us in the shadows. It usually don't take much to scare a rat.

That was what I was saying. You always seemed to me to be a "non-rat". Maybe like a guy with a broom.

A rat with a machine gun has no confidence. A man with a sturdy broom can submit a Rottweiler.

I'm really having a problem expressing my Oregon (like before the California invasion) viewpoint.

I am sort of rare in my neck of the woods. I think it was like my pa and grandpa said. "Don't lie. Don't steal and Don't be Mean!"

and of course.... don't be late for breakfast ;)

Hell. If you don't lie, steal, and you aren't mean, come by for breakfast.

For 22 years, including the incident I mentioned here, just chasing rats off with a broom.

Ignoring the obvious flamebait, my interest is with the best possible outcome for the victim. I think it is better to let the police handle such situations because they are better at it.

Note that I am not discounting the possibility of acting if the police fail to respond in a timely fashion. I said that already, but in baafie v. right wing nutters I invariably end up repeating myself.

Oh I'm sorry! I joke too hard, sleep deprivation takes away my sarcasm!

Like most left wing nutters, you didn't make any more sense when you did.

Actually, I am a centre-left nutter and a moderate liberal. ;)

Can yall stop talking about your left nuts, seriously. Getting tired of it! :igor:

For the record, we also discussed the ones on the right.

What in the pig fuck is a centre-left nut anyway? Third ball? Gross!