Tuesday, June 19, 2007

Fight or Flight: In the minutes after a tragedy begins do you think pedophile or bear attack


This morning's SF Chronicle bring an AP story perfect to set a father's blood pressure to high, "Utah Boy Killed by Bear While Camping." I've got a boy, we love camping, I'm afraid of bears. To boot it happened on a father's day camping trip. You have to read on to find the other dimension of the tragedy. In the crucial minutes after the bear opened the side of the tent, dragged the kid off into the woods and was presumably killing him, the father, unable to see him, jumped to the conclusion that his boy had been abducted by a person and went off in search of police help.


Wearing flip-flops and without a flashlight, the stepfather searched frantically for the boy and then drove a mile down a dirt road to a developed campground.
"He was pounding on my trailer door. He said somebody cut his tent and took his son," said John Sheely, host of the Timpooneke campground, who alerted authorities by driving down the canyon to a pay phone.
The boy's body was found about 400 yards away from the campsite, said Lt. Dennis Harris of the Utah County sheriff's office.


Governing through crime is not just about prisons, or the growth of the carceral state, it is about how we think about the risks we face on a real time basis.

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