150 arrests, 11 DWIs and, now, 1 dead 4-year-old

[smizzy]

150 arrests, 11 DWIs and, now, 1 dead 4-year-old

Spoiler

The link above takes you to a story in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that documents the life of a true piece of shit.

Ricky Weeden has been arrested over 150 times in the last 30 years, making even Tammy Sytch look like an amateur. The majority of these arrests primarily happened in the Northern St. Louis county, while being arrested by 21 different police departments within the county.

They should have put an end to it thirty years ago.

Gregory Wynn came to in a hospital room in September 1983, battered from a car crash. His buddy Steve was in the next room in a coma. A nurse deflected questions about two friends in the car, who were dead.

St. Louis police detectives told him a driver named Ricky Weeden had sped through a red light and plowed into their car.

“They said they thought he had been drinking,” said Wynn, who escaped serious injury.

Police did not document any alcohol use. Prosecutors passed on filing a manslaughter charge.

It was the start of a trend. For the next three decades, Weeden drove recklessly. He was arrested on suspicion of drunken driving 11 times. But police, prosecutors and judges never kept him off the road for very long.

So Ricky Weeden was allowed to keep on keepin' on. The result?

Now authorities say he has killed a child.

Authorities said Weeden kept driving after hitting two brothers as they crossed St. Charles Rock Road in Pagedale on Oct. 5. Traye-shon Williams, 4, died at the scene. Jay’Shard Conner, 10, was released Tuesday from St. Louis Children’s Hospital. Wearing a leg cast on Friday, Jay’Shard used a walker to approach his brother’s casket for a final goodbye.

Not to go all Todd on you guys, so I'll refrain from speaking badly about the St. Louis police department, but how in the hell has this guy been allowed to stay on the streets? The article mentions that he has speant a total that is not even 2 years in prison for his DWI. I know a guy specifically who was facing 2-3 years for his third. Weeden had 11! He also wasn't cooperative during his arrests either. His ex-wife mentions in the article that he'd been "pepper-sprayed so many times that he's losing his vision."

Imagine being the guy that Weeden almost killed thirty years ago while successfully killing two friends, coming across this article.

Wynn, who is now 50, couldn’t believe it when Weeden’s name surfaced in news reports last week. It made him think of the friends he lost in 1983: Avance Wilson, 23, and Doris Ann Jones, 20. Steve Stanback, the other survivor, now 50, walks with a cane from his injuries.

“It is ridiculous,” Wynn said, “that it took this long for them to catch him. A child had to die.”

 

[Showtime]

That's terrible man. I honestly didn't think stuff like that flew under the radar much in the states. In Canada, and especially in Winnipeg, that fits right in with how our justice system operates in some cases. This one incident that happened years ago where 13 minors stole two vehicles and were playing bumper cars up a street with them. One of the cars ended up slamming into a taxi cab, killing the driver and injuring the passengers. One of the people in the stolen vehicles (not the driver) laughed about it after in front of cameras, saying that the taxi driver had been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Pretty sick stuff. The driver was sentenced to two years, that was eventually reduced. All the others either received either a few months jail time or probation. Since then they all have reoffended or breached probation, some continue to steal cars. The public actually has access to very little of what has been done to them because the Youth Criminal Justice Act we have here prevents their names from being released and pretty much guarantees that jail time is an absolute last resort, even after multiple charges.

This incident, pretty sick. The guy shouldn't be allowed to even own a car, let alone a license to drive one. Hope you guys put him away for good after this one.

 

[Rayne]

Not to go all Todd on you guys, so I'll refrain from speaking badly about the St. Louis police department, but how in the hell has this guy been allowed to stay on the streets? The article mentions that he has speant a total that is not even 2 years in prison for his DWI. I know a guy specifically who was facing 2-3 years for his third. Weeden had 11! He also wasn't cooperative during his arrests either. His ex-wife mentions in the article that he'd been "pepper-sprayed so many times that he's losing his vision."

Imagine being the guy that Weeden almost killed thirty years ago while successfully killing two friends, coming across this article.

Good thing you didn't go all Todd on us. Police have very little to do with keeping people off the streets. They can make arrests, but it's the judicial process that handles sentencing.

As for the rest, it's tragic, but I've never noticed that expressing my rage on gaming or professional wrestling message boards does anything to help the problem.

 

[Jack-Hammer]

As Rayne pointed out, there's not really very much the police can do when it comes to keeping people who frequently break the law off the streets. The cops are responsible for catching people that break the law. Once they do that, it's completely out of their hands. That's when the lawyers and judges take over, which is usually when things tend to get screwed up.

I'm a corrections officer and have been for over 8 years now. If there's one thing I've learned about the system over the course of that time is that there are FAR, FAR, FAR too many cracks and loopholes in the system. This fine gentleman, Ricky Weeden, is a perfect example of it. His record is longer than an elephant's dick but, up until now, all of his run-ins with the law have been considered "minor". Given the number of arrests he's had, including a well documented history of drunk driving, they just had to know something like this tragedy was bound to happen. I'm surprised it took as long as it did to happen.

His pattern obviously suggests a lifelong repeat offender and there have been various cases in which special circumstances have been made in certain cases for certain individuals. For instance, I can't remember the name of the person involved, but there have been cases of state imposed sterilization, very rarely, for mother's that use drugs and continuously give birth to crack addicted babies. It's obvious that Weeden qualifies as as case with special circumstances. Exactly what should've been done to him a long time ago, I honestly don't know. Lengthy jail time & other correctional supervision does sound excessive for drunk driving but this is an extreme case involving an extreme individual. Prosecutors probably felt that, even though he's long since had enough involvement with the St. Louis judicial system to be on a first name basis with everyone from judges to baliffs, it wasn't worth the money going after him. Too bad. If they had, maybe that 4 year old baby, and 4 years old is very much still a baby in my eyes, would still be alive.

 

[HBsam31]

I think special circumstances should be used more often for these types of people. Stupidity/lacking value in human life is a dangerous combo, and I am surprised this guy doesn't have a body count larger than 3. This kind of stuff astounds me everytime I read something like this. I know our system is not perfect, there are loopholes, ways out of things, but we just have to do better than this. Surely there will be enough backlash from him killing a child that someone will get riled up enough to throw him in jail for a long while. Such a shame, and I am sorry for these lives lost and their families.