May 8, 2008
Six-Year-Old Girl Run Over By Mom
A young girl riding her tricycle in her Pittsburg neighborhood on the 1000 block of Muir Creek Drive was inadvertently run over by her own mother yesterday afternoon. According to the Gate, Rachel Lopez was struck by her mom's car at 4:30 p.m.. It seems her mother "realized she had run over something, got out and saw her daughter pinned under the right front tire."
Yikes.
The young girl later died at Sutter Delta Medical Center in Antioch. No criminal charges will be filed against the mother.
Image credit: Wikicommons
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I love how they word the headline on the front page. "Girl Struck by Mom's Car," like the car just came out of nowhere, of its own volition, and ran the kid over. I rarely see a story regarding someone running a person over where it's not couched entirely in terms of "the CAR did it, not the person driving it." And they never say "the driver ran them over," it's always, "the bus made contact with the pedestrian."
They amend it when you click on the story, but the way these stories are written strike me (no pun intended) as ridiculous.
Isn't that their edict, to report the news while maintaining a measure of objectivity about them? I realize it's not always well practiced, but I'd think it rationale - and probably rooted in risk management - to avoid laying blame without all the facts, especially when a death is involved.
This is so sad. I hope the mother and other children gets the proper psychiatric help to get through a nightmare like this. :(
Heartbreaking. I can't imagine the pain that mom is going through right now.
There is some news that you neither want nor need to know about. This qualifies.
that's not objectivity, it's hideous use of the passive voice, which is supposedly verboten in journalism anyway.
It's shocking that in a major city like SF, the supposed "major" newspaper is so piss-poor.
and blame should be assigned. People should be alerted that when you drive a ginormous SUV, oops, you might not be able to see your kid standing in front of it.
Sorry, van, not suv, but a vehicle too large to see over the hood, at any rate.
Look again - we're not talking some mystery giant rape van here, we're talking about a VW van which is a very different style. That kid had to have been literally right in front of her car for her mother not to see her, which means if we're going to blame anyone here it's the kid who died because she was playing in traffic (or her sisters for not watching her), and that's even more fucked up.
I agree with travin. It is not appropriate for the reporter or headline writer to proclaim fault. They should be reporting the facts.
How is it proclaiming fault to report the facts and not use passive voice?