Moron kills woman. Mother thinks sentence too harsh

The BBQ Pit
1

WTF?

This brain-donor zaps a co-worker with a defib paddle, as a prank.

I’d be pitting the alleged EMT if I thought it were worthwhile. I’m tempted to suggest that this bozo should be harvested for organs. Certainly anyone involved with emergency medicine should be able to recognize that you don’t “zap” a co-worker with voltage/current that can affect the SA node. It’s a last ditch effort to save someone’s life. Usually for someone who’s dead, or damned close.

(My father used to teach CPR courses, and made a point of reminding his students, if someone qualifies for CPR, they also meet most definitions of being dead, and so any damage they take from the efforts to ressucitate them is an improvement.)

Likewise, you don’t hit someone with an epi-pen for a joke. You don’t take nerve-toxin antidotes unless you’ve got the nerve toxin in your system already. You don’t don’t point a gun at anything you don’t mean to put a slug into.

So, my sympathy for this brain-donor is nil.

What really pisses me off, however, is the statement from his mother.

And if a cop playing with his gun kills someone, he’s going to jail. He’s not guilty of a lesser crime than the cop who accidentally kills someone in a tense situation, he’s guilty of a greater crime. Likewise, your brain-dead son was told not to handle the equipement, and that it’s not a toy. As such, he should be being held to a much higher accountability than he’s being charged with. At the very least I’d consider his behavior equivalent to the kind of criminal behavior that drunk driving is supposed to get these days.

This is not a teenager or child whom one can say didn’t know the consequences of his actions. This is a 25 year old adult, doing an adult’s job.

Maybe if your son didn’t believe that people would be making excuses for him because he was a nice kid, Courtney Hilton Rhoton wouldn’t be in the grave, now.

2

He was not certified to use them. He approached her with them (obviously to shock her), was warned by her point blank not to screw around with them or touch her with them, and after pretending to put them away, came back with them, and put them on her chest and arm and zapped her.

This asshole *needs * to go to jail.

3

The guy deserves all the pitting you want and I will back you 100%. The mother, meh, she is the mom, I wouldn’t really expect her to be all rational. Parental instincts oftentimes trump reasonableness.

4

Since Mommy thinks it’s okay, maybe she should volunteer to let people zap her with the paddles. You know, “all in good fun”.

5

I don’t think he qualifies.

6

He’s got the brains only a mother could love.

7

I disagree. Not about parental instincts trumping reasonableness, of course. There’s a difference between being protective of one’s offspring and being enabling, or excusing.

Being supportive doesn’t mean that one should ignore the real ills done by one’s child. I think it is indicative that she thinks that being a “good kid” is sufficient explaination to get her son a bye for having killed a woman. Especially when I consider that a possible ten year sentence is more lenient than the brain-donor deserves.

Ethrilist, I mean that as he is a demonstration of the post-operation state.

8

I thought defibrillators only work if the machine doesn’t detect a heartbeat (like it doesn’t try and shock until it has tested for heartbeat).

Of course, that’s supposed to be in the hands of someone trained.

9

I don’t see where she said he deserved a bye for it al. I just got the impression that she was trying to keep folks from thining her son some sort of monster. Yes, she has rose-tinted glasses. But she’s the mom and it may very well be that he is a good kid, except for this one moment of absolute stupidity. Or he may be chronically stupid, I don’t know. I just cannot get worked up over the mother making excuses for her son.

10

I have no sympathy for the mom. She’s the one who raised this cretin. Her protests that “he was just playing” ring a little hollw to me. You don’t “play” by electrocuting somebody. That kind of "playing’’ is sadistic and mean and shows a profound lack of respect for boundaries even if the shock is non-fatal. In addition, this prick had already been warned that the AED’s were dangerous so I’m not buying ignorance as an excuse.

How did he envision this gag turning out? Even if his victim hadn’t died, how could it conceivably have been “funny?” This is the “fun” of a schoolyard bully. Fuck him and fuck his mama.

11

gig, those are the idiot-proof ones, that are used by police, airlines, and other non-trained personnel. The ones in an ambulance, or hospital, are more flexible. And so they can be used on someone with a sinus rythm or an abnormal one.

Gangster Octopus, the exchange at the end of the article where the mother responds to the family of the dead woman’s comparison between the grief of the two families seems to me to imply she feels her son has been unfairly treated. You may disagree, of course. But that’s how I read it.

12

No different than shooting a spit wad. Well, maybe a little bit.

13

The judge convicted him of involuntary manslaughter. I don’t know the legal definitions of such things, but Martin deliberately zapped his coworker. I’m sure he didn’t mean to kill her, but she’s just as dead.

If I had my way, his mother and aunt would be serving sentences, too. I’m sure that Martin learned that he could get away with just about anything from those two, as long as he was just doing it for fun.

14

You’re sure? Interesting.

15

I’ve never understood people that feel they owe such ridiculous loyalty to family members.

I appreciate the fact that someone is family in my life, but I still judge them based on the people they are. Do I excuse things from a family member I wouldn’t from a stranger? Yes. But I actually hold them to a higher standard in a lot of regards, too. And if someone is an abominable human being, then I could care less if they’re my son or father (hell I didn’t speak to my father for 15 years) I’ll not have anything to do with them, and I certainly won’t excuse or accept their actions.

16

I don’t think this makes any difference, but the dumbass yelling at the grieving woman’s family was the aunt. Apparently, her view of how much a “good kid” he is/was is more important than someone else’s death.

17

The stupidity involved in this case is absolutely mind-numbing. It makes my brain hurt. Now, I’m not familiar with either the trial or the case law, but I’m curious if involuntary manslaughter was the most he could be convicted of. He may not have intended to kill her, but he certainly intended to hurt her. Also, he had to go through several steps to do this- turn on the defibrillator, select an energy level, charge the unit, touch her with both paddles, and push the shock buttons. So, he put a lot of thought into what he was doing, especially after being warned not to do it. I’m having a difficult time describing just how mind blowingly stupid this is.

gigi- From how I’m reading this, the device in question was a manual monitor/defibrillator like this Lifepak 12. This would work like I described above. What you’re thinking of is an automated external defibrillator or semi-automatic external defibrillator. Both of these are referred to as AEDs. The difference is a semi-automatic requires the user to push the button to shock, a fully automatic device will shock as soon as it recognizes a shockable rhythm. They are programmed to recognize and defibrillate/cardiovert ventricular fibrillation or ventricular tachycardia. They have no way of telling if the patient actually has a pulse.

St. Urho

18

All true.

If a cop, in the course of “horseplay,” discharged their service weapon in the direction of another officer, even without intending to cause harm, and ended up hitting them square in the eye, I’m pretty confident nobody’s going to shrug it off as a stupid mistake.

We pay for stupid mistakes. His expected payment is meet. Light, even.

19

Unbelievable.

I’ve never understood people who thought it was funny to deliberately cause other people physical pain. It puts me in mind of the bullies at the public pool I went to as a kid, who would hold smaller kids’ head under water to watch them scream and cry in terror. How did this guy end up an EMT?

The judge should tell him that he understands it was all in good fun, and in the same spirit, send him to prison for the full ten years, no 5 year parole option. That’s a joke he should appreciate.

This woman he killed… she sounded like a really good person. What a tragedy.

20

When I first saw this thread, I swear it said MORMON kills woman.