Posted on by Californiacontrarian

What if ??

Today as I was listening to the radio while driving home, the headline on the news was, “Fatal hit-and-run accident on I-8.” Of course I knew nothing of the particulars of that accident, but my imagination is not a quiet place, and so my mind made up some unknown details as I continued home. These details turned out to completely wrong, but my imaginary scenario led to the following “what if . . .”

What if the person killed was just an innocent bystander who was walking up the exit ramp because he had run out of gas. And what if he ran out of gas because he was driving an old car, albeit the only car he could afford, and his gas gauge on his jalopy was nonfunctional. What if the reason that he did not stop and get gas, just to be safe, was because he was late for his second job, from which he could not afford to get fired, and what if the reason that he did not call his employer, was because he could not afford a cell phone. And finally what if his now widowed sick wife and their four young hungry kids were forced out of their small apartment because today was payday and his paycheck never made it to the bank.
Like I noted above, my imagination is not a quiet place, and it was the task of this imagination to make the dead man as sympathetic a figure as possible. I hope that I achieved that goal, because what if the driver of the car was drunk, and the car had been stolen. What if he had just been released from jail a few hours before. To make matters worse what if this intoxicated individual was an illegal who had a record of multiple past DWIs, and who had been deported multiple times before for stealing cars, and what if he was released from jail before the federal authorities were notified because the jail was located in a sanctuary city in a sanctuary state.
Whoa, you say, this could never happen. Balderdash, It’s only a matter of time before something akin to this happens, and I would wager that in fact, innocent citizens are already, and not infrequently, being harmed by illegals who should have been in the custody of ICE.
In this particular tragic situation as described above, who is ultimately responsible for the death of this innocent bystander on the I-8 off ramp? To me the answer is obvious. What if the widowed wife found a good lawyer, and sued because the city as well as the state both were in violation of federal law when they allowed the driver of the car to go free without contacting ICE. They certainly were negligent here as anyone could have anticipated that he would drive drunk again, as he had already done so multiple times in the past. Again something like this is going to happen, and what if with a good lawyer and a sympathetic jury, the deep pockets of the city and of the state are picked big time. What if ? One can only hope!

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