Eye Nosh: Is This the Best Pastrami in America?
The Creepy, Yet Beautiful Street Art of Dan Witz Now in L.A.
Does Traffic Get Worse After the End of Daylight Saving Time?
Silver Lake Art Crawl: Also a Food Truck Crawl?
Thomas Keller Comes Home: Book Signings and a Recipe(!)
I'm glad to see that the trial of 89-year-old George Russell Weller is finally getting underway. Like a lot of people you might be asking, who's George Weller? Though he hasn't gained the notoriety he so richly deserves, he's the genius who plowed his Buick LeSabre through the Santa Monica Farmers' Market killing 10 people and injuring 60 others in July 2003.
I'm not normally a hang-'em high kind of gal, but there's something about this case that infuriates me and makes me long for the days when scumbags like Weller were dragged through the streets and hung in the public square.
Maybe it's that I find it impossible to believe this was an accident. Maybe it’s because it has taken three long years to bring George Weller to trial. Maybe it's because for so long it seemed as though Weller wasn't going to be charged with any crime at all. But mostly it's because Weller has been treated like a sweet, doddering old man instead of the murdering bastard that he is. Imagine if a 30-year-old had caused this "accident." The perpetrator would have been vilified in the local media, and the D.A. would have already thrown the book at him.
I don’t care how old George Weller is. I don't have an ounce of sympathy for him. All my sympathy rests with the families of the people George Weller killed:
Theresa Bregalia, 50, of New York
Brendon Esfahani, 7 months, of Los Angeles
Molok Ghoulian, 62, of Los Angeles
Cindy Valladares, 3, of Los Angeles
Gloria Gonzalez, 35, of Venice
Movsha Hoffman, 78, of Santa Monica
Leroy Lattier, 55, a transient
Diana McCarthy, 41, of Mar Vista
Kevin McCarthy, 50, of Mar Vista
Lynne Ann Weaver, 47, of Woodland Hills
The details of what happened on the afternoon of July 16, 2003 will come out at trial. My hope is that the jury doesn’t buy the cockamamie "pedal error" theory that Weller's lawyer, Mark Overland, is pushing. Imagine the fun we could have if we extrapolate the it-was-an-accident-as-a-result-of-pedal-error defense. "Oops. My hand got stuck on the handle of the knife" or "Sorry about that. I'm a little prone to trigger finger error."
George Weller did not have a stroke or some other major medical malfunction that could account for his behavior. According to a recent article in the Daily Breeze, George Weller drove for approximately 1,000 feet at speeds of 40 to 60 miles per hour ignoring the wave of screams around him, steering away from parked cars and back towards people in the street, hitting onlookers with such force that they were literally knocked out of their shoes and finally coming to a stop only because the body of a woman was wedged under his car. I guess he's never heard of a parking brake.
It strains credulity to believe that the Farmers' Market crash was an accident, but even if it was that doesn't change the fact that GEORGE WELLER KILLED 10 PEOPLE. His age is no defense nor should it be an incentive for the legal system to show him any mercy. George Weller should spend the rest of his miserable life rotting away in some wretched prison. It's better than he deserves.
add to stumble upon
add to reddit
tweet this
post to facebook
Sympathy for the perpetrator doesn't preclude great sympathy for the victims. Don't be afraid to see the total horror of the situation; it's too easy and lazy to vilify. Shame on you and this irresponsible post.
3 years! That just goes to show if you are white, the system favors you. That is why I love jury nullification.
Angry kneejerk vitriol spewing has no place in any medium that wants to even pretend that it offers professional or even semi-professional journalistic observation. Your bullshit post should be removed as soon as possible and is a good example of why reasonable people generally ignore blogs as a serious form - you are an idiot.
Hmm. Must be white.
I'm with you, Elina. My dad was killed by a drunk driver, and my mom obviously has no tolerance for people driving under the influence... of alcohol. However, I've been in the car with her more than once where we've noticed a dangerous, erratic driver on the road, and when we notice the driver is elderly rather than drunk, my mom's reaction is... a chuckle. WTF? It's not cute, it's not funny, it's fucking dangerous to everybody on the road.
"Witnesses say Weller initially appeared unconcerned. 'If you saw me coming, why didn't you just get out of the way?' he asked, according to court papers."
yes, this is someone for whom we should all have immense sympathy. *rolls eyes*
you have got to be kidding me. this is nowhere near an irresponsible post. irresponsible is allowing a person of this age who had previously had various incidents showing that he was not exactly the safest person to be behind the wheel, to continue driving.
irresponsible is this man having hit another car just a few minutes prior to barging through the farmer's market and not having stopped.
i say let him have it. i don't buy into this bullsh*t belief of "oh, well he was old and got confused."
he should not have been driving, then!
If you had been to the SM farmers market in the past before this incident you'd be hardpressed to fathom how someone could excelerate up to 40+ mph in such a tight space and still continue on. The place is crawling with people and boths set up around the promenade. That's a lot of dead people for it just being an "accident".
kneejerk?
john, we've had three years to think about this old man. kneejerk is your reaction to elina's reaction. it's you sir who should retract your comment.
and that has nothing to do with my belief that the old man should fry.
Knee jerk is cursing in a post and then slamming someone for being unprofessional, or is that ironic?
While I'm not for Mussolini style shoot 'em first and drag 'em through the square justice. This case is rotten with the fear of bad PR. The point needed to be made that legal system in LA is far from blind. Anger can be healthy when you're not embittered about life and behind the wheel of a car.
There are laws that are supposed to guarantee the right to a speedy trial. And if you think she's pissed do the math; ten dead people times Xfamily and friends equals a huge loss to our community. If anything John your vitrol would be better spent cursing out the LA County prosecutors office about continuing to waste taxapayer money on a case that should have gone to trial years ago.
If you want unbiased factual coverage stick to the LA Times - err, waitaminute, I take that back.
PS Paul,
People seem only grasp the "horror" of a situation around these parts when you're white. Just ask the mother of the Huntington Beach police shooting vs. the thirteen year old kid gunned down for trying to steal a car in South LA. Being old is just icing on the cake.
No, Tony, kneejerk is lynch mobbing someone in an online forum before they've had a fair trial. It doesn't matter whether you THINK someone is guilty or not. He deserves to get his day in court, whether he's a scumbag or not. If you want this blog to be taken seriously, the writers should act like responsible citizens rather than juvenile, reactionary twits.
Maybe you should change the name of this blog to "Lynchist."
Tom I have no problem with a fair trial. I never said the old coot doesn't deserve one. However, I've seen this city react poorly when others have had verdicts go differently than what public opinoin would have them go.
With that said, I have no problem with people posing their opinions as to how they view this man, pre-trial, nor should you.
This blog is no different than a group of friends talking about current events in a backyard around a bucket of cold ones - we talk based on the information we're given. The blogs that you should not take serious are those who try to fake you out into thinking that they have zero opinion on anything before the trial, and stand behind whatever the jury says after the trial.
Before the trial, I am clearly stating that I think a man who runs over innocent people and then says "you should have gotten out of my way, you saw me coming" deserves to go to a very bad place. If you want me to wait until after the trial to say that you need to go to a different blog of people who withhold.
One thing that seperates good blogs from bad ones is a thing called Transparency.
OJ got a long, indepth, fair trial and that certainly didn't change many people's opinions as to whether they thought he was guilty or not, and he was lynch-mobbed out of LA. But who knows, maybe something will come up in this case that will do something to change our minds.
But if you think I lose sleep as to whether this blog is taken seriously or not based on some of us speaking our minds, then think again. I'd rather have honest writers who are transparent than a bunch of gutless PC sheep who pretend like they have no stance on a topic before it goes to court.
Between this "murdering bastard" post and the Steve Irwin/car post below, this site has really changed -- and not for the better.
As for me, though I live somewhat nearby and have been to the Farmer's Market many times, I wasn't there that day and didn't witness what occured. Nor am I not privy to the evidence that will be presented in court. So I'm withholding judgement.
Afterall, Elina, last I heard that's why they have trials in courtrooms rather than on blogs.
So Corey,
I assume then that you had no opinion of OJ before his case went to trial? And after the glove didn't fit during the trial you agreed with the jury that he was not guilty?
No Tony, believe it or not I didn't have an opinion guilty or not on the OJ case beforehand or really afterward for that matter. But that's another story.
In this case, as I said above, I wasn't at the Farmer's Market that day nor do I have any special
insight into the court case before it takes place. In short, I don't know enough specifics of what happened to declare someone a murdering bastard beforehand.
I do, however, think that deciding someone's guilt or innocence in a public forum, be it a newspaper or a blog, sort of defeats the purpose of a court trial. After all, there's a reason they screen juries to determine if they have a preconceived opinion of the case.
And I felt Elina's blog post crossed a line. But that's just me. Judge that as you like.
i guess we'll agree to disagree then since i always thought that the purpose of a court trial was to decide if someone was going to go to jail or pay a fine or be set free, while the purpose of a blog is to talk about things.
call me crazy.
I was there that day--I was a vendor in the last 1/2 block of the market towards the ocean (in other words, I was on the end where Weller's car stopped). I was a few feet from the car and by the grace of g*d uninjured. That day will always haunt me, and I have overwhelming sympathy and grief for those who lost their lives, were injured, or were otherwise effected.
All that said, I find the original entry here to be inflamitory and overboard. Weller is, by all accounts, a sweet old man. I can hate what he did, but he is an old man, he walks with a cane, he clearly has health problems, as most octogenarians tend to. Bless the two vendors who stopped the mob that *did* try to drag him out and beat him in their immediate (and understandable) rage.
I quible mostly with the line above "If a 30-year-old had caused this 'accident,' the perpetrator would have been vilified in the local media and the D.A. would have already thrown the book at him." Weller's actions should not be compared to those that could have been perpetrated by a normal 30 year old, they are more akin to what an epileptic 30 year old might have done. In the case of both an epileptic and a health-challenged old man, it would have been uncontrollable at the time, but the issue is they SHOULDN'T BE DRIVING. At least in the case of epileptics, the risk is taken seriously and they are not allowed to drive. The issue at hand should not be villifying Weller, but instead learning from this and preventing future incidents by changing the laws for senior citizen drivers. There is no question that there's a point at which people cannot see the road and respond to incidents (or even regular road conditions) in a way that is safe for themselves and those around them.
Please urge older drivers you know to limit their driving or preferably give up their licenses. Save us all from future incidents like this one, that took the lives of 10 and pieces of the souls of so many more of us.
If I had been there, I would have restrained the vendors who restrained the mob that wanted to kill the guy.
So juding by the posts here Im guessing none are by family or friends of any of the victims who lost their lives on a glorious innocent day of shopping at the SM Farmer's Market because of the actions of a "sweet, old man" ('If you saw me coming, why didn't you just get out of the way?')
Weller has a right to a fair trial without morons stirring up anger based on second hand accounts and uninformed preconceptions. This type of lynch mob journalism is despicable. LAist deserves better writing than this.
He was not epeliptic. That is not an excuse.
1000 FEET is more than anyone needs to ascertain that there is a problem going on.
I love to drive. I will hate it when I have to quit. But this is the reason why EVERYONE over 65 should be road tested every 3 years, over 75 EVERY STINKING YEAR! NO EXCEPTIONS. It is for their safety as well as ours!
And MURDER is MURDER, regardless of the age of the perpetrator. He needs to be punished.
Everyone here rushing out to hang this old man is missing the point. He's going to be tried in a court of a law and it's irresponible to convict him in the press before that trial has even happened.
why? we dont effect what happens in a santa monica courtroom.
we're just people who are talking about current events, no different than if we were at a party or in your backyard.
we can speculate and express our opinions just like anyone else.
the purpose of court is to organize all the facts and present them in a fair way. obviously we dont have all the facts, but it is not irresponsible to take the information that is out there and comment on it.
and based on the information that we have seen, read, and heard, that old fucker hit a car, turned the wheel and then ran over people. then when he got out of the car he asked people why they didnt get out of the way since they saw him coming.
if that turns out to be the case, then bring out the rope -- to use your imagery.
George Weller is guilty of fleeing the scene of a hit-and-run accident. The only plausible reason for all of this madness I can conclude (and I'm not trying him here, but only trying to understand) is that he panicked after hitting a stopped Mercedes Benz. Weller delivered a letter at the SM post office on 4th st. and then somehow ended up turning right onto Arizona after hitting the other car. It is only a half-block to where the market barricades were, and there was no other outlet, so I believe the old man 'freaked out' and just drove into the only exit he had. It seems to me that he was trying to avoid parked cars, so as not to injure himself, and it also seems that he was trying to make it out the other side as quickly as possible. When he entered the market area and began to plow into things and people, he apparently just kept on going, without any intention of stopping. I do not think he planned any of this, and I believe it was all a spur of the moment set of decisions his addled brain made, and he probably is guilty of gross negligence, at least.
But that will be up to the jury to decide.