...and as he was best known, as Rameses:
Posted on 03/26/2007 11:44:39 AM PDT by JZelle
NEWARK, N.J. (AP) -- Jason Ray, a North Carolina student who performed as a mascot for the school's basketball team, died three days after being struck by a car hours before an NCAA tournament game. He was 21.
Ray died Monday morning, said Steve Kirschner, the university's associate athletic director for communications.
Ray had been in critical condition at Hackensack University Medical Center since the accident Friday afternoon. He was hit from behind while walking on a highway shoulder near his Fort Lee hotel after going to a nearby convenience store.
Ray performed as UNC's ram mascot, Rameses. He was scheduled to graduate in May with a major in business administration and a minor in religion. He was in New Jersey for the men's game between North Carolina and Southern California.
Emmitt Ray said his son "absolutely loved" dressing up as Rameses, despite the costume's bulk.
(Excerpt) Read more at ap.washingtontimes.com ...
This was reported on Friday night prior to the UNC game but ignored by the MSM over the weekend, including during yesterday's critical game, in which UNC collapsed and lost. One would have reasonably surmised that the young man was recovering.
As usual, the commentators are lazy, gratuitious pigs and did a horrible job of keeping people apprised of this student's condition. Prayers might have helped, but we surely can't have that.
Amen to those sentiments.
Yes, there are many possibilities. An obstacle in his path could have caused him to step around it at that particular point in time. Don't know if there were eyewitnesses, or if the driver even saw the young man before he hit him. He did stop and try to help him, and called 911. That probably prevented others from hitting him too.
It is one of those things that makes you wish to turn back time, and have the young man, as well as the driver, to be more careful.
...and as he was best known, as Rameses:
Could very well have been caused by a culture gap. The article doesn't mention the victim's hometown, but this occurred in an urban area with heavy traffic. People in urban areas don't generally walk on the shoulders of highways, except for motorists whose vehicles are disabled. On the other hand, walking on the shoulder of a highway would be a an ordinary thing to do for a young man from a rural or exurban background. So he may have made a tragic error in judgment - assuming that there was no alcohol involved on the part of either the driver or the pedestrian.
But, again assuming no alcohol, why would the driver of the van would have been using shoulder at all?
I know..that's when the tiny word IF becomes like a log in our eye.
On a much more somber note, my sincerest condolences to the friends and family of the young man. This was indeed a tragedy.
It could also be the case that he was hit by the SUV's side mirror. Around here we have some roads with very narrow lanes and the cars are on the very edge of the road already and wider parts such as side mirrors hang off. Many mailboxes are hit by such mirrors. Just a thought...
The guy who hit him was not drunk, either, or under any influence of substances illegal. That makes TWO families who have a tragedy. This is so very very sad.
It is true the Tar Heel nickname and the Ram mascot are not connected. For the origins of each, go here.
The "Tar Heel" nickname, for the State and for the University, preceded the Ram mascot. I would speculate that "Tar Heel" doesn't really lend itself to a mascot, so we settled on something else. In addition to the costumed Ram figure Jason Ray and many predecessors played, a real ram, his curly horns painted Carolina Blue, is a fixture at football games. Not so satisfactory for indoor events.
Nickname/mascot divergence is not unique to UNC. The Alabama Crimson Tide has an elephant as a mascot, for example.
A number of older highways (at least in my part of the country) have small or non-existant shoulders, but many of the newer roads/ highways have fairly wide highways that allow disabled vehicles to completely pull off the road and give walkers a fairly wide margin of safety.
My educated guess is that Route 4 probably dates back in some form or another to about 1931, which is when the George Washington Bridge was opened. Route 4 kind of serves as a feed-in route for the Bridge going to New York, and an egress route from the Bridge going west in New Jersey for about 15 miles. You probably have a point there when you say the shoulder is narrow, but probably neither the pedestrian nor the car should have been there regardless.
It's late winter. Usually at that time the roads in the area are pretty beat up, and there's a fine assortment of mangled automotive parts and accessories on the shoulders.
Either might have caused either the driver or the walker to alter their path.
That's one theory. I believe it might have raining at the time as well, but am not sure. Also, the possibility alcohol use by either the driver or pedestrian should be considered, as I previously mentioned. (The pedestrian was returning from a "convenience store". What did he buy there?) We obviously don't know all the details from what we've been told by the AP story posted.
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