heard about this on the news, no link

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On the news at noon I heard a story out of Chicago about two guys who lost control of their van and drove into a house, hitting some elderly women sitting on the porch.

A mob formed and pulled the guys from the van and beat them. the elderly women are hospitalized but will apparently survive.

The men died at the hospital.

-- Anonymous, July 31, 2002

Answers

Yep, Lucianne.com has the story from the NYT. I'm too cranky to get a subscription from the NYT so I don't know much about it, except the mob beat the guys to death with bricks.

-- Anonymous, July 31, 2002

Chicago Sun Times

Mob kills two after van hits building

July 31, 2002

BY ANA MENDIETA STAFF REPORTER

Two men were pulled from their rental van and beaten to death by an angry mob Tuesday evening after the vehicle mowed down three women while crashing into a South Side building, authorities said.

"I just saw some guys like they were going to make a U-turn, and then they went up on some people's yard over there,'' witness Will Smith told NBC-Channel 5. "Then I saw some guys getting in a van. I think they beat them up because it was one of their girlfriends they hit.''

At least six people apparently were involved in the beating, and four were being questioned by police late Tuesday, said Wentworth Area Detective James Michaels.

The dead men were identified by the Cook County medical examiner's office as Jack Moore, 62, of 3510 S. Rhodes, and Anthony Stuckey, 50, of 431 E. Oakwood.

A 17-year-old woman was in critical condition at Northwestern Memorial Hospital, an official said. The other two women--ages 18 and 26--were in fair condition at Mount Sinai Hospital, according to a nursing supervisor.

Investigators late Tuesday and early today were trying to piece together what happened, but offered this chronology:

The van, from Elite Truck Rental, was being driven east on 40th Street around 6:40 p.m. when it made a "drastic and improper" U-turn, lost control and slammed into the front of 3983 S. Lake Park.

The three injured women were either on the porch or in front of it, said Prairie District Capt. William Town, whose officers were interviewing the injured women at the hospital early today.

A group descended on the van, yanked the men from the vehicle and "jumped on the two guys," said Wentworth Area Sgt. Ricardo Mancha.

Some witnesses told reporters on the scene the van's occupants were hit with fists and bricks.

The driver's side window was broken at some point, but it wasn't immediately clear if the glass broke during the crash, or was shattered by an object thrown from the street, police said.

At some point an ambulance was called. Moore was transported to Northwestern Memorial Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 7:27 p.m., authorities said. Stuckey died at Cook County Hospital eight minutes later.

Daryl Dunn, who lives on the block where the incident occurred, told ABC-Channel 7 that he heard "a big boom," ran out and "saw the girls in front of the house and the guys had gotten beat up already." [Two words--Reginald Denny.]

-- Anonymous, July 31, 2002


isn't that odd, I heard they were elderly women. turns out the men were the older ones.

Crazy, any way you look at it.

Thanks for the news link.

-- Anonymous, July 31, 2002


WallStJournal

What's Black and White and Red All Over? Yesterday on Chicago's South Side, a mob attacked and killed a driver and his passenger after a traffic accident in which the driver, Anthony Stuckey, lost control of his truck and hit three women, injuring one critically. Race was not a factor in the incident, but the reactions we heard from several readers say something interesting about the racial attitudes of American news media and their consumers.

Early wire reports of the melee made no mention of the race of anyone involved, which led some to read between the lines and assume that the mob and the accident victims were black and the murder victims were white. This turned out to be mistaken; today's Chicago Tribune has pictures of Stuckey and passenger Jack Moore, both of whom were plainly black.

Our readers were operating according to a stereotype, but it is a stereotype with some basis in reality. The standard practice in newsrooms is to omit references to race, especially in crime stories, unless race is relevant--an eminently sensible policy in theory. But the exception for "relevance" is an invitation to mischief, because determining whether race is relevant or not can be an exercise in subjectivity--or political correctness.

If a white mob had attacked a black motorist, there's little doubt reporters would have presented it as a racist "hate crime" and it would have become a huge national story. And if a black mob had attacked a white motorist? It's easy to imagine reporters and editors deeming race "irrelevant"--or deeming its mention potentially explosive--and playing down the racial angle, just as our readers suspected they did.

This may amount to an argument for including racial references more often in crime stories. In this case, their omission led at least some readers to assume falsely that a pair of murders were racially motivated. In retrospect it's clear that the victims' race was relevant to the story, if only to dispel the suspicion that it was relevant to the crime.

-- Anonymous, August 01, 2002


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