Japanese police seek arrest of US teenagers

this i can agree on.

How can you not tie a rope across a street and expect it NOT to cause harm?

I made the top stair very slippery and other’s skull happened to be fractured. It was undoubtedly unintentional but the aftereffect made that one completely dumb, you know.

Rock in the air while people are around = reckless.

But I do agree with Ajapa that someone greasing up stairs is more like what happened. A line was strung across a road, where you could be sure someone would cross that path. In fact the most obvious reason they strung it up is that they expected someone to cross it.

A rock in the air is a little more random, it may or may not cross your path.

But a rope mid-air across the road at night and a stair that has been tampered with–both pretty difficult to avoid.

There’s a difference between normal mistakes and bad judgment and ones that you really should know will hurt people. Those kids really should have realized the danger involved. Someone almost paid for the kids’ ‘mistake’ with their life. And no doubt that person’s life will not be the same anymore.

Just because it may have been done without malice does not mean they should not be punished. They really should have known someone could get hurt. Their ignorance does not give them a license to harm others.

Some people are comparing this to speeding, or running a red light, etc. I’d say this is more like pulling a stunt like driving on the freeway with a blindfold and expecting no consequences.

“So by your logic if someone throws a rock into the air and it hits someone on the head and causes them to get a fractured skull even though the people who threw it had no intention of harming anyone they’re still just as bad as a drunk driver.”

I would agree with hl that if you throw a rock in the air, especially one that is large enough to fracture someone’s skull, while people are around, then you are really reckless and probably no better than a drunk driver.

Let’s break this down again. Most people would say that if you drive drunk, you run a very serious risk of hurting someone, regardless of your intent. Similarly, most people would say that if you tie a rope across a road, you run a very serious risk of hurting someone, regardless of intent (actually, I could argue the chances of causing harm is even bigger). So again, tell me: how are these teenagers any different from drunk drivers?

I don’t know if you’re just being difficult on purpose, but do you really not see the difference in the level of risk between sober and drunk driving?

Society considers the risk of a sober driver following the rules on the road acceptable.
Society considers the risk of a drunk driver incapable of following the rules on the road as an unacceptable hazard.

Could be a troll or could be someone who likes these kind of pranks and has somehow never thought of the harm they could cause and is trying to rationalize things.

I could buy this not understanding harm could be done thing if we were talking about five year olds, not teenagers.

Me,

That argument is a massive fail and you know it, but I will rephrase for your benefit. If you drive drunk, there is a high probability that you could seriously hurt someone. It’s a reckless act. If you tie a rope across a road, there is a high probability that you could seriously hurt someone. It’s a reckless act. If you drive sober, the probability of seriously hurting someone is pretty low. It’s not a reckless act.

So again, how aren’t these kids at least as bad as drunk drivers?

yes negligence.

Im just saying look at both sides.

I should point out one thing, an excerpt from Mainichi’s article:

According to police, the four suspects — aged 15-18 and all children of U.S. military personnel — have been questioned by U.S. military police and have denied involvement.

Me, if you are confident that you are indeed right, please enumerate all people who had actually neglected “the other side” here. And then please clarify your stance and opinion again.

Until we develop telepathic abilities, we’ll never know what actually went through their minds. But we can use facts in establishing whether we can consider them to have had the intent.

If the kids in question have the mental facilities of an average teenager, it should have been very obvious to them that what they were doing with the rope would cause injury or death to motorists. Thus it can me established that we can consider them to have had the intent to cause, or make absolutely no effort to avoid harm, possibly death inflicted on another person.

If they couldn’t figure that out, then they should not be able to participate in society until they learn to do so as LB said above.

There’s still a liability and accountability there.

Me,

Get off your high horse. What we all can do is perhaps to try to guess the situation and intent from facts supplied by others. Are you one of those suspects or a close friend?

Attempted murder is the intent to kill out the premeditated act of attempting to kill someone. I dont think they had the intent of murdering someone.

but its still wrong to assume they mean to cause harm

How is it wrong. There is actually evidence harm was caused and that any reasonable person should have expected harm to be caused.

All of your ‘lack of intent’ attributions have no evidence to support them.

A rope strung across the road is the proof, obviously.
Any reasonable person would realize that would harm someone.
So the only proof we are lacking is proof they had no intent.
There is reasonable proof of intent.

You compare it against common sense, not them specifically.

It is proof in the context of a regular, reasonable person.

The fact is assuming they should have known it would cause harm is more likely than your assumption that somehow they did not know.

And even if your personal and unlikely assumption is somehow true, there is still legal liability for these people.

The proof is that most people do know.

It’s not definitive proof, but it is more likely than them not knowing!

theres no such thing as not definitive proof. If is a guarantee.

theres no proof on either side whether they had intent or didnt.

From the link you posted:

“A police source said: ‘At this stage there is nothing to suggest this wire has been maliciously placed there in order to injure someone.

‘Early investigations reveal the wire may have been used to support a sign reading “Private Road” on it but somehow this has fallen off.”

Probably not a good example to prove your point, just saying.

pixel_bomber

What is the intention of your comment above?

The only point I made with my comment is that it is extremely dangerous to tie a rope across a road. The victim of this case near Yokota could have been YOU. Quit this Japanese vs. gaijin nonsense.

If you are just trolling I will never ever take any of your comments seriously from now on.

fg,

I don’t know if it was actually pixel_bomber though… I think the target was me since I was sometimes in confrontation with pixel_bomber, don’t worry!

pixel_bomber,

My intention in my second comment was simply,

It’s scary when I think of my head being cut off.

I am not an all-gaijin-drug-dealer theorist so, maybe, I may not get the point precisely. Actually, I mentioned on a mere rumor which could make Americans unpleasant (sorry!) but I think I took a balance by writing about facts and rumors regarding the incident happened in Japan too.

It’s quite a challenge to communicate through this comment section. On top of that many of my comments take a long time to show up for some reason. I do wish Japanprobe had a proper forum. But anyway…

Ajapa: My reply to you was intended as humor of sorts. The point I was trying to subtly get at was that this is not something you should be scared of. In fact it’s very uncommon to find trip wires on public roads. So of course I was kidding when I said it’s common for gaijin to string up trip wires in the road. While this particular incident is tragic and scary in itself you really don’t need to worry about this happening in my opinion. So please be careful on your bike, but I doubt you will have to worry about tripwires.

It might be hard enough to see a rope during the daytime, much less at night!
There is a much more obvious explanation.
And even if they had a different intent, it is reasonable to expect they should have foreseen other possible consequences.
It is true that a pickpocket might just have wanted to dust your wallet off for you, but not likely…

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/kent/3436645.stm
Here’s a case of people throwing bricks on a roadway. Even without the police being able to read the ‘pranksters” minds, they still put out the warning that people caught could be charged with attempted murder.

How? At least you have half a chance of avoiding a brick.

Can’t avoid a rope strung across a dark road!

Me, you have passed from anything resembling serious discussion into the realm of trolling.

“These people were throwing bricks at cars thats a little more obvious then this case.”

Not at all. Maybe they thought the bricks would bounce off. Maybe they thought that cars came with Star Trek force fields. Maybe they thought the bricks would dissolve into dust on impact. Maybe they thought God told them to. Maybe they were trying to donate spare bricks to random strangers.

On August 13th at around 11:30PM, a woman riding a moped collided with a rope that had been strung across a road.

The lighting was obviously not sufficient as the person did hit the rope!

The lighting was probably sufficient for normal driving, but not for such an act of sabotage.

If the truck was driving with its lights off in the wrong lane, you bet your trollish arse the truck driver would get done. However since trucks normally have lights and ropes don’t, your analogy is ridiculous.

Totally not trying to be a troll here but I think it is possible they might somehow believed their prank would not end in someone being terribly injured or killed. It’s hard to imagine the reasoning behind doing something so absurd but it is possible they did not expect a cyclist to be their victim. I mean if a car hit a rope it would just break the rope or cause the driver to stop I guess. Still the question would be why do that in the first place.
The main factor in this case that sways me away from something like attempted murder is the fact that they remained on the scene and tried to get help for the victim. I guess if murder was the desire they would not have stayed on site, or could have easily finished the job after the accident occurred. I do think the people responsible should be punished to the fullest extent of the law but I’m just saying I can see how attempted murder might be extreme. I was actually worried they would be charged with something too light but murder could be too much. Either way I won’t lose any sleep for them, but I can see a side of the case that would not call for an attempted murder charge.

Agreed. This should be manslaughter, not murder.

However, Me’s insistence that these kids aren’t at least as bad as drunk drivers is ridiculous.

On the issue of lighting. From Asahi Shinbun (Nov. 21):
http://www.asahi.com/national/update/1121/TKY200911200529.html

現場付近は倉庫が立ち並び、街路灯は道路の片側にしかなく、夜間は見通しが悪い。同庁は、ロープが見えにくいため、バイクや自転車が気づかずに引っかかって転倒すれば死亡するおそれがあることを判断できたはずだとして、殺人未遂容疑での立件を目指す。

Around the scene of the incident, there are many warehouses built along the roadway, streetlights are installed only on the one side of it, and there is poor visibility in the nighttime. The [Metropolitan Police] Department are aiming at prosecuting (treating) the case with the suspicion of an attempted murder, claiming that they must be capable of judging the consequence of their attempt that it could cause a death if a biker was caught by the rope without noticing it and then was tumbled.

Me, please stop changing the focus arbitrary and meaninglessly without knowing anything nor inspecting by yourself.