MPJ
New member
If you don\'t want to read a post of ranting and raving about something semi-personal then stop now, it may get boring but I need to get this off my chest. It has nothing to do with minis or CMoN, I\'m just clearing my head.
Backstory (will try to make it as short as possible):
April 13, 2005 I was driving one of my employees home in the afternoon (bad part of town) when my truck became surrounded by 8 persons who did not want to let me preceed (stopped to let them cross the street, they stopped in front, side, and behind and started taunting). In my less then smartest moment I got out to tell them to move when I promptly got jumped. Fought 8 of them, well with that many I didn\'t do all that much \'fighting\', during the course I was smashed in the ribs with a large boulder (bout 20lbs) breaking several, smashed over the head repeatidly with a club (hit so many times it was reduced to splinters), kicked, beaten, spit on, punched, etc... This went on for about 5 minutes me being knocked to the ground 3 times (near as I can tell I lost consciousness after the 3rd). Just before I went down for the 3rd time I realized I was fighting for my life (did I mention I\'m a bit slow?) and managed to grab a hammer out of the back of my truck but did not have enough left in me to make a good swing with it, missed and dropped it so I dove onto it to keep it from them.
During this there were some 20+ bystanders watching and doing nothing. My employee in the truck did nothing (not even dialing 911 on his cell phone) or help (he was sitting on a 36\" wrecking bar which sure would have been useful). At the end two men who had pulled up behind chased off the 8 punks.
Ambulance and police came but I refused the ambulance, not wanting to leave my truck and tools in that neighbourhood so I signed the release and drove myself to the hospital, made it there but collapsed in the hospital parking lot.
Anyway...
The past year and a half:
Recovery took a while, 2 months on the ribs before I could claim to be at about 90%, the better part of a year before I was pretty much back to 100%.
The police worked slowly and in the end made only one arrest of the \'ringleader\', the only one I could ID out of a lineup. None of the \'witnesses\' would give any information.
I was finally just subpoenad last night for a court date this coming Friday. The subpoena was written on August 14 but they couldn\'t be bothered to deliver it. The prosecutor\'s office is suposed to prep me for court by bringing me in and going over the information and such but can\'t be bothered so they are just going to call me Wednesday evening and do it over the phone (which the cop who delivered the subpoena says is rediculous).
I\'m also now told that I will be the only witness for the prosecution and I had better \'ham it up\' on the stand to have any hope of a conviction (which will likely be a joke sentence anyway). The proscution has no intent on going after the other seven involved in the attack.
Conclusions:
I have always been a pretty \'happy-go-lucky\' kinda guy who believed that most people are basically good and predominatly desire to help their fellow man. Sadly the older and more experienced I get I am starting to realize that most people are basically large walking piles of crap. It sickens me greatly that there was not one witness willing to come forward or to help out. And out of the many people there that day it took only two people who arrived at the very end to chase off eight (as I mentioned there were at least 20 standing around watching, many more who walked by or witnessed from their homes). My idiot employee who was in the truck refused to give any statement to the police other than it was my fault for getting out of the truck in the first place (that\'s sorta like saying the girl in the short skirt deserved to get raped for dressing that way).
Anyway, sorry for the ramblings. If you\'ve made it this far then you deserve my apologies as I\'m sure this wasn\'t easy to read or possibly even understand. I just got this off my chest as a sort of impromptu therepy session. I\'m not active on any other forums, nevermind one that might be more appropriate.
Truely, Michel P. Jeanrie
PS: Really sad part is, if I had it to do all over I most likely wouldn\'t change a thing except maybe come out swinging with the wrecking bar (hindsight). No one, even me, will really know why I got out of the truck that day but I sort of think I did it because I\'m sick of seeing all the violence out there espicaly towards the elderly and such and felt that at least by getting out and standing up for myself I was making a stand for me and others against this sort of thing.
PPS: If the same situation happened again I\'d probablly do the same thing and because I really wouldn\'t want to hurt anyone I wouldn\'t come out swinging. Dumb or what? However if court goes badly on Friday I\'m afraid I will have less than plesant things to say to the judge and will likely have to be restrained from going after the defandant, my idea of punishment would be locking him and me alone in a room for 10 min and seeing how well the coward does one-on-one. I\'m quite sure I could deal out more \'justice\' and \'rehabilation\' in 10 min then the courts ever could.
Backstory (will try to make it as short as possible):
April 13, 2005 I was driving one of my employees home in the afternoon (bad part of town) when my truck became surrounded by 8 persons who did not want to let me preceed (stopped to let them cross the street, they stopped in front, side, and behind and started taunting). In my less then smartest moment I got out to tell them to move when I promptly got jumped. Fought 8 of them, well with that many I didn\'t do all that much \'fighting\', during the course I was smashed in the ribs with a large boulder (bout 20lbs) breaking several, smashed over the head repeatidly with a club (hit so many times it was reduced to splinters), kicked, beaten, spit on, punched, etc... This went on for about 5 minutes me being knocked to the ground 3 times (near as I can tell I lost consciousness after the 3rd). Just before I went down for the 3rd time I realized I was fighting for my life (did I mention I\'m a bit slow?) and managed to grab a hammer out of the back of my truck but did not have enough left in me to make a good swing with it, missed and dropped it so I dove onto it to keep it from them.
During this there were some 20+ bystanders watching and doing nothing. My employee in the truck did nothing (not even dialing 911 on his cell phone) or help (he was sitting on a 36\" wrecking bar which sure would have been useful). At the end two men who had pulled up behind chased off the 8 punks.
Ambulance and police came but I refused the ambulance, not wanting to leave my truck and tools in that neighbourhood so I signed the release and drove myself to the hospital, made it there but collapsed in the hospital parking lot.
Anyway...
The past year and a half:
Recovery took a while, 2 months on the ribs before I could claim to be at about 90%, the better part of a year before I was pretty much back to 100%.
The police worked slowly and in the end made only one arrest of the \'ringleader\', the only one I could ID out of a lineup. None of the \'witnesses\' would give any information.
I was finally just subpoenad last night for a court date this coming Friday. The subpoena was written on August 14 but they couldn\'t be bothered to deliver it. The prosecutor\'s office is suposed to prep me for court by bringing me in and going over the information and such but can\'t be bothered so they are just going to call me Wednesday evening and do it over the phone (which the cop who delivered the subpoena says is rediculous).
I\'m also now told that I will be the only witness for the prosecution and I had better \'ham it up\' on the stand to have any hope of a conviction (which will likely be a joke sentence anyway). The proscution has no intent on going after the other seven involved in the attack.
Conclusions:
I have always been a pretty \'happy-go-lucky\' kinda guy who believed that most people are basically good and predominatly desire to help their fellow man. Sadly the older and more experienced I get I am starting to realize that most people are basically large walking piles of crap. It sickens me greatly that there was not one witness willing to come forward or to help out. And out of the many people there that day it took only two people who arrived at the very end to chase off eight (as I mentioned there were at least 20 standing around watching, many more who walked by or witnessed from their homes). My idiot employee who was in the truck refused to give any statement to the police other than it was my fault for getting out of the truck in the first place (that\'s sorta like saying the girl in the short skirt deserved to get raped for dressing that way).
Anyway, sorry for the ramblings. If you\'ve made it this far then you deserve my apologies as I\'m sure this wasn\'t easy to read or possibly even understand. I just got this off my chest as a sort of impromptu therepy session. I\'m not active on any other forums, nevermind one that might be more appropriate.
Truely, Michel P. Jeanrie
PS: Really sad part is, if I had it to do all over I most likely wouldn\'t change a thing except maybe come out swinging with the wrecking bar (hindsight). No one, even me, will really know why I got out of the truck that day but I sort of think I did it because I\'m sick of seeing all the violence out there espicaly towards the elderly and such and felt that at least by getting out and standing up for myself I was making a stand for me and others against this sort of thing.
PPS: If the same situation happened again I\'d probablly do the same thing and because I really wouldn\'t want to hurt anyone I wouldn\'t come out swinging. Dumb or what? However if court goes badly on Friday I\'m afraid I will have less than plesant things to say to the judge and will likely have to be restrained from going after the defandant, my idea of punishment would be locking him and me alone in a room for 10 min and seeing how well the coward does one-on-one. I\'m quite sure I could deal out more \'justice\' and \'rehabilation\' in 10 min then the courts ever could.
