Intensive care doctor, 33, is hit and killed with his own Mercedes by carjackers who jumped in when he left the engine running while delivering a package to his girlfriend

Daily Mail UK ^ | March 10, 2022 | Alyssa Guzman

[Morgana]

An intensive care unit doctor was hit and killed by his own Mercedes while chasing down the carjackers who stole the car.

Dr. Rakesh Patel, 33, of Silver Springs, Maryland, had his car stolen on Vernon Street in the Adams Morgan neighborhood of Washington DC on Tuesday around 8pm.

Patel had left his car running when he got out to give a package to his girlfriend Rachel Lincoln.

As the couple embraced, at least one carjacker jumped inside the doctor's car and sped off.

Patel ran after them but was run over by the thief when he caught up with them on the corner of Florida Avenue and 18th Street, a busy intersection surrounded by row houses and shops and is home to a diverse community. The Adams Morgan community is known for its nightlife and international dining on 18th Street - where Patel was hit - and having cheaper rent than other parts of the DC area. Despite it's lower rent, the area is consider one of the oldest and nicest neighborhoods in Washington DC.

He was pronounced dead shortly after being taken to a nearby hospital.

Lincoln described the moment as 'a nightmare,' as she witnessed her boyfriend's final moments, and now his family is left grieving over the senseless killing.

'[He died] for what? A car?' his mother Charulatta Patel told NBC Washington. 'I always used to call him my baby.'

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MedStar also said it was 'heartbroken to learn of the sudden passing' of Patel and that he was completing a residency fellowship in infectious diseases and critical care.

'Dr. Patel will be greatly missed,' MedStar Washington wrote on Twitter.

Patel was in DC on a critical care fellowship at MedStar Washington Hospital Center.

[Bigg Red]

So very true. The “news” media have blood on their hands.

[Jamestown1630]

Maybe I’m confused because I’ve seen transcribed genealogical records from the 17th-18th centuries that list birth or death locations as ‘Prince George County, Maryland’. That indicates to me that that is what the originals said - genealogists and historians tend to be precise in that sort of thing.

But maybe even in the beginning people weren’t uniform in writing it.

[the OlLine Rebel]

Oh if you mean originally, of course that could’ve happened. Although I don’t recall if PGCo. is that old, or was part of Anne Arundel as most of us were.

Ancient records are unreliable, anyway, as they spelled things the way they wished. People’s names changed all the time.

But all my life, it’s always possessive.

[Jamestown1630]

Well, it was originally founded and named by the English in 1696, and parcels were changed around a lot; and yes, there were a lot of irregularities in spelling and language then.

I found at least two antique maps/atlases that show it as ‘Prince George’ (though this first one from LOC may just be a function of the phrasing - it said 'County of Prince George'):

https://www.loc.gov/resource/g3850m.gla00496/?st=gallery

For this one from Hopkins, you have to go down and view/open to see the pages (can't get the html to work with this one):

https://jscholarship.library.jhu.edu/handle/1774.2/33000?show=full

Another question is, when did they officially add the apostrophe? It wasn’t in the seal until around 1971, and this street map which appears to be from the 70s or 80s doesn’t have it either. Was the earlier version just the practice of older English? (This might be a job for actually going into a library :-)

[the OlLine Rebel]

I was born in ‘69, and I’ve never known it any way else.

That ADC map is from the ‘80s. My mom was a realtor then and had all the ADC maps all the time (we still have many of them). It’s a “mistake”. Maybe my mom thinks differently; I don’t know. She’s been alive since the Hindenburg crashed albeit is only a Baltimore native.

[Jamestown1630]

Well, I’m about 15 years older than you are, and I miss those map books a lot - I had them for the whole Metro DC. My husband was saying the other day that he wants to buy new ones, but I’m not sure you can still buy up-to-date ones (they used to be in every 7-11 and drugstore).

They were a lot easier for me to read and understand than internet map directions; and a GPS would drive me nuts.

(Do you remember TripTiks? I think those are all online now, and not much different from Google or Mapquest.)

[the OlLine Rebel]

Not sure the ADC is still out. ADC was bought by a series of companies over the decades. I loved them. I have every county of MD from I believe the Langenscheidt iteration, which my husband bought for me some 15 years ago. When I worked in hardware store in 2015 they were selling them, but yet another company and they were smaller. Not sure their status now!

I have to admit I’ve become pretty addicted to the iPhone maps. But, they don’t show the streets easily since it’s so small but the route indicates where to go.

I almost never used TripTiks but I got one in the ‘90s for my trips back and forth to home from CT. Occasionally my parents got some earlier, but mostly they just used roadmaps of the states.

[Jamestown1630]

When you go to ADC, it transfers you to something called ‘Kappa Map Group’.

They have a PG map, but it’s sold out.

This place might be useful:

https://www.omnimap.com/catalog/cats/maryland.htm#p5

It seems that when things get faster and easier to access, they also fall greatly in quality and become more complicated to use. ‘Progress’ is always a tradeoff.

(Have I said before that I really miss old-fashioned landline telephones?)

(sigh)

[the OlLine Rebel]

When you say “landline”, what exactly do you mean?

We still use landlines. The electronic portable phones are great, but we still have a corded phone always available just in case.

I’m irritated by people discarding the landline for cell phones. Why? Because when they’re AT HOME, cell phones are individual phones, and we have to have #s for every person in the house instead of just one.

E.g., my BIL has his adult girls living with him. They no longer have a landline. If I want to call someone, I can’t just call a catch-all phone to talk to SOMEone and find out what’s going on! I have to call all 3 before I might hit someone.

All the more why I still have a landline.

[CFW]

“diverse community”. Love the way that way they slipped that in there. “Diversity our strength” they say.

[Jamestown1630]

Yes, I can’t remember a POTS (or’Plain Old Telephone System’) going dead in my life, unless a car accident or a storm actually knocked out a pole and lines - and I can’t recall that happening at any of my homes.

You didn’t have to charge them, they worked even when the electricity went out, and the voice quality was always far superior to today’s cell phones.

Where I am, the only ‘corded’ option is VoIP - which is NOT a landline. They switched out all of the old plug-into-the-wall options - in some areas, you have no choice, now.

Someone posted a joke here a few years ago:

“A man heard his kids always complaining about losing their cellphones. He said, ‘Wouldn’t it be great if someone invented a phone that plugged into the wall, so you’d never lose it?’”

I have an old dial one that I’m thinking of having refurbished to work with VoIP. I just like old-fashioned phones.

I guess I’m old...

[nascarnation]

Amazingly I’m getting 22 Mbps DSL on an old “twisted pair” of copper wires from ATT.

[the OlLine Rebel]

MyMIL used her rotary phone up until a few months before her COVID death last year.

I hate that Verizon (AT&T) got rid of just plain phone power. It has to be FIOS, so it’s fiber-optic rather than independent power. We have to have a stupid back-up battery pack that doesn’t fit well now for power outages. Used to be phones worked regardless, as you stated.

But, it’s still better than purely relying on cells.

[Jamestown1630]

Where are you?

We had no problem using the copper-pair landline for telephone and Internet where we lived before. I don’t know if they still have that now, or if it would even work for everything we do now - and that was about 18 years ago.

No option for it here, anyway.

[Jamestown1630]

How long does your phone work, if electricity goes out?

[aculeus]

An excellent “prevent” defense against carjackers: standard shift.

99% of US criminals cannot drive shift.

Invest in driving instruction by a pro with the money you save by not buying automatic (several hundred dollars).

[Jamestown1630]

We’re hearing now that thugs are beginning to siphon gas out of cars, just like in the 1970s...)

[nascarnation]

Indiana.
ATT just installed fiber cable in our ‘hood last week so I’ll probably switch when they get it connected.

Most excitement we’ve had in 20 years, the crew of braceros punctured a gas line and we had to evacuate for the afternoon until it was repaired.

[the OlLine Rebel]

I can’t tell you. It’s been so long since the change was forced. It’s just a huge bank of D batteries that has to be plugged in near the input to the house! Hence, we never even did it - we’d have to move our wall units somewhere else and don’t know what to do.

Fortunately we RARELY have power out - our entire neighborhood has underground. So we really haven’t had to test anything.

[Jamestown1630]

Oh, gosh.

Another apartment building in our area had a ruptured gas line recently - second one in about five years. I think it was a plumber confusing a gas line for a plumbing pipe. Lots of folks injured/displaced.