Posted on 05/05/2015 7:16:21 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Renowned neurosurgeon and potential 2016 GOP presidential candidate Ben Carson, said Friday that the injury suffered by 25-year-old Freddie Gray who died on April 19 after being gravely injured while in the custody of Baltimore police officers "would be almost impossible to acquire…by simply rolling around in a van."
In an announcement highlighting criminal charges against six Baltimore police officers Friday, the city's newly elected State's Attorney Marilyn Mosby said Gray suffered a spinal injury while being transported in a police van and charged that the failure of the police to put a seatbelt on him was a crucial factor in how he was injured.
"Mr. Gray suffered a severe and critical neck injury as a result of being handcuffed, shackled by his feet and unrestrained inside the B.P.D. wagon," said Mosby.
An earlier report in The Washington Post citing a police document had suggested that Gray may have been intentionally trying to hurt himself while being transported in the police van.
Carson, who served as head of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore before retiring in 2013, said however that it is quite unlikely that Gray's injury was self-inflicted.
"The type of injury incurred by Mr. Freddie Gray at the base of the cervical spine with significant damage to the spinal cord requires a great deal of direct pressure to that area. It would be almost impossible to acquire such an injury by simply rolling around in a van, regardless of how violently," said Carson in a post to his Facebook page. "Therefore, there is a high likelihood that direct trauma occurred."
(Excerpt) Read more at christianpost.com ...
Yes. An exposed bolt could definitely do the job. A metal rod is stronger than flesh or discs. You don't have to be an MD, physicist or mechanical engineer to figure that out.
And so the Carsonisms begin.
He thinks that inanimate objects commit crimes. His opinion is of no value. Despite for not drinking all the liberal Kool-aid and making some valid statements about the direction our country is going, he never was and still isn’t a Republican.
Well, if you wanted someone “speculating”, then Ben Carson is someone who could make a pretty good guess.
My thoughts also. He doesn't have enough information to be doing this. Very irresponsible. Reflects very badly on him as a candidate.
Well I respect his opinion. I do think if Gray was trying to slam the door open to escape that he could have caused the injury himself.
Republican he may well be. But conservative? That’s altogether different.
Did Carson actually see all the medical reports or is he speculating on news reports? Big difference.
After reading it in more detail (should have started out that way), I see that Carson is just saying it couldn’t have happened by just a failure to place a seatbelt on him like the prosecution is charging.
That’s the problem with most people who comment. They read the headline and then make a conclusion without bothering to read the article.
Well...won’t he just make a perfect “expert” for the prosecution?
Yes. I’m guilty of that more than I would like to admit. I’m trying to do better. LOL! Sometimes the source is one I do not wish to directly visit. Usually it’s just that I am going too fast or being lazy.
“Republican he may well be. ...”
Not really even a Republican, he joined the party last November in order to run for president. Has anyone even asked him whether he voted for Obama in 2008? He talks some sense about economic and social issues but he believes that inanimate objects commit crimes, that people in the inner cities don’t deserve the full protection of the bill of rights and it’s pretty clear he swallow most of the rest that the radical left has to offer, including the race baiting.
Better still, don't live in a place where they need paddy wagons!
Despite Dr. Carson's vast expertise, I suspect that if you handcuff and restrain a person, lock him inside a metal box, and then drive the metal box fast enough over potholed streets, it is possible to severely injure him.
IIRC, Baltimore has paid out a lot of money for injuries that occurred under similar circumstances.
If the doctor has not examined the body or read the coroner’s report, this is pure speculation based on hearsay of interested parties.
And it is not intelligent to engage in such speculation.
I disagree. To my knowledge, the coroner’s report is not released. If Dr. Carson has not seen the report (at a minimum) or examined the body himself, this is uninformed speculation, because he is relying on second hand information from interested (read: biased) parties to for the opinion.
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Carson is falling off most people’s radar; he had to step up and rescue his image.
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>> “Ben Carson is someone who could make a pretty good guess.” <<
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Yes, he correctly guessed that people had forgotten all about him, and were moving on to real candidates.
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One of the things that suggests that it was self inflicted is the location of the bolt. The officers never entered the van. The door would have had to be closed for him to have slammed against it where the bolt is supposedly located.
I agree on Dr. Carson. I can’t believe all of the candidiates entering the race that have absolutely no chance of winning. In some cases, I suspect ulterior motives.
Yeah, a deeper reading of the article is necessary.
However, I will say that when I was in elementary school a kid knocked himself out during a school bus ride. There was one particular bump on the route where if you were sitting in the last couple rows (behind the rear wheels) and pushed up at just the right time going over it you could catch serious air. The kid pushed up too hard and put the top of his head right into the bus’s metal roof.
He didn’t have anything more than a slight concussion, and it was the 70’s, but we were still all banned from doing that, as a result.
It’s easy enough to imagine a scenario where if he’d come back down differently, out of his seat and onto the rear emergency exit door handle, it could have been a lot worse. So I’m not quick to dismiss the notion that police negligence (failure to strap him in) or even an act of commission (”nickle ride” back to the station) were major contributing factors in the fatal injury.
Oh, I’m sorry, when did Carson get to examine the body? I must have missed that memo. I honestly have no idea what happened, but I doubt that Carson does, either. He just keeps opening his yap...almost as if he wants to lose.
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