Posted on 07/23/2016 1:10:05 AM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
When communication about the unspeakable stupidity of the recent U.S. 231 rock-throwing incidents first popped into my email inbox a couple months back, the subject line made me gasp.
"Rock throwing arrests," read the line heralding arrival of an email from Owen County Prosecutor Don VanDerMoere, a likable former deputy prosecutor for Putnam County who still keeps in contact.
Before I could even click to open it, my heart was pounding and my mind went to thoughts like, "Oh, my god they finally caught those guys."
However, it was a leap of faith to a wrong conclusion.
Instead we have two Owen County men facing charges (48 thus far cumulatively) in Putnam and Owen counties for throwing rocks at vehicles and damaging more than 25 in the process.
Obviously more menace than Mensa, the two have admitted hurling 50-100 rocks at northbound vehicles on U.S. 231 between Greencastle and tiny Carp, north of Spencer.
Boy, did they pick the wrong county to start throwing rocks at cars.
Anyone who was living in the Greencastle area and was old enough to pay attention to the world in 1991 would have only one thought upon seeing or hearing the words "rock throwing arrests."
Poor Marsa Gipson.
It will be 25 years on Saturday, Aug. 27 that we all felt the horror and shame that accompanies such a senseless and godless act as someone raining rocks down upon a car traveling along Interstate 70 just for the sport of it.
That despicable act claimed the life of Gipson, a 28-year-old Arcadia woman whose only mistake was choosing to drive through Putnam County in the wee hours of the morning.
Such an irrational act and its dire outcome have helped make anyone who drives the interstate a little uneasy when they go under an overpass.
While no major injuries were reported in the recent rock-throwing incidents on U.S. 231, one female driver did go to the hospital with concerns that glass fragments may have lodged in her throat.
But that doesn't mean something much more dire may not have been possible.
After all, any reasonable person would understand that such a thing could easily result in injury or death. It's difficult to explain why somebody would want to throw a heavy rock or anything else down on a car traveling at 65 or 70 mph.
Cheap thrills, intoxication, boredom perhaps ... those have been the prevailing notions related to any theory in the case. But everyone concerned is long finished with theories. They want to solve Marsa Gipson's death.
Gipson was en route to Terre Haute with a male companion, heading to pick up her young children (ages 9 and 10 in 1991), approaching the 33-mile marker (eight miles west of Cloverdale) westbound.
As they went under the Manhattan Road overpass at about 1:15 a.m., two large chunks of riprap -- later estimated to weigh 21 or 22 pounds -- were hurled down upon Gipson's Chevrolet Camaro.
One chunk bounced off the hood, missing the windshield on the passenger's side, while the other jagged piece slammed through the driver's side of the windshield, striking the unsuspecting Gipson.
The impact fatally injured Gipson, who died at the scene moments later from massive head trauma.
In the intervening 25 years, multiple unanswered questions have lingered in the case. A quarter-century has now passed without any resolution or closure, even after investigators and the victim's family returned to the scene eight years ago for a thorough reconstruction of the incident.
More than 100 people have been interviewed in the case, ranging from the proverbial "persons of interest" to interstate travelers to those who might have secondhand knowledge of what the usual suspects may have said or done on the bridge or in the aftermath of the incident.
But time and distance have conspired to cloud memories and stunt the process. Some of those presumed involved have long ago moved away. At least one is in prison elsewhere.
Of course, the only charge still viable in the case is murder. The statute of limitations expired on everything else in 1998 (seven years after the incident). There is no statute of limitations for a murder charge.
"It's murder or it's nothing," Prosecutor Tim Bookwalter has stressed before.
Regardless, the image and the randomness of what happened to Marsa Gipson in 1991 is like every driver's worst nightmare.
"Every time I hear of a case where something is thrown off an overpass, I can't help but think of Marsa," a longtime investigator once told me.
And believe me, I've seen the damage something like a chunk of rock can do to a windshield at 70 mph.
Daughter Kara was heading home from St. Louis a few years back when a hefty five-inch industrial bolt either bounced off a truck or flew off a piece of machinery in the I-70 construction zone, crashing right through her windshield and landing in the back seat of her second-hand BMW.
A couple inches to the left and that bolt likely would have hit her in the head. Then her little "Kara Bernsee bolt of death," as she likes to call it, wouldn't be much of a joke.
Those drivers on 231 have to feel like they were a bit lucky, too.
Yet if their incidents can do more than just remind us of the Marsa Gipson case and bring to light those involved, it would be worth all the broken windshields in the world.
I was an IDIOT in my teens. Threw a finished 40 out the window on a busy Blvd two or three times.
I could have killed someone and would have deserved 20 years.
I got lucky. I NEVER thought about throwing rocks onto cars!!! but I guess what i did was just as dangerous.
I tossed a very heavy Champagne bottle out of the sunroof on my BMW which could have killed someone. Fortunately, I was stopped at a traffic light at the time and the only damage was an $800 trunk repair. The bottle did not even break. It just bounced off the trunk lid and slowly rolled to the curb.
Your post is perfect for this article.
I have no idea what a finished 40 is and I have no idea what, exactly, is being reported in the article. Is there new information of some kind buried deep inside that poorly written piece?
Not really all that curious.
I imagine a “Finished 40” is a fully drunk 40 oz. bottle of beer, ale or malt liquor.
The web site cited looks unfinished, with the greyed heading “Banner Graphic”, but that really is its name. It took some hunting, but the location is Indiana.
I always hated going to New York City, because I knew that in NYC an invisible dustbusterwould hover over my back pocket and suck up my money. So, when I had to pick someone up in just outside of JFK Airport, I was determined to pick up my friend and go back to Connecticut.
Leaving the airport area, some friendly New Yorker decided to say hello by dropping something (preumably a rock or small brick) onto my windshield from an over pass, ruining the windshield, and almost shattering it completely.
I didn’t even leave my car, and the dustbuster won again anyway.
Probably an empty 40oz malt liquor bottle, but your point is well taken. The article is a mess.
And so....what? Keep chucking away? What a terrible author.
Were not we ALL?
Threw a golfball sized rock out of the back of a 6 by (when in the service) as we were going down the road at a good clip.
My target was a tree about 30' off the road.
Just wanted to see if I could hit it while moving.
It was a wee bit in front of the truck when I tossed the rock. That sucker DID hit the tree (much to my amazement) but then it richoceted right back at me and clobbered me in the side!
(Yeah... I quit throwing at things...)
I read it twice and all I could come up with was "Huh?"
Years ago I was out for a run and heard a woman screaming. It was not nearby, so by the time I got there to “help,” a police car was on the scene.
Some moron kids in a car threw an egg at her windshield (she was moving toward them) but missed and hit her in the face. Pieces of the shell went into her eye, but no major damage.
The closing speed of the cars was probably 80 and the egg was probably tossed at least 20 for a total of 100 miles/hour or more. Had it hit her in the eye, she would have lost that eye.
“Hurling 50-100 pound rocks.” Wow!
Looked up the I-70 overpass on Google Earth - the subject location for most of this story.
Latitude: 39°30’23.25”N
Longitude: 86°56’43.07”W
It was a dark and stormy night when communication about the unspeakable stupidity of the recent...
what’s a 40?
Maybe no morning humor but I am shocked at FR members admitting to the things the are in this discussion thread. These are crimes that could and MAY have injured or killed someone. If your crime could be matched up to property damage, to personal injury, even to death, what is the statute of limitations? The death penalty is too good a result. One person writes about the police officer not caring, which seems about par for the FR members commenting on this discussion thread. I am shocked, seriously shocked. People die from these actions. For those admitting such actions, for admitting drunk driving, do you really know if you did or did not hurt anyone?
Why be shocked? We all sin.
NOT by drunk driving or potentially killing people we don’t.
Whether I was a teenage idiot or not, I've never thrown anything onto a roadway for "fun." Many other people who might've been teenage idiots once haven't either.
I'm not going to cast the first stone (that'd hurt!), I'm not shocked by the admissions as such, and I'm not shocked that anyone on this site may have committed certain acts in the past--but I've never liked statements like "we were all teenage idiots" used as an excuse or dismissal for serious things.
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