|
Mom: God led me to van sought in son's death
|
View this Thread in Original format
| speedracer_mec |
| quote: | GREENWOOD, Ind. -- Joy English was driving to a store on Thanksgiving eve to buy Christmas flowers for her son's grave when, she said, she had an urgent prompting from God.
She said she was guided to turn into the Friendly Village mobile home park off County Line Road, west of Ind. 135 in Johnson County, where she eventually stopped by a white van.
She thought it might be connected to her son's hit-and-run death.
On Tuesday, a call from Marion County Sheriff's Sgt. Doug Heustis confirmed her hunch.
Israel Cardenas, 19, Greenwood, was arrested Tuesday by Heustis on a preliminary charge of failure to stop after an accident causing death and driving while his license was suspended. He was being held Wednesday afternoon in the Marion County Jail on $15,000 bail.
Bradley English, 27, was fatally injured about 7 p.m. Oct. 26 when a hit-and-run driver struck him as he pedaled his bicycle along Shelby Street, south of Stop 11 Road in Indianapolis.
Witnesses said the vehicle was a white van, sport utility vehicle or truck. Later, investigators learned from debris collected at the scene that the vehicle was a late 1980s or early 1990s model Dodge van or truck.
Cardenas' van is a 1993 Dodge.
Marion County Sheriff's Capt. Phil Burton said Heustis compared pieces of crash debris to Cardenas' van. "They fit like a puzzle," Burton said. He credited the arrest to mother's intuition.
Police said the van was not visible from the road.
Joy English said the entire experience was divinely guided.
"I had no control over my own car," she said. "It just makes me know that God is truly with us in our mourning, sorrow and trials, and this is proof he is truly with you. There is a God, and he does exist."
English and her husband, Mark English, live in the Auburn Trace subdivision in White River Township, three miles south of Friendly Village.
On the afternoon of Nov. 24, she decided to drive to Hobby Lobby Creative Centers, 8040 S. U.S. 31, Indianapolis.
"I went the long way, up Peterman Road, and as I was driving I had this urgent prompting to pull over -- pull over now!" Joy English said.
She said she was thinking of her son and crying as she listened to Christmas music, and a voice said to her over and over: "Only a mother's love." She stopped crying.
"I turned off the radio, and the next thing I saw was the van, and I wrote down the license plate number," she said. "I couldn't see the front of it to see if there was any damage."
She said her cell phone rang, and it was her sister, Jeri Hanford.
"I told her where I was and that I didn't know why I was there," English said.
Hanford drove to her sister.
"She (Hanford) knocked on the door of the trailer where the white van was parked and asked for someone just so she could see the front of the van. It had damage," English said.
English telephoned Heustis and gave him the information.
"I told my husband that I don't want to sound like a cuckoo, but that it was such an urgent prompting that I almost had to make a U-turn to get into that park. I never felt more amazed."
English said that as horrible as her son's death was, finding the van was amazing.
"It is not every day that someone gets to experience God like that," she said. "I believe God led me to it. I give him all the praise."
|
http://www.indystar.com/articles/4/199071-8244-092.html
VERRY INTERESTING. Good for her, I hope it brings some closure. |
|
|
| occrider |
I like this divine intervention better ...
| quote: |
Jury accepts insanity defense for mother who killed sons
John Springer
Court TV
Monday, April 5, 2004 Posted: 2134 GMT (0534 HKT)
TYLER, Texas (Court TV) -- Deanna Laney, who bludgeoned her two young sons to death last year because she believed God commanded it, was legally insane and could not distinguish from right or wrong, a jury concluded Saturday.
Laney, a 39-year-old East Texas housewife, burst into tears and was visibly shaking for more than 30 minutes after Judge Cynthia Kent announced that the jury found her not guilty of capital murder by reason of insanity. Keith Laney, who testified that he still loves his wife of 19 years, remained composed throughout the reading.
The jury, eight men and four women, also found after six and a half hours of deliberations that Laney was not guilty by reason of insanity for causing seriously bodily injury to a third son who survived the attacks last May. Laney told psychiatrists that her then 14-month-old son Aaron, who remains nearly blind and brain-injured, just "wouldn't die" and she feared that she had "done wrong" by him.
Had she been convicted, the 39-year-old woman would have faced a mandatory life sentence and would not have been eligible for parole until she served 40 years in a state prison. Laney, who was remanded to custody pending a civil commitment proceeding later this month, now faces the prospect of confinement to a forensic psychiatric facility for an unspecified period of treatment.
"She is so emotional at this particular time that she wasn't able to say anything but simply, 'Thank you, thank you, thank you' to the three of us," defense lawyer F.R. "Buck" Files, flanked by two colleagues, told reporters at a press conference.
"She is in a living hell because of what she knows she did when she was delusional," Files said.
Jurors were escorted out of the courthouse after being sequestered for nine days. They did not speak with the media.
Smith County District Attorney Matt Bingham said that he had no quarrel with the verdict. Bingham said his only duty was to present the evidence, prove that Laney committed the killings and then let jurors decide whether the defense met its burden under the insanity statute.
"We had a burden to meet and that burden was proven: That she committed the offenses beyond a reasonable doubt," said Bingham, who did not ask jurors specifically to return guilty verdicts. "I did what the law required me to do. I presented all the evidence."
According to testimony, Laney led two of her sons to a rock garden and crushed their skulls with heavy stones because she believed God commanded it. She also believed that she and Andrea Yates, the Houston mother serving a life sentence for drowning her five children, were chosen by God to witness the imminent end of the world.
Four psychiatrists, including one hired by the prosecution and another hired by the court, concluded that Laney could not discern right from wrong when she killed her two sons and seriously injured the third two days before Mother's Day last year. Jurors, by the verdict, apparently agreed with the experts.
Laney, who looked at jurors after the verdict for the first time, is due back in court Tuesday to learn whether Kent will retain jurisdiction over civil commitment proceedings. If she is committed, as expected, it would be at a psychiatric hospital with a maximum-security unit.
Files said it would be wrong for anyone to believe that Laney "got off" by a legal technicality. He refused to answer questions about what he believes should become of his client now.
"She has a chemical imbalance in her brain that she will have for the rest of her life," Files said. "It's not curable."
http://edition.cnn.com/2004/LAW/04/05/laney/index.html
|
|
|
|
| speedracer_mec |
But this was actual evidence found/criminal found
vs
a lunatic who uses that as an excuse? |
|
|
| occrider |
| quote: | Originally posted by speedracer_mec
But this was actual evidence found/criminal found
vs
a lunatic who uses that as an excuse? |
And you can of course prove God's direct involvment in one and not the other right? Perhaps if God were more vigilant, the son wouldn't have been killed to begin with heh. |
|
|
| speedracer_mec |
| quote: | Originally posted by occrider
And you can of course prove God's direct involvment in one and not the other right? |
Im not saying I can.
However can you give an explanation onto how she just bumped her head into the van?
Who was proven to be insane? |
|
|
| occrider |
| quote: | Originally posted by speedracer_mec
Im not saying I can.
However can you give an explanation onto how she just bumped her head into the van? |
Not really. Dumb luck? Perhaps thousands of mothers across the US follow silly little hunches after a great wrongdoing and end up with jack while this broad manages to score the lottery and attributes it to “God”. Meanwhile all those other mothers who’s children’s deaths go unsolved are out of luck. Maybe aliens put it in her head, maybe the illuminati, maybe good old Lucifer gave a freebie, maybe it was Vishnu the destroyer … does it matter? If this is divine intervention I’m sorely disappointed that god saw fit to mingle in the affairs of man to bring a simple man guilty of manslaughter to justice as opposed to actually saving the kid’s life or a multitude of other issues that are of far greater significance. |
|
|
| occrider |
| quote: | Originally posted by speedracer_mec
Who was proven to be insane? |
And if Jesus came back in 2004 claiming to be the son of God, and so on and so forth, what would psychologists think of him? |
|
|
| Zild |
| Just for the record, Vishnu totally rocks. |
|
|
|
|
