Crime is really getting bad when its not even safe to ride a bicycle on a trail. :dubious:
Three teen punks ambush a bicycle rider and got him to the ground. I’m assuming they would have beaten him senseless or maybe killed him..
65 year old man managed to shoot two of them and the third was arrested at the scene.
I ride my bicycle a lot for exercise. Its not hard to imagine the terror of seeing three punks coming for you. :eek: Glad the old guy was armed and able to defend himself. I carry pepper spray on my belt.
I have been through that area many times bike commuting. It’s pretty much a permanent crime scene. It’s thick with brush and forces trail users to slow down to negotiate some tight turns, great for ambushing. I’ve never been hassled there, but I do ride with a can of bear spray and an “attitude”. I’m scared every-time. I would be with a gun too.
Does that sort of thing happen often? If so, it’s news to me.
I see it as tragedy all around. The man is probably going to be haunted by what he had to do for the rest of his life. And the teenagers – how did they manage to screw up their lives so soon?
IIRC Reading is the poorest city in America at the moment. Poor people get desperate and desparate people do desperate things. I’m not surprised that this happened but am saddened by it nonetheless.
Folks move to Reading from NYC and Philly to cherry-pick welfare. These fine “yuts” were not in school. It’s a shame they weren’t desperate for an education.
A complete lack of empathy with another human being. Saying that poverty turns people into monsters is deeply insulting to poor people, the majority of whom are average decent human beings.
I doubt it. More likely, they’ll spend a few years in jail - lifting weights, drinking “pruno”, sodomizing “punks”, hanging with their homeboys who are already in jail, swapping criminal strategies, earning “cred” - and then they’ll get out and do the same thing again.
Nobody ever “rots in jail.” If they get a life sentence, then they spend it doing the same shit they did before, only in jail, to other prisoners.