Posted on 08/19/2009 11:47:00 AM PDT by markomalley
SOUTHBRIDGE — Police now say a Southbridge woman allegedly stabbed several times by her boyfriend because she refused to get an abortion may not have been pregnant.
Chief Daniel Charette told The Telegram & Gazette on Tuesday that police now think 28-year-old Leah Diver was not pregnant, but that her 18-year-old boyfriend believed she was. Diver remains in the hospital in critical condition following the stabbing early Friday morning.
The boyfriend, Alex Santana, is being held on $500,000 bail. He is charged with armed assault with intent to murder and assault and battery with a dangerous weapon.
Santana’s mother questioned why a 28-year-old woman wanted to be with her son, who just turned 18 last week. The mother said Diver became upset when her son tried to end their relationship.
There are so many levels of wrong in this story, I just don't know where to begin...
Ooops! I guess she didn’t die. Make that “stabbed woman.”
Grammatically, "woman" is the antecedent of the pronoun, "her."
Adjectives and adverbs modify (change).
Pronouns have antecedents.
He should have been charged with practicing medicine without a license.
And men have no "right" to shirk their obligation to that child for the next 18 years, 9months. Only mothers can claim it would inconvenince them too much. Nearly 19 years of financial obligation isn't considered an inconvenience apparently.
She became so upset that she ran into a knife in his hand 18 times.
“She became so upset that she ran into a knife in his hand 18 times”
In Massachusetts, that is likely how it will be viewed.
There’s no referential ambiguity (’her son’ clearly refers back to ‘mother’), so no harm, no foul.
When someone purports to be offering a grammar lesson, he should use the correct grammatical term.
When someone purports to be offering a grammar lesson, he should use the correct grammatical term.
Yeah, I hate it when that happens...
Folks, if the truth were known,
we’d probably be staggered with the number of abortions
that are coerced by family, boyfriends, or molesters.
And planned deathhood couldn’t care less.
I disagree. The noun immediately preceding the "her" is "woman."
Usually that noun will be assumed to be the antecedent.
If you say that "her" clearly takes "mother" as the antecedent, I would ask you how it is that that is clear.
In and of itself, then, that makes the antecedent of the pronoun, "her" ambiguous.
The use of ‘mother’ at the beginning of the sentence sets the reader up for ‘her son’; in contrast, the 28-year-old is called a ‘woman’, not a ‘mother’. The sense of the sentence is preserved in spite of the slight grammatical infraction.
Thank you.
I have to get back to the ivory tower now.
A tower made of ivory? Amazing!
Run and hide. The grammar police are on this thread.
I have never seen a story try so hard to paint the aggressor as the victim.
... either with practicing medicine without a license or with attempted double homicide...
If the woman were a school teacher this would be understandable.
There are so many levels of wrong in this story,
One of the levels of wrong is that it sounds like the 28-year-old-woman was trying to hold onto her 18 year old boyfriend by telling him she was pregnant.
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