Young brothers, 'denied refuge,' swept to death by Sandy

[jsr]

http://www.cnn.com/2012/11/02/world/americas/sandy-staten-island-brothers/index.html

Young brothers, 'denied refuge,' swept to death by Sandy
By Tim Hume, CNN

(CNN) -- As Superstorm Sandy ravaged New York, Glenda Moore drove frantically across Staten Island in an attempt to get her sons to safety.

Instead, Moore found herself and her boys -- Connor, four and Brandon, two -- caught in the full fury of the storm.

Buffeted by torrential rains and winds of up to 90 miles per hour, her Ford Explorer plunged into a hole. According to the account she would later give police, Moore carried her sons to a nearby tree, gripping branches along with her boys as she tried to shelter them from the storm surge.

She told police they clung together for hours, before Moore managed to make her way to a nearby property, and pleaded to be let inside. But according to her police account, rather than sheltering the desperate strangers, the occupant refused to let them enter.

[jpbollma]

1. How Terrible.

[tbennett76]

2. I don't buy this

STORY for a second.

[HipChick]

3. Denied refuge by racist SI citizens..

[OneMoreDemocrat]

6. Totally...

Says so right there in the article.

[OneMoreDemocrat]

5. I do...

This is after all New York and make no mistake, the people here are not the touchy-feely Heroes that they are constantly made out to be.

Though I do think she should have probably tried to find shelter a little before the winds reached 90 miles an hour and everything was flooding (especially with the responsibility of two little lives along for the ride)...but that's another issue.

[HipChick]

8. Where you there?

There's already a long discussion on it... I lived through Hurricane Andrew...I lost everything...hindsight is 50/50

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=1687564

[OneMoreDemocrat]

11. Was I where?

I live in Montclair New Jersey (which is not on Staten Island, but still got the same weather) and there was ample time to get out.

I couldn't possibly care less about a thread debating the whys and wherefores regarding when to evacuate..she had an SUV and two kids; she should have left earlier, Sandy did not fool anyone with respect to appearing out of nowhere, the storm took a long time to get here and there was ample time to leave.

Sorry about your 'everything'...though I bet you'll act differently the next time.

[Horse with no Name]

51. It also says she was a nurse

do you think it MIGHT be possible that she didn't get off of her shift in time to get out when there was "ample time"?

[jsr]

9. Yep.

I guess many people have never heard of Kitty Genovese.

[OneMoreDemocrat]

12. Shhhhhh...

You'll ruin the narrative.

[LanternWaste]

22. Or have heard of her, and simply hoped ...

Or have heard of her, and simply hoped we more completely transcended the complacency of Edmund Burke's good men doing nothing.

[TomClash]

35. Because it's always 1964 . . .

. . . and we'll have the World's Fair soon!

Will we ever get a Negro President? Nah, nothing ever changes.

[SoCalDem]

30. The article I read yesterday said that they were swept from her hands

and then she went to try & get help looking for them in the water.

As bad as it sounds, there are probably lots of people who would NOt go out into a hurricane to look for bodies..

I am heartbroken for her, since she made a dangerous choice and lost her children, but this particular "take" on the story is probably seriously skewed.

[get the red out]

4. Oh God

Wouldn't someone at least look to see who was there?

[TwilightGardener]

7. The guy in this story is unsympathetic and easy to villainize, BUT

it wasn't his fault that the boys died, ultimately. Bad shit happens.

[HooptieWagon]

28. It was a tragedy, but appears to be the parents responsibility.

Mother didn't evacuate before the storm. Then, during the height of the storm decided to evacuate to a family member's home. She drove her SUV into deep floodwaters. Rather than call for help on her cell phone, she ran around banging on doors of mostly unoccupied houses.

OK, this was a woman who had a vehicle, and a relative's home to evacuate to in advance. I think we should look at this tragedy in light of several extremely bad decisions by the mother.

[TwilightGardener]

29. She did make a series of bad decisions, that is clear.

And there were no heroes around to save her kids--just average people who were worried about their own safety.

[SickOfTheOnePct]

32. Well put

How tragic that so often, children pay the price for their parents' mistakes.

[HooptieWagon]

36. True, but who is going to go out in a storm surge...

to look for possible victims when their location isn't certain or even if they're still alive? Even first responders stand down when conditions are too dangerous. Did the man have family? Wouldn't his responsibilty be for their welfare?

I feel bad for the death of the two boys, but their mother's several horrendous decisions were what caused their deaths. Where was their father, BTW?

[lady lib]

10. Gawd, the comments section runneth over with callousness.

What are we coming to in this country?

[tbennett76]

13. Here is the lie

IMO, the woman never asked, just desperately tried to break down the door. That is what I believe. The man may have thought she was a guy or is glossing over the female part.

[AtomicKitten]

14. Whoever is responsible, Brandon and Connor should not have paid the price.

Sweet babies of 2 and 4. RIP.

I think the man is lying. For crissakes he could have opened his garage door for them. Something. His excuse was that he had flip flops on. Aaarrgghh.

What struck me as surreal was the CNN video ending in a Seinfeld episode, in fact the finale, wondering if not helping people who need help is against the law.

[WinniSkipper]

15. Something doesn't make sense

The reporter said she got out of the car, with her sons, and then made it to the tree. He then says she held on for hours with her sons - with a house right next to her. He doesn't say if the kids were ripped from her arms, and then she went to the house, or if she left them to go to the house.

Why was the first house the only one she tried to get help at? Was he the only person who rode out the storm among the other houses?

[Nay]

16. Yeah, the story simply makes no sense. We'll have to wait and see -- nothing adds up. Why go to a

tree when the house was right there? Even if the guy wasn't letting anyone in, she could shelter on the side of the house away from the wind. And kids will cling like monkeys to mom or dad if told to -- she wouldn't even have to carry them. I wonder if she was so panicked that she did totally bizarre things?

[TwilightGardener]

19. That's what I can't figure out--if she made it to his backyard with

the boys, why not huddle up against his house? How high was the water? His house sat up high off the road--did his house flood? It didn't look like it from the outside.

[LisaL]

33. There are two versions of the story.

In the first one the boys were already gone by the time she made it to his house.
Frankly I find that more believable.

[HiPointDem]

39. if you look at the anderson cooper video, it's easier to figure -- her car went into a

deep spot/ditch & the tree was the high ground in that deep spot. the house was some distance aways.

http://www.cnn.com/2012/11/02/world/americas/sandy-staten-island-brothers/index.html

since in the storm she probably couldn't tell how deep the surrounding water was, i can imagine her staying at the safe place for some time if visibility etc was poor, maybe venturing further if it got better.

[deutsey]

21. I've seen two versions of what happened

This one and another in which the children were wrenched from the mother's grip when they were hit by a surge.

Whatever happened, it's tragic as hell.

[Junkdrawer]

17. Different story told yesterday....

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10021687564

[TwilightGardener]

18. Yeah. This story is a little suspect, IMO.

[Junkdrawer]

20. First story is probably correct...n/t

[TwilightGardener]

23. Then they weren't denied refuge. I don't think the man who was

interviewed was a prince by any means, seems like the sort who wouldn't go out of his way for anyone. But it's unfair to blame him (and now he's famous and thus going to be harassed for a long, long time) for not giving refuge when he didn't know what was going on, and possibly the children were already gone.

[Junkdrawer]

24. First as in yesterday's story. Mom lost her kids and asked a stranger to swim after them.

If a call to 911 was refused, that's horrible. If refuge was refused, that's horrible. If the man refused to risk his life in a probably-futile attempt to rescue the kids, well....

[SickOfTheOnePct]

25. Agree 100%

This certainly isn't the same story she told yesterday.

[WinniSkipper]

42. Spot on. nt

[JI7]

26. the man said it was another man who came by asking him to go out and help

he said there was no woman or kids.

[TwilightGardener]

27. I saw that--who knows if that's the truth, but I guess

it's not all that important. I don't think anything this guy did would have made a difference. It's not like she and her children were on his stoop, banging on the door to be let in, at any point in time.

[JI7]

31. i think he might be lying about the man, that it was the woman

it makes him look worse to treat a woman that way than to say it was a man. she said she broke his window and he claims the man did it. so i think it was her who was there.

but i also think she might have already lost her kids when she went there and asked him to come out and help.

i kind of really hope she is lying about going there with her 2 kids and the guy refusing to let them in until things get calm . the guy comes off as an asshole but i think even some of the biggest jerks would allow 2 kids in to keep them safe. i can understand not going out but to refuse to let them in is just something else.

[magical thyme]

34. that's a very different story than she told yesterday

The first story was that they were ripped out of her arms and swept away by a surge that threw her under the flood waters and that her car was flipped over.

And that after they were ripped out of her arms, she ran to 2 different houses screaming for help and at the first house, the person refused to help her and at the second house, they turned off the lights and refused to open the door. And that then she sheltered against the house and screamed all night.

If she had made it with the boys to a tree to shelter at, why not get to the houses with the boys, and then shelter with all of them against a house?

It is hard to understand why she waited until so late to evacuate and where in the hell was the father through all this?

[sammytko]

38. yes, they showed the father today, wonder where he was at the time?

[Care Acutely]

50. He works for the city. He was out helping with disaster efforts.

Yet one more tragic twist.

[EmeraldCityGrl]

37. I watched the interview with this man outside his home.

His story correlates with hers with the exception that he said it was a man not a woman.
Only opinion, but it seemed he thought this would make him look like less of a heartless
coward if it were a man seeking refuge opposed to a woman.

The cops investigating said they wish he could be charged criminally. He can't. Some
states have good samaritan laws that require you to do at least the minimum to help
a person in a life and death situation.

He sat on the floor with his back to the door to make sure she couldn't get in. She was
begging for help for her kids. He has every right to do just that and he strikes me as the type
that won't lose any sleep over it. When the reporter asked him if he knew what happened to the
boys, he said "no." When he was told they died, he shrugged and just kept defending himself.
It wasn't a blip on his screen that these kids were dead.

[SickOfTheOnePct]

40. The police wish that he could be charged

for not going out and looking for kids that according to the mother's story yesterday, had already been swept away?

If they think that should be chargeble, then perhaps they should consider charging the mother for refusing to evacuate when she had time, and then leaving in the midst of the storm...reckless endangerment.

Not that I want her to be charged, but her actions are what put her children in danger. For her to expect someone else to risk their life because she endangered her children's lives is ridiculous, IMO.

[LisaL]

41. I don't know what they want him to be charged with either.

You can't make someone to be a hero.
It's horrible what happened to the children, but you can't make it illegal for a stranger not to try and rescue them.

[SickOfTheOnePct]

43. I agree, the loss of these children is horrific

As a father, I can only imagine the guilt she must feel, and I can't help but wonder if that is why she has changed her story in order to lay more of the blame at someone elses feet.

Horribly sad for all involved.

[EmeraldCityGrl]

46. How is opening your door and letting them inside risking your life?

Are you serious? That's what the police were referring to. They didn't expect him to leave his home.

[SickOfTheOnePct]

47. According to her story yesterday

there was no "them" to let in - she said that the kids had been swept away and that she was trying to get people to come out and help her look for them.

The mother screwed up, big time, and now she's trying to lay the blame on someone else. Understandable, but still wrong.

[LisaL]

49. As already has been pointed out, there are several versions of the story that contradict each other.

[lynne]

44. This story has changed several times -

- first time I read it, the car was swept away by waves, she got the children out, they were swept from her arms and she asked neighbors to help her look for them in the water during the storm and they refused.

Yesterday the story was that the children were swept away and she asked people to call 911 and they refused. Of course, no info as to if anyone had cell signal or phone service. Probably not.

Today the story is that she stood with the children in her grasp for hours and was refused help.

No matter what version of the story is true or which version people choose to believe, the hard truth is that none of this would have occurred and her children would be alive and well had she evacuated before the storm and not during it. Maybe she can't face the truth and needs to change the story to something that she can live with. Can't say I blame her.

[SickOfTheOnePct]

45. Your last paragraph mimics my thoughts exactly n/t

[JVS]

48. Big inconsistency between this story and yesterday's version