I’m sure you’ve heard by now. The Journal Star, Pantagraph, and WEEK.com (picture to the right is from WEEK) have all been reporting the latest Peoria homicide. This time the homicide was committed without a gun or knife, but with a cement block. From the Pantagraph:
Apparently, someone threw the brick just after 1 a.m. from the Broadway Street overpass, according to the Illinois State Police. Katrina Kelley, 26, was riding in the passenger seat of a westbound Cadillac driven by Todd Foster when the brick crashed through, hitting her chest.
The State Police and Peoria Police departments are both working on this case. This just goes to show you that those big fences on Peoria’s overpasses are no deterrent to the demented [expletive deleted] who think it’s funny to throw heavy objects onto unsuspecting motorists. My guess is the person was just out for his usual night of random vandalism and his extra-tiny pea-brain never considered the fact that a brick dropped/thrown/whatever from that height could kill somebody.
Please, please, please let the police catch the filthy vermin who did this and bring him to justice.
in all do respect, the other outlets reported in a timely fashion.PJS and WEEK didn’t break the story.
This horrible act killed a young lady/mother and there is no excuse for it. For what was done it could have caused a pile up on the freeway and many more could have been killed or injured. Where are the brains of the people that could do such an awful thing? You have to know that they were not out to kill a particular enemy but just random, stupid, ignorant, assine violence. If they love violence so much send them to Iraq with a bomb strapped to their chests.
The Journal Star had it on their web site by 2 p.m. WEEK had it on their web site later. The definition of breaking a story.
Caught! Read: http://peoriaantipundit.blogspot.com/
unfortunately, if they are 14 and 15 they will probably be back out on the streets in a couple years (or less) commiting more crimes. Part of the problem (I said “part”) is that the juvenile “justice” system is an absolute joke. If it were up to me these people would be shipped to Lapland and assigned to work a reindeer ranch for the next ten years – no early release.
My sister was nearly killed a few years back (before the upgrade) by some asshat tossing a larger pickle jar off one of the I-74 overpasses. The impact totaled her car.
Who knew pickles could do so much damage?
They never found who did it and there wasn’t much of an investigation. It was just passed on to insurance.
We had a good sized log thrown off a 474 overpass which bounced off our front bumper. We called the cops, of course, but they didn’t do a whole lot. I’m sure the kids were long gone by the time the police showed up, but I thought they might at least follow up with us.
If the kids had better aim, my wife could’ve been the one on the front cover of the paper.
Interesting. The Journal Star turned comments off for this article.
Comments on PJStar.com were probably racially offensive.
Kids out at 1am?
Curfew?
In fairness to the Star and WEEK, it’s a Saturday. Newsrooms are bare bones. At the TV stations, a morning crew comes in at 9:00 or so and leave right away to start gathering the news. There are no overnight crews, so when the night crew went home at 11:00 Friday, there was no on there until 9:00 am Saturday. At that point, there is no one in the newsroom until 2:00 pm when the anchors and night crew come in. The web is an afterthought on weekends because your looking at 6 people doing the job usually done by 15-20 on a weekday. The web gets updated when there’s time. I’m sure the staffing at the paper is similar.
From the experiences of Mahkno and PI, it sounds like the police need to pursue these cases more aggressively even when they don’t result in death or injury. Only fractions of a second in release time separate annoyance, significant property damage and horrible tragedy.
Such a strategy would fit in with the Settingsgaard “broken windows” policy. Of course so would aggressively enforcing curfew for minors …
Aside from the horrible tragedy this is – how in god’s name did a 14-15 year old heave a paving stone over a 9 foot fence? Someone HAS to have seen this, or been there and helped carry the stones onto the overpass. I certainly hope they find the person, whatever age they are, and force them to meet Katrina’s family, to meet her orphaned children.
And you can rail all you want about the juvenile justice system or the police not taking such crimes seriously – but this is a serious failure of our society and educational system. Kids SHOULD know better, beyond the age of 7 or 8 – this is simple cause and effect. And respect for human life, which is taught at an early age. A good education for the parents could have prevented 1. these kids (assuming they’re juveniles) from thinking it would be “fun” to toss a massive stone off an overpass. 2. helped keep them off the streets at 1am. 3. given them something better to do in general.
Preventative medicine folks. If you don’t the let quality of life deteriorate to such a horrible state that kids are out at 1am, thinking that heaving a brick over a 9 foot wall into oncoming traffic is okay, things like this don’t happen at all, necessitating an overtaxed juvenile justice system. Good schools go a long way towards educating kids AND parents.
A strong 14 year old can throw a 12 pound steel ball 40+ feet at a track meet.