America’s Democrat-controlled major cities have been at the forefront of “social justice” calls to scale back policing and put an end to “mass incarceration.”
Predictable consequences have promptly followed in what are becoming urbanized war zones.
Reports that three teens had gone on a subway slashing spree in New York City, randomly maiming individuals along the way, made headlines over the May 15-16 weekend. It is now emerging that the deranged acts were not as spontaneous as they first may have sounded.
The May 14 attacks “left five victims bloodied and battered in lower Manhattan,” the New York Daily News luridly detailed.
“One of the victims of a horrific subway stabbing spree lost his eye in the attack — and the teenage suspects staged the early-morning rampage as part of a gang initiation, prosecutors said Sunday,” the paper reported May 16.
Taquarious Soto-Burgos, 19; Joseph Foster, 18, and a 16-year-old boy have been arrested and charged with robbery and weapons possession.
“The violence started at 4:20 a.m., when the underage suspect first demanded money from a 44-year-old man on a downtown No. 4 train approaching the Union Square station and then sliced his face, while Soto-Burgos urged him on by yelling ‘Do it again!’ prosecutors alleged,” the Daily News reports.
“The victim escaped, but the teens turned on other passengers, viciously punching a 41-year-old man in the face and slicing a 40-year-old man’s nose open as the subway neared Astor Place,” the paper’s account continues.
“Those victims also fled, and the teens stayed onboard to terrorize yet another victim, a 44-year-old man, demanding his money and his cell phone and slashing his head when he resisted, prosecutors said. That victim escaped as well.”
It sounds like a storyline straight out of Charles Bronson’s Death Wish film franchise. And not the intelligent, thoughtful first movie, but one of the over-the-top sequels at that.
While New Yorkers now ride the subways at their own peril, Chicagoans may find just sticking their heads outdoors to be a risky venture.
“At least five people have been killed, and 32 others wounded in shootings across Chicago since Friday evening [May 14], including a 2-year-old girl who was shot in Little Village on the Southwest Side,” the Chicago Sun-Times reported May 15.
“The girl was in the back seat of a car being driven by a male about 6:55 p.m. Friday in the 2800 block of West 26th Street when another vehicle drove up alongside them and someone inside that vehicle started shooting, Chicago police said.”
The girl was shot in the leg and is in “good condition,” the paper reports.
Others were not as fortunate. The Sun-Times goes on to report tidbits of information on a veritable bloodbath occurring within city limits over the span of a single weekend.
Among the items:
- A 21-year-old man “was shot dead Saturday afternoon in Woodlawn on the South Side.”
- “Early Saturday morning, two people were killed and three others wounded in a shooting at a party in Gresham on the South Side.”
- “In another fatal shooting, a person was found shot to death about an hour later at a gas station in West Garfield Park.”
- "Friday night, a man was killed and another injured in a shooting in Belmont Cragin on the Northwest Side."
A staple of our rapid-fire 24-hour news cycle is that innocent lives snuffed out by heinous acts of senseless violence are quickly forgotten as the chattering storm moves on to the next grisly story.
It was hardly noted throughout the big-box media world but on May 11, a Philadelphia judge ordered a suspect in the shocking January murder of a young man walking his dog near his home held over for trial.
“They rifled through his pockets. Then the gunman shot him in the chest,” the Philadelphia Inquirer wrote in describing the slaying, which was captured on surveillance video. “The shooter and his accomplice ran away as [Milan] Loncar, 25, stood still for a few seconds, appeared to try to use his phone, then collapsed to the sidewalk.
“He was still clutching the leash of his dog, Roo, a dachshund-Chihuahua mix, when police responded a few minutes later, finding Loncar bleeding at 31st and Jefferson Streets. Officers rushed him to Temple University Hospital, where he was pronounced dead shortly afterward.”
“Loncar’s mother, sister, and girlfriend were in the courtroom” where the video of the gruesome murder was shown on May 11, the Inquirer reports.
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