*sigh* Crowd swipes dying man's groceries

Passerbys Steal Groceries From Dying Man


MESA, Ariz., Oct. 3 (UPI) -- The sight of an old man being hit by a truck in Arizona touched off a feeding frenzy among witnesses who allegedly stole the dying victim's groceries.

Not only were the man's groceries taken, but the only person who tried to help him also had his own bags taken.

Mesa police told KPHO-TV in nearby Phoenix that the scavengers could face theft charges if they are eventually tracked down.

The elderly victim was waiting for a bus Tuesday night when a pickup truck swerved off the road and plowed into the stop. The man was sent flying as were his bags of groceries.

As the truck sped off with a white plastic bag flapping on its grill, witnesses began grabbing whatever scattered food they could get their hands on. Boro Mitrovich, who was himself nearly struck, said he ran to help the man and had his bag disappear as well.

"One minute it was on the ground, the next minute it was gone," Mitrovich told KPHO.


http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=upiUPI-20071003-145323-9350&show_article=1

in a country where people are hungry.

We have crossed a line

Sorry, I agree that there are hungry people. But, I would expect more from people. America has jumped the shark.

An old guy once told me how his dairy's truck over-turned and that people for miles around saw this as an opportunity to grab some "free cheese". This was in the 1970s or 1960s. Then there was Kitty Genovese.

Expect more of this coming. Hungry people don't worry about social niceties.

The biggest problem for me isn't really that people there decided to eat the food. The groceries would have sat strewn about the gutter long after the ambulance had left, and if people didn't eat the perishables at least, the rats surely would. Yes, I can see people who are hungry not wanting to let food go to waste after it has become clear that it won't be of any use to its owner.

No: the problem is that they even NOTICED the damn groceries while a man lay critically injured right in front of them. I think that's what's really bothering me.

Those were his last moments on earth. He was one of their fellow men. They should have been doing whatever they could for him -- even if that was only being a witness for him.

or whether he's just being greedy?

Then we eat it. :D

Hail to the almighty swamp rat! Excellent pics, as usual.

I don't think rats can feel greed as we do-- merely an instinctual need when hunger overtakes them. As humans, I think we should be able to rise above this.

You can blame it on pervasive hunger if it floats your boat-- but let's be honest, this was nothing more than greed and the dismissal of others in need, and the blame belongs on those who did it.

and that's what I was trying to convey. "Higher human behavior" is a luxury. Our basic instincts rule when things aren't well in our world.

Personally, I do think the rats can be greedy. I don't believe that we are somehow "special" in the animal kingdom. Expect more "feral" behavior as things get worse for people.

Think that luxury isn't the root of this? What if those people had more than enough at home- they wouldn't even think of taking his items. They might ignore his plight though...I've heard of rapes happening in broad daylight with people walking by, ignoring the victim's screams.

If I'd never seen the luxuriously wealthy try to scam the poor for nothing more than an additional buck or two, I'd be inclined to agree with you.

But I have seen it. So either the basic human instincts rules regardless of whether our own world is good or not, or these people simply made a conscious choice-- to steal. I'm inclined to believe the latter.

Maybe I'm an idealist thinking that we make our decisions based on the heart and the head rather than mere instinct, and that we can actually suppress the 'flight or fight' response when necessary.

The decline of our country is seen when people justify this kind of behavior.

How hungry would YOU have to be to do this to an old man? Sheesh.

*sigh*




And it's "passersby"...

economically it sucks, and the city leaders rarely do more than talk about persecuting brown-skinned people for any reason and cutting taxes for "growth," even though the city spends next to nothing as it is and its economy still sucks.

On one hand you've got the trailer parks, on the other you've got batshit wealthy Mormons.

Why I'm keeping my ass in Tempe until I move back home to NYC.

I'm around ASU. :hi:

The only wealthy Mormon I ever knew, his family made its money doing guess what?

Owning trailer parks!

It's very much two castes: rich Mormons and the poor folks who serve them. Meanwhile all the city officials seem to be able to do is come up with new and varied ways to persecute the brown menace.

The first time I rode the bus into Mesa from Tempe it was surreal. I could tell exactly where one city ended and the other began without looking at a single sign.

Mesa is a freakin' sanctuary, because the Chief of Police (Gascon) refuses to let his police force bust illegals. Central Mesa (where that hit-and-run occurred) is a predominantly Hispanic area that is rife with crime. You can't drive through there on a weekday morning without having to swerve around the illegals lining the road waiting to hop in the back of a truck.

I live in Mesa, and I'm pretty happy with the city. I voted for the property tax, so we wouldn't have to cut some of the city services, but apparently I was outnumbered. :) Still, it seems to be a decent place to live, even with the budget cuts.

I just wish the Mormons who run the show would ease up a little bit and allow some kind of business that would bring some night life to the town. It's embarrassing to be that close to Mill Ave and Scottsdale and be DEAD after 8pm.

Americans are to lazy to steal.

That place is a shithole. They'd steal the laces off your shoes out there.

that this country can't do enough to help those in need that some people feel the need to resort to doing this. Of course some people will do it anyway--regardless.

Currently held by a ReThug by the name of Jeff Flake. (What a name.) No Democrats opposed him in '06 and '04.

For this awful behavior.

There must be some reason these people are that desperate.

Who among us wouldn't steal a loaf of bread if we were starving?

That's who and they stole from him, and he may be as poor as the thieves that stole from him.

Jerks.

But that really doesn't matter.

And if he is hungry and poor like those that stole from him, it should matter to you too because now they are less hungry and he is more hungry.

But your concern is more for those that stole than those stolen from.

I think nobody should go hungry or without shelter and I'll pay more taxes to change that, but this behavior is wrong and not justified, period. These weren't groceries left behind or from a giant store, they were taken from other people, plain and simple and other people taking the bus (in Phoenix!)who we can be sure we also not wealthy.

The thieves are perps and no longer just victims but victimizers.

"But your concern is more for those that stole than those stolen from."

No, you're just making that up.

"I think nobody should go hungry or without shelter and I'll pay more taxes to change that, but this behavior is wrong and not justified, period."

Yes. And the situation that led to these people doing this is even more wrong and less justified.

What they have done is also wrong.

You don't get to have morals for victims and for perpetrators, morals are for both or else it all falls apart.

A better way is that we as a society should see that we all have what we need so that we don't steal. Likewise, none of us should steal nor encourage nor tolerate theft from others.

Where's Wilford Brimley when you need him?????!

"You don't get to have morals for victims and for perpetrators, morals are for both or else it all falls apart."

Uh, yeah you do. Are you familiar with the phrase "do unto others as they'd do onto you?" How's about "let he who's without sin cast the first stone?"

What do you suppose those mean?

And thus, even the people you consider victims of some sort are not without sin. Jesus didn't even justify the woman in the story you reference.

Jesus in that story pretty much shows that we are all sinful and that He is the only one fit to mete out justice for sin.

So, perhaps that only thing I can correct is that I am like those people in the sense that I do things wrong, but they certainly have done wrong in what they did to that guy.

And I ask nobody to agree with me on religion, but I felt it was relevant for this topic.

How do you know that the people who stole the groceries were poor or desperate? Did Wynona Ryder shoplift because she's poor and desperate? They could've just been opportunistic scumbags, or they could be poor, desperate scumbags.

not because of the economy, politics, violent video games, or any other thing. The guy who tried to help lives in 'George Bush's America' too, and he still has a conscious. When someone is dying in front of you, stealing rather than providing aid is contemptible, regardless of poverty, hunger, etc.

OK so now we are down to one person who cares.
When Mr Mitrovich decides to join the crowd.......
The level of desperation on the streets of America seems to be approaching
a socially critical level.

This just sucks. What is our society coming to???

The infrastructure sucks because the Repukes in charge keep cutting taxes (the buses don't even run on Sundays out there!). As far as I can tell there doesn't seem to be much of a middle class...there's upper middle-class to wealthy folks, mainly Mormons, and the poor/colored folks who serve them. It's economically dead. The only Pagan store I know of out there, besides the one close to the Tempe border, is disguised as a "gift" shop because the Mormons would otherwise run the lady who runs it out of town.

Republican blueprint for America, folks! :(

No many sidewalks either for that matter.

I swear they think if you are not filling up an H2 every other day then you are unpatriotic.

The worst assholes on the road are in cars sporting W bumperstickers. They also like to run down bicyclists, I see it all the time around here.

What infrastructure problems do you see? We've got good roads, good services (they have to be, to take care of all the illegals), and over 400,000 people. Something must be going right in Mesa.

I've lived there for over 10 years, and I like it. I'd like it better without the Mormons in charge, but that's just because then we might be able to get something resembling a nightlife. I'm pretty sure we're the biggest city in the US without anything fun to do at night. :)

Worst in the East Valley aside from Chandler (where the yuppies don't care about plebes who need the bus), and it's a disgrace considering the number of college students there. I really want to take classes at MCC but the way the buses run out there it's out of the question until I can get a car. And it's sad that if I need any errands done out there they had better be done on Saturday or I'm SOL.

I'm not saying there aren't pockets of nice in Mesa (I've got a couple of friends out there and they're also middle class and not Mormon :)), just that you'll need to look harder to find them.

LOL Mesa nightlife consists of going to Tempe or so I hear. Or chugging Robitussin in the Walgreens parking lot. :rofl: But don't feel bad, there's probably similarly-sized cities in Utah that have even less than you guys...

If they get their way... the middle class will disappear completely, and the gap between the rich and the poor will be humongous... The USA will resemble a 3rd world country where incidents like this become the norm.

This nihilism and ruthlessness that you see coming out in every facet of our economic, cultural, political, and social reality is way, way bigger than Bush or his dwindling number of supporters.

Conservatives tend to look backwards with rosy-tinted vision, but the reality is that societies run on the basis of laissez-faire economics are hellholes, pure and simple.

Me, I've no more interest in living under "Free Market" tyranny than any other kind. Really, I think we just have to figure out a way to make our society human somehow, so that people will stop behaving like a pack of feral dogs.

Thugs shooting unarmed Buddhist protesters and now this?

:banghead:

what a bunch of scumbags.

What about people getting trampled when Wal-Mart opens it's doors on day after Thanksgiving? Or just the random bouts of road rage that lead to a stabbing or a gunfight? We don't seem to have a sense of community as much, with a general sense of coarsening. There are poor areas all over the world; some of them look out for each other, some of them take advantage of each other. We seem to be increasingly falling into that latter category.

That's the way it works and right down the hatch we all go.

I hope they fucking burn in hell.

Yes....don't worry, I am thinking of going elsewhere.

If Clinton Part II occurs, it might be sooner rather than later, so you can all defend this so-called "GREAT" country without a quitter like myself.

Americans deserve what we have coming to us. What a sad lot we are.

though I have no intention of budging from beautiful, progressive Vermont.

I will never, ever live outside New England. It is "home" on so many levels. In my town just about everyone would have stopped to help the man and would have saved his groceries for him.

It is NOT true that hungry and/or desperate people automatically behave like this. And it is not true that individual moral superiority defends against this sort of thing.

People in life and death situations (and that after all is what dire poverty is) act one of two ways. They can opt for a predatory, survival of the fittest model. Or, they can opt for a pitch in together and aid each other to get through this approach (the latter, by the way, has a better outcome as far as individual survival goes). The difference is whether or not the persons affected have a working sense of community.

It's those community connectedness that has been under attack from the Right, even more than the economic well being of Americans. You can't, actually, enact the Right's agenda without first attacking the bonds of community. For predatory capitalism to become entrenched it needs to turn neighbors into rivals and threats, and the community into a lonely and dangerous place where enemies lurk in the shadows. People don't vote (or acquiesce with policies) to take food from their neighbor's children, or deny their neighbor his chemotherapy. They do vote to to do these things to the mortal enemies, real or imagined, who plot to do the same to them and their loved ones.

Right now this country is a mosaic of still relatively healthy communities and pathological ones. I've chosen to live in a still-healthy small city in a still-healthy state. I'm honestly not sure where to advise people to live when I've been asked (I'm something of a "progressive survivalist", if such a thing exists; I do have an EM background, and a solid enough background in outdoor survival skills that I could teach that if I were able-bodied, and I do have grave concerns for the near future, but I'm not digging any bunkers both because I know (as in have extensively read the research) that the paranoid crap that passes for survivalism is not a successful strategy for actual survival. I've had planners of intentional communities try to consult me on this for some reason, though I don't personally support the creation of artificial communities. Sometimes, as an ex- liberal Republican, I feel like I live a left-of-center, hopefully more sane, parallel to a lot of the worst of right-wing cultural attributes).

Sometimes I wish I lived somewhere where there was a fight to be fought, and I know if everyone of goodwill abandoned those places that have been culturally vandalized by the Right's agenda, things would only get worse. On the other hand, as someone with health issues I don't think I can or should risk my life trying to live in such places, nor am I comfortable telling others they should go fight the fight.

I don't think having Ms. Clinton is going to do much to change things for the better.

In no way am I saying that she'll be the same, but in some ways....I suspect she will.

?

exact same thing happen to her in Brooksville, FL 30 years ago.

She, her boyfriend and their little puppy were in their car, which was packed with their stuff because they were moving to a different apartment. They were broadsided by a car that ran a red light. They were literally lying in the intersection, injured, and their puppy was running around yelping, and NO ONE helped them--bystanders instead looted their car, taking their TV, all their clothes, everything they had packed while they lay there hurt.

Yes, Brooksville is and always has been a place very much like Mesa -- full of worthless grifters, lowlifes, and amoral toads. May they all rot in hell.

many years ago we heard about a few serial killers . Now we hear about street people being killed by teens and this poor fellow .

It almost seems that the selfish hate has filtered down from the mentality of the admin and flowed out into the population .

It has also come to the point where if you speak out at all or confront rules that you know are not valid and fair you can be tased or shot or die in police holding tanks .

I know this is not the country I grew up in during the 50's or even the 60's and 70's .

What will we be , sheep that live or humanitarians who die ?

coming out with gifts such as submarines available for $1.4 million. And while the poor are fighting over a dead man's and a good samaritan's groceries. The two Americas indeed.

I absolutely cannot imagine that happening where I live....ever.

What a sad, sad commentary on what some places have become like.

:hide:

say in some destitute Latin American country. Probably that was wishful thinking on my part.

When did the America I once knew die? :shrug: :cry:

:wow:


They say anyone will do things like that if they're starving, but it's still hard to think of.


Poor man. Rest in peace, Boro Mitrovich.


:cry:

Boro Mitrovich is the man who helped the victim -- not the victim himself.


:dunce:


Rest in peace, poor fellow who was killed (his named hasn't been released yet). And a long and happy life to the man who tried to help him!

And hope that those that stole from him notice that what he received was more than they stole.

Changes your perpective on everything...amazing how fast it dries the koolaid out of you.

My point is that a person would have to really desperate to concentrate on being the first to grab that bag of rolls lying next to the curb rather than minding the bleeding, dying person next to you.

Either really desperate, or really callous. I don't know which, because I don't know anything about Mesa, or what it's like there. It could be both.


It's just sad to think that a guy died in the road, all but ignored, and it only meant free butter.

The problem with living on that level is that you realize that no one is there to help you. Ergo, why should you care that the man is dying? You just got a can of soup from his misfortune.

Law of the jungle is so easy for us humans. Harder, it seems, is for us to let everyone have what they need.

A lot of people here are assuming that the people who stole the groceries and allowed the man to die hadn't eaten for days themselves. I've gone for a week without food and I can honestly say I can't imagine behaving so barbarically. Still, there is no evidence at all that the thieves were dirt poor and starving to death. Maybe they were just a bunch of self centered assholes?

I could understand hungry people deciding to take the food after the ambulance has left: better than having it just sit in the gutter and spoil while the victim is in the hospital.

What I can't deal with is helping oneself to the spilled groceries while ignoring the victim as he lies hurt in the road.


:cry:

Lovely.

"the truck sped off with a white plastic bag flapping on its grill"

Reminds me of what I hated about Phoenix when I lived there for a year in the 80's. Self styled 'cowboys' doing macho things with their jacked up trucks. Oblivious to the environment and people around them.

I got no sympathy for them.

I think they suffer more from lack of morals than lack of food. I can't see that any hunger is so great that you take food instead and leave an elderly person dying in the street. I'd rather starve than live with the knowledge I was that 'souless'. :-(

They ate the food as they stole it.

Otherwise, me not buying.

Stories like this seem more the norm than the odd nowadays.

I would like to think those people really needed the food, but they're probably just cockaroaches.

is this what things have come to

:scared:

very sad

:cry:

NOT.

Mesa is about an hour from where I live. What is there to say about this other than it is yet another disgrace. Maybe this story is a metaphor for what our country has become under the Bush regime. Compassion and simple human decency have contracted terminal cancer.

This story is another one of those "canaries in a coal mine" that indicate the human race is suffering from a serious ailment.

We are all on our own, and are entitled to nothing except what we can grab first.

That's what the evening news does. They look for those stories of such shock and outrage and unbelievable inhumanity to use as the teaser to keep you watching through the entire program. If they don't find one, they edit footage to make one up.

I don't believe it happened anywhere near the way it's been made out here. People are good -- the great majority of us are. We help each other and were concerned. You can't tell me that most of the witnesses were actually fending for themselves rather then trying to help or keep interest out of concern. ESPECIALLY if it was poor people. This isn't news. It isn't evidence of humanity's inhumanity. It's a local tragedy and news as usual -- worthless near-fiction.

Remember when "getting mugged'" was a new thing?

My friedn was mugged on an "el" platform in Chicago, and a guy who "came to her aid" stole her engagement ring ..go figure..

Luckily she was ok and was not pushed down the stairs or onto the tracks, but even the cops were amazed.. She had a cut lip (the original mugger hit her) had her purse stolen and then her engagement ring ..

http://www.eastvalleytribune.com/story/98962


The story says that he is from Mexico, but doesn't say where exactly, or whether he'd been living in Mesa or just visiting. It took a long time to find out who he was, because they couldn't find any ID among his belongings at the scene.


Speaking of things that take a long time to find, it took me a long time to find this thread so that I could post this update. Folks seem to have lost interest, somewhat. The flame of moral outrage burns hot, but sooo brief. I guess all that fuss was never really about the victim, was it?


For some of us, the horror lay in the fact of a man dying all but ignored in the road. Under the circumstances, who cares about a stupid sack of cookies?

But for most of you, the real outrage was the spectacle of the dusky scavenging hordes making off with our things.


And now the word is out that the victim was himself a Mexican, which probably explains the sudden loss in interest in some quarters. Oh, well...

Granted I didn't read every post on the thread, but I didn't see DUers characterizing those who didn't help as "the dusky scavenging hordes making off with out things."

And threads here have a "shelf life"- particularly as they grow longer.

The fact that the victim was a Mexican national is irrelevant. What's more, I'm sure it occurred to many here that there was a possibility that the victim was either of Mexican heritage or Mexican.

Frankly, I find your accusation that "most" on this thread were being actively racist, nothing but ugly projection.

... seem to have run out of steam as we come to know more about the victim...


... and whatever you end up with -- is what you end up with.

The fact that the victim was a Mexican national is irrelevant.

Not to everyone. These remarks are from the comments appended to the story I linked to:



http://www.eastvalleytribune.com/story/98962

Frankly, I find your accusation that "most" on this thread were being actively racist, nothing but ugly projection.

No. I'm taking a closer look at this great swirling mass of moral outrage, and pointing out that it's not all the same stuff.

You really should check out the Free Republic thread on this story. It'll put the commentaries here in their larger context.

Spare us the "Nobody cares about Mexicans"-martyr bit. The driver of the truck that hit the man is Mexican, and many of the people that stole the groceries are Mexican (so I've read); those Mexicans are the people who don't care about the Mexican victim, not the people on DU!

In fact, I've heard nothing about the people who allegedly swiped the groceries. Please provide a link that backs up your claim that they were Mexicans. I find it hard to believe you've read any such thing.

...not your post.

That's not how DU works. You get to respond to any friggin' post you feel like. And I've certainly seen YOU do just that. Now how about putting up or... Where's that link to the people who swiped the groceries being Mexican-American or Mexican? Make statements like "I've read it", you should be able to provide links to where you read it.

in a failed empire with worthless currency. The only positive aspect of this story is that at least the onlookers didn't resort to cannibalism!:evilgrin:

my parents were in a local (upscale) hotel lobby with friends for a party...my dad had collapsed and was onconscious, and in the commotion while my mother and friends were tending to him and waiting for 911, someone stole her Blackberry PDA that she placed on a table....