“A team of construction workers were working on tearing down a building that had caught fire in Quincy last week when the teenagers shot at them with a Nerf gun,” myfoxboston.com reports. “The workers confronted the two teens and cornered them on a dead end road. In an attempt to flee the scene, [Colin] Hayes backed over a a construction worker who sustained a serious injury resulting in a protruding bone in his leg and ankle. Hayes [above] then sped off and ended up going over a 10 foot retaining wall injuring himself and his passenger. The injured construction worker was taken to Boston Medical Center while police booked Hayes on several charges, including assault and battery with a dangerous weapon.”
That’s it, the madness ends now! I insist that we immediately ban the following:
Nerf Guns
Structure fires
Cars that travel in reverse
Retaining walls over 3 feet in height
Further, I move that we institute a registration (both State and Federal) of all dead end roads!
Banning structure fires makes me happy. I swear to God, if I have to re-pack that high rise kit one more time…
I’m sorry but I don’t see anything in the report that suggests that the Nerf launcher is the “dangerous weapon” in question. I would guess the vehicle was the cited dangerous weapon. Lets not get wrapped around the axial just because there was a gun-type device used in the commission of a crime.
I did a quick search and found the Jury Instructions for Mass. cases. These seem to support my assumption. http://www.mass.gov/courts/courtsandjudges/courts/districtcourt/jury-instructions/criminal/pdf/6300-assault-and-battery-by-means-of-a-dangerous-weapon.pdf See page 2 towards the bottom. Part B.
I have a hard time beliveing they charged the nerf gun as the assualt weapon, after all the foam darts didn’t snap the guys femur like a twig. The kids shouldn’t have been terroizing the workers, but by the same token those guys didn’t have to leave the work site. If they had been on my crew and they left the job to get payback on a couple of teens, they would have been fired and I would have ran their asses over for leaving the site and the tools unguarded.
So, you’re working on a site using dangerous/powerful tools that need your undivided attention to conduct your work safely and be responsible to those arround you, and then some punk jackass walks up to you and shoots you with a nerf gun/lights a firecracker behind you/sprays a CO2 fire extinguisher at you/etc./etc. All good fun? And you ‘d fire your crew for trying to teach the little angels a lesson? Do your guys know how you’re watching their six for them? Keep the job, pal, I’ll find work elsewhere.
Mr. Hayes is going to get what he deserves on way or another. More’s the pity he didn’t break his neck going over the retaining wall. Regrettably, the worker get far more than he deserved. If the punk wasn’t such a coward and a fool, none of this would have happened.
Yes I would fire them. Any group of guys that works or has worked for me knows the first thing they should do if there is a problem on the site with the customers or random people is to call thier manager first and let him (me) take of the situation. That is my job as a project manager/supervisor, they get paid to do the work, I get paid to make sure they do the work and act as a buffer between them and the rest of the world. I manage several jobs at the same time, I cannot be there at all times to baby sit, but they all have my cell number. They should have called thier PM or supervisor and then let him handle the situation. My guys also know that if they are in danger or they feel threatened to simply call me and then walk the job. They don’t get paid enough to take that kind of bs.
However they don’t get paid to “teach” anyone any lessons. If they had cuaght those two kids and beat the crap out of them, they could have lost their jobs, lost the contract and invited a lawsuit on the company they worked for becuase they hired pycho’s with rage problems touse heavy tools. “Teaching” those two a lesson could have done more damage then what was already done. It was a bad idea on thier part to leave the site, they put the rest of the crew at danger from loosing a contract and now the crew is a couple of men down, and the site is behind schedule.
Nice attempt at rationalization but I’m not buying it. Those workers had just been assaulted and their safety compromised. It was their duty as citizens and men to take command of the situation and seek justice. Their job wasn’t to ask “Mother, may I?”. A citizen’s arrest would have been totally appropriate. And if it had happen to you, of course you would have kept a cool head and called 911, patiently waiting for the police to arrive to take your statement? Seriously? Also, please note that at no time did I ever suggest or imply that the workers should have “beat the crap out of” their transgressors.
If someone threatens or assaults me, you can bet the farm that I’m not going to wait for my “superior” to green light my response, nor should any man (or woman), let the chips fall where they may. If it costs me a job, so be it. I’ll stand on principle every time, and take what comes my way, before I’ll give up my rights and my duty.
Before you reply, please read the following; Marko Kloos essays “Give them nothing” and “Why the gun is civilization”, as well as Jeff Snyder’s “A Nation of Cowards”. Throw in “The Tao of the Gun”, while you’re at it, by Richard Roberts.
You are clearly a case of someone who needs to “get their mind right, boy”. Look, I don’t know you from Adam or a hole in the ground, but my perspective is that you don’t get the paradigm or the way things should work in the real world. I’ll attribute that to you being young, inexperienced and foolish. Don’t feel bad, we were all, by and large and at one time or another, at the same point in the journey as you are today.
I thought it interesting and karmic that the tale below should be posted by Lyle, over at Joe’s place. Do give it a read and your consideration.
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
Enhanced Penalties
By: Lyle at UltiMAK Wednesday, July 20, 2011 6:01:41 PM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00) ( Crap for brains | Gun Rights | Politics )
Over the years, mostly in the 1990s IIRC, there has been a lot of talk about certain enhanced penalties for “gun crimes”. Even some supposedly on the pro rights side have advocated them, presumably as a compromise to prevent some other, more egregious infringement.
I thought we had dispatched the whole concept years ago, but it came up again in comments here, so I figure it’s time to update some folks who might be new to this game of official, wholesale coercion and persecution of different groups, verses liberty. Besides that, we all know by now that the leftist playbook is very short, and so they have to recycle the old ideas and find a way to make them new again every few years or so.
What you’re saying when you advocate special punishments for “gun crime” is that the same, or very similar, crime committed without a gun is somehow less criminal. What you’re saying is that gun owners are to be treated the way black people were treated before civil rights.
Do you really want to go there?
My sister and her approximately three year old daughter were murdered in their own home by an invader. The killer used a kitchen knife to brutally stab and slash my sister to death, in the presence of her daughter, and then the daughter was strangled to death with a shoestring as the murder weapon.
So you’re saying; “Oh, well thank goodness they were killed with a knife and shoestring, because being shot with a gun would be…just terrible!” And you’re saying to the murderer; “Thank you, my good man, for using a knife and a shoestring instead of a gun. That’s the way we like to see it. Now you’ll get off a little easier.”
WTF..Really?
One of our music store customers in his early teens was minding his own business one night when a carload of other kids stopped, got out, and clubbed him with a baseball bat. He dragged himself some blocks to the steps of a nearby business, and died from the massive head injuries.
“His parents should count their lucky stars their boy wasn’t shot, ’cause that would have been bad news!”
Really?
That’s just as stupid and bigoted as saying that, as an alternative to slavery, we should just have enhanced penalties for black people who commit crimes, and referring to that as “pro civil rights advocacy”. With friends like that I don’t need enemies. I know the enhanced-penalty-for-the-presence-of-guns concept has been bandied about by supposedly pro gun legisladiots, and that you might have been fooled for a moment, but don’t let it happen again. Now you know– such ideas come either from the anti rights movement or from people who can’t think straight and don’t understand what the words “rights” and “justice” mean. We can all do much better without them mucking up the waters.
ETA; Maybe the slavery reference wasn’t the best one. Maybe it should be, “…as stupid and bigoted as saying that, as an alternative to outright lynchings, we should have enhanced penalties for blacks who commit crimes…” Makes everybody happy, right? Everyone gets a little something.
In any case, when we stick to the basic truths, we win. When you compromise the basic principles, you’ve relegated the concept of rights to the back of the bus. You’ve just lost. Creating enhanced penalties for one group verses another is outright dumb, and evil, regardless of the political/tactical environment. If you can’t stand on the principle of basic rights, equality, liberty and justice, well thank you for applying but no– we just can’t use you at this time. Coward.
Cute story, doesn’t apply to this situation. The workers were being harrassed by a nerf gun, the assualt happened becuase the two men cornered the kids who were driving in a car and they freaked out and backed over the men. Had they not of escalted the situation they would not of been injured away from the jobsite. Becuase they left the jobsite and were acting on thier own without authority from their company they are not eligible for workers compensation, had they of stayed on the jobsite, phoned the boss and the police, and they were still injured the company would have payed for their medical bills, which the two men are now responsible for paying on thier own. Any time off would have been covered and paid for by the company and the feds, now they have to take sick days, or sit it out and not get paid for being injured. I own my on Construction company, I do this for a living, I have dealt with and continue to deal with these types of situations. By leaving the jobsite and going off on their own they created a situation which resulted in injury. These aren’t just my guidelines, they are national guidelines for safe working enviroments published by organizations to help prevent accidents. This could have been avoided if they followed those guidelines.
The assault and battery with a deadly weapon charge stems from his using his vehicle to both assault and batter the construction worker. In this case the vehicle is more than capable of causing death or serious injury, and as such can be considered a deadly weapon.
The nerf guns are irrelevant, but because this is a gun site it’s what you got caught up on. Don’t tell anyone, but there are a lot of other types of weapons out there.
+1 for Severe
What other kind of behavior do you expect in a city that reveres the Red Sux?
Lovely. Bet they didn’t think that was going to happen. Bostonians.
It’s a nerf gun… A similar situation would be if they had threw a paper ball at the workers.
Wait a minute … The teen is charged with battery after he ran over a construction worker after a gang of construction-workers “cornered them on a dead end road.” Let’s see … I’m goofing around and hit some construction worker with what amounts to a dry sponge, so he and his buddies are then permitted to corner me and a friend, and I’m not legally permitted to escape? Granted, the teens were clearly the instigators; but Mom and Dad never cared who started it. What justifies a bunch of construction workers cornering a couple teenagers because they were pelted with foam darts? Young people (yes, even ones that are apparently old enough to have their names and photos printed in the paper) are stupid and they don’t realize that hitting a guy on scaffolding with something–no matter how light and soft–can be dangerous. So you yell at them. You don’t chase them down and corner them. Seems to me like there was stupidity and immaturity on both sides of this story.