Heartless, inhumane POS!
Posted on 07/15/2005 11:27:28 PM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
Pain has become a companion for Rafael Diaz Jr. Whether he is asleep or wide awake, he can't escape it.
"There is a tremendous amount of pressure around my eye," he said. "During the middle of the night it is hard because the pain is so sharp. And when I wake up in the morning, I keep asking myself, 'Why did they do this to me?' "
It has been about two weeks now, and no one really knows why a group of teenagers and young adults ambushed Diaz's tanker truck off of Donald Lee Hollowell Parkway while he was on his way to an early-morning fuel delivery. Two people have been arrested in the attack.
What is known is that the savagery of the act has left Diaz physically and emotionally scarred for life.
"My whole life has changed," he said. "This was a group of people who had bad intentions."
Diaz's mother, Evelyn Wilson, has been taking care of him since the attack, making sure he takes his medicine and gets rest, which has been hard. The night before, he woke up screaming.
"I don't know what words to use, because I am so angry inside," Wilson said at her Dallas, Ga., home. "I just try each day to be spiritually strong."
The right side of Diaz's head is shaved, revealing a hook-like scar that begins at his ear and ends above his eye, which doctors are hopeful he will see out of again.
"I am upset that people would actually do what they have done," Diaz said. "I'm just a human being. It was like these people were heartless."
In the early morning of July 5, Diaz said he and another trucker each picked up fuel in Powder Springs to deliver to Newnan. About 2 a.m., Diaz made his way to Donald Lee Hollowell Parkway.
"As I approached to make a right on [Hollowell], I see a huge group on my right-hand side," he recalled. "They had made a makeshift roadblock out of chunks of cinderblock. The next thing I know, it was like a meteor shower."
Diaz said that, as he was driving about 35 mph, rocks and fireworks started raining down on him. He said someone threw a smoke bomb into the cab of his truck. Then came the bottle rocket, which hit him on his right temple and exploded.
"The bottle rocket startled me. It was so overwhelming. I didn't know what to think."
He said he made an abrupt turn to the left. The tanker, filled with 7,500 gallons of diesel fuel, jumped the curb and skidded on its side.
"I just remember the truck sliding down the embankment. The sound of screeching metal," said Diaz, grateful that this was a day he wasn't hauling gasoline or jet fuel. "I tried my hardest to bring it back to the road."
When the truck came to a crashing stop, Diaz saw blood everywhere. And he could smell the raw fuel, although there was no major spill.
"There was a large shard of metal sticking out of my head," he said. "When I reached to touch it, I could hear it inside my head."
The accident and the pain disoriented him, and the blood made it hard for him to see. At least that is what he assumed. "I could feel my eye resting on my cheekbone," Diaz said.
He estimates that there were between 20 and 30 people around the accident.
"You would think that once they saw the catastrophe, they would have taken off — or helped me," Diaz said. Neither happened.
He tried to climb head-first out of the passenger-side window, but couldn't. He cried for help.
"I was screaming," Diaz said. "When I would scream, they were mocking me. Taking it as a joke. It sounded like they were partying. They started banging on the truck."
Still trying to get out, he said he could hear someone kicking out the driver's-side windshield and yelling for him to get out. But, fearing that he could damage his eye further by crossing over the glass, Diaz asked them to help him get out the other window.
"Before I could finish my sentence, someone pulled my leg and pulled me out of the front windshield. Dragging me out on my ass."
Resting on his hands and knees, he pleaded for help. But he said the crowd still mocked him and beat on the truck. He said someone kept slapping him in the back of the head, "like a dog." Others patted him down. Someone stole his wallet.
"One person had a flashlight. He was flashing me with it in the face. When I looked up, he gasped when he saw me. He had my wallet in his hand."
Diaz said he snatched his wallet and again started yelling for help.
"The guy with the flashlight said, 'If you don't shut the [expletive] up, we will [expletive] up that [expletive] eye of yours. I kept thinking, 'Why isn't anyone helping me?' "
At that point, Diaz said a young woman came to him and told him to calm down, "because I was gonna get the wrong people over here." He said the woman started telling him that Jesus would protect him.
"I didn't want to hear that. I wanted to get out of there."
Police believe the person who held the flashlight is a 16-year-old they now have in custody, charged with robbery and terrorist acts and threats, for allegedly taking the wallet, which Diaz said contained $800. Anthony Boyd Jr., 18, was also arrested for allegedly throwing the bottle rocket and released on $1,000 bond.
Diaz said he believes the woman was part of the group that initially attacked his truck and had seen enough of the attack.
No other arrests have been made — which rankles Diaz. "There were 20 to 30 teens out there, and they only got one?" he said.
Atlanta police spokeswoman Sylvia Abernathy said the investigation is ongoing and that more arrests could be made.
"But we are confident that the two suspects we have identified contributed directly to Mr. Diaz's accident and the injuries he sustained," Abernathy said, adding that Boyd, the 16-year-old and eyewitnesses have continued to give them information. "APD is working hard to identify any other suspects."
Paramedics arrived and took Diaz to Grady Memorial Hospital, where he underwent more than seven hours of surgery. Doctors had to rebuild his eye socket and cheekbone. He will go through months, if not years, of rehabilitation. If his eye doesn't heal, he will not be able to drive commercial trucks anymore.
Yet he only wants answers.
"If I could get to get those guys, I would ask them why did they do this? What were your intentions? What was going through your mind?" he said. "I want them to look me in the face and tell me they are sorry. Tell me why. That is all I want."
I lived in Kansas City, Missouri, for a while. If ever there was a black school district that was utterly and completely broken, it's that one. All they ever ask for is more money, and more money is given with no expectations and no requirements. Sad to see so many generations of inner-city blacks lost.
This is no big deal, just some teenage kicks, lighten up already.....the judicial system did...$1,000 bond???!!!??.
Atlanta is the Poster boy for the out of control black culture of criminality.
I see that the Grorgian gun-Rights communities' efforts to allow legally armed citizens the right to an effective self-defense is being wasted. See my dot.sig
Colleges of education turn out inferior teachers and tenure keeps them in front of the classroom.
It is a national disgrace and disaster.
Heartless, inhumane POS!
No, he needs to see his family executed in front of him. Then, hang him. This animal and people who produce animals like this need to be executed and removed from the gene pool. They are a cancer on our society. There needs to be a shoot to kill order for any other animals involved in incidents as this. These slime are NOT humans.
It certainly sounds like a neighborhood that would be greatly improved by a liberal application of napalm.
He's one of a much larger group - many I assume minors.
There is a cancer that the people in this community need to cut out.
I've never understood how people could say that they didn't try to kill that driver.
I am still shocked at the $1000 bail and only two arrests. The DA reminds me of the DA in San Francisco. Too bad the driver can't bring a civil suit against these savages, nothing to sue for. Hopefully, the company he drivers for has good disability insurance.
Savages.
Someone tries to murder me and is let out of jail had better leave the county and not leave a trial.
How long before Atlanta is another Detroit as more and more of the law abiding leave.
Wishing the best for Mr. Diaz.
http://www.ajc.com/opinion/content/opinion/0705/11attack.html
Keep fury colorblind
> As Atlantans assail how hoodlums attacked a tanker driver, don't let racism cloud the search for answers
> Published on: 07/11/05
The vicious rampage by marauding hoodlums in Atlanta that left truck driver Rafael Diaz Jr. critically wounded last Tuesday has whipped up palpable outrage. Law enforcement officials must swiftly bring the perpetrators of this sickening attack to justice and punish them to the fullest extent of the law. Police have already made two arrests; more are possible.
But once Diaz's assailants have been jailed and our collective anger has subsided, what then? The circumstances leading up to this horrifying incident — and the subsequent public response to it — point to deep-rooted problems that are often too painful to discuss but mustn't be ignored.
While the police investigation into the attack is ongoing, this much is known: Diaz was hauling diesel fuel in a tanker truck along Donald Lee Hollowell Parkway (formerly Bankhead Highway) near the Bankhead Courts public housing projects about 2 a.m. Without warning, a throng of teenagers began hurling rocks and concrete blocks at his vehicle.
One of the assailants either threw or fired a lighted bottle rocket into the cab; it exploded when it hit Diaz in the head, causing him to lose control. After the truck tumbled down an embankment, Diaz was allegedly robbed by one of the teens. Some at the scene reportedly came to his aid while others danced atop his fallen rig.
The attack on Diaz was apparently not the first time motorists and others have been pelted by rocks in that area. Firefighters responding to minor incidents in the community have also been assaulted, and MARTA had suspended rail service in the area at least once for the same reason.
This type of lawless atmosphere would not long be tolerated in more affluent neighborhoods, nor should police have allowed it to continue in a low-income community where residents have just as much right to live in safety and free of fear. But blaming the police isn't enough. The parents of the teenagers involved cannot be pardoned from their obligation to monitor their children's whereabouts and to be held legally responsible for their misconduct.
Furthermore, the community at large must reject insidious elements of pop culture that celebrate wanton criminality. The so-called "thug life" is nothing more than a dead end.
So, too, is the reflexive impulse by those who seek to use this incident as an excuse to engage in a perverse brand of racial brinkmanship. Several letters to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution have claimed that if Diaz had been black and his attackers had been white, certain self-appointed spokesmen for the African-American community would no doubt have played the race card, pre-emptively claiming that the driver's civil rights had been violated.
Those sentiments, however, are merely the flip side of racial demagoguery, not an antidote to it. Those who wish to exploit racial fears and feed stereotypes can stake no moral or intellectual high ground.
There is still much to be learned about the shameful episode on a darkened Atlanta street last week. It would be just as shameful if we lost our shared humanity and sense of community in the process.
Gee, I never thought some black kids would do such a thing. They're always so civil and dress so nice.
Just as with white kids, many black kids are civil and well dressed.
These were thugs.
If one ever wanted an on-the-spot description of "utter depravity", this story fills that sqare.
He doesn't look so big and bad without the other animals around him, does he? His parent(s) should be in jail with him. Just a matter of time before his kind turns into official terrorists. Thank you democrats, thank you Atlanta - but most of all, thank the community that produces these worthless users of oxygen.
The scene here in Durham may be the most typical: It's in this enormous swell of the black middle class, in particular, that home schooling is taking off. Though Durham has won awards recently for improving its inner-city schools, the Smiths worried about peer influences on their children. "We frankly didn't want our kids becoming the kind of kids we see hanging around," says Ms. Smith.
But a chief worry for teachers, according to National Education Association, is the fact that along with avoiding school violence and unsavory peer influences, home-schooled students often miss out on positive socialization, too. No matter what their grades, the criticism goes, they're missing a crucial part of the American curriculum: fraternization with peers. ..........................***
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Strong families don't want the kind of "socialization" that brought about this assault.
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