Griffith Park Blog » From beyond the grave

Strange sort of suicide for The Walking Man.

Donna Barstow — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 10:56:20 +0000

I only bothered to read about the Walking Man because he was called The Silver Lake Walking Man.

Then I saw a small memorial for him on the Silver Lake reservoir path when I ran last night. I hate memorials – they don’t have them back east. It’s like there’s no real land here, or people don’t understand what a cemetery is. The flowers die in a day in the blazing sun, so you have dead flowers in worthless vases, or a dirty teddy bear. Ugly, smelly, and no, it’s not the thought that counts when it’s such a thoughtless thing to do.

Anyway, turns out he walked all over town locally, said his obit.

Abrams traversed 20 to 30 miles of pavement each day and wore out four pairs of shoes each year. He walked swiftly — often hunched over a newspaper — slowing only to shout hellos to friends or give medical advice to those who asked for it.

walking man mural

I can’t believe Tom LaBonge had to get his quote in someone’s obituary.

“He had the greatest tan of anyone in town,” said City Councilman Tom LaBonge, who lives a few blocks from the quiet hillside home Abrams shared with his wife. Whenever LaBonge spotted Abrams striding down the sidewalk he would stop to shout, “What up, Doc?”

(Btw, Tom LaBonge called me last week! No, not to ask me out, as one of my exes guessed. He got my blog confused with the OTHER Griffith Park blog, and was calling to correct the facts about something published there!)

I saw someone on Facebook link to the article in the Eastsider, and one of the commenters there, instead of expressing regrets about the WM, who I would have called Reading Man, said it was a suicide, and wondered why the news was covering it up. Turns out he was right.

Today the LA Times reported:

Marc Abrams, the doctor known as the “walking man” for his shirtless walks around Silver Lake, died by drowning himself in his hot tub, a spokesman for the Los Angeles County coroner’s office said Monday.“He was found in the Jacuzzi with the Jacuzzi lid pulled over the Jacuzzi itself,” said Ed Winter, assistant chief of the Department of Coroner Investigations. “There was no suicide note found.”…

At the time of his death, Abrams was under investigation for prescribing drugs to a 25-year-old patient who died of an overdose, according to law enforcement authorities and a lawyer for the patient’s family.

What a strange way to commit suicide – drowning in the dark? Can one not lift the lid off a hot tub? There’s no air? And he was a fitness buff, too. He was probably proud of his tan, since he walked SHIRTLESS everywhere.

Poor guy.

PS. I think he may have been murdered.

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Meeting to see coyotes graves in the Park on Oct 1, Wednesday.

Donna Barstow — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 09:25:27 +0000

I seem to get announcements of meetings, etc, through emails who got them from someone else. I’m not on Councilman LaBonge’s email list, and THAT’S OKAY. But someone sent me this:

The Councilman would like to meet for a walk-through at the coyote encounter site at Zoo Dr. Thursday 10/1 @ 3 pm. We’re inviting public. The walk will begin in the Victory/Zoo Drive area. He didn’t know the exact location, but it should be easy to find.

In my experience, “inviting the public” means anyone who’s a mind reader will find out about the meeting and join the city and neighborhood council regulars. It’s sort of an invitation by happenstance.

Tonight I walked into a dark room without turning on the light, and immediately tripped over a box I had left there, so my knee is pretty sore. Don’t call me names, send me flowers. But I’m going to try to make it tomorrow.

No related posts.

If you get in an accident with a truck, you’re dead meat.

Donna Barstow — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 23:50:35 +0000

And neither you nor your family will get bupkis. Case in point: the Interstate 5 pileup in a tunnel near Santa Clarita in October 2007, which killed 3 people and 33 trucks and a car. (33 trucks in a row? Remind me never to drive there.) The crashes turned the nearby tunnel into a fiery inferno, melting cars and people. (another reference to hell in SoCal.) Fatalities included a little boy who was burned alive in his father’s truck.

The I-5 tunnel fire that killed 3 and burnt 34 trucks may not even have happened! Photo by AP, via Popular Photography.

The Times article says:

CHP investigators determined that Jose Reyes, 29, was driving at least 65 mph along the rain-slicked freeway when his truck veered left and crashed into a concrete median wall after driving through the tunnel, according to the prosecutor’s memo obtained by The Times…

Reyes’ crash set off chain-reaction collisions behind him that killed a 6-year-old boy and two adults, and injured 10 others…

But as traffic slowed, other trucks collided near the tunnel exit, leading to the fatal accidents about four to five minutes after Reyes’ crash. Flames shot through the 550-foot tunnel, trapping motorists and melting vehicles as temperatures inside soared to about 1,500 degrees.

A spokeswoman for Georgia-based Saia Motor Freight Line Inc., issued a statement Tuesday saying that the company’s vehicle had been regularly maintained and met state and federal safety requirements. The fatalities in the tunnel, she said, were unrelated to Reyes’ accident.

The company went on to say that there really was no tunnel, it was just a big barbeque pit, and the driver, Reyes, enjoyed a fine cup of coffee afterwards, on their dime.

Popular Mechanics analyzed the crash last winter, before the facts were in. They said the tunnel is dangerous on its own. (although there was no previous history of accidents, from what I could find. And, of course, Reyes was on the other side of the tunnel when he jackknifed, so, not.) They also gave the info that it happened at 10 PM. Drink and drive? Who knows, no one was tested in the emergency. But, yeah.

Los Angeles County Deputy Dist. Atty. Courtney Armendariz wrote up the investigation and report. Courtney seems to be a very intuitive attorney: she argued both sides of the case, just guessing what Reyes and Saia would say in court, without, actually, you know, going to court.

She said the driver would say it’s the truck’s fault, and the lawyers would do tests to show he was driving much slower, and the company would say their trucks were in perfect condition and it’s the tunnel’s fault. Oh, and the drivers behind him, damn them. (Oh, did I mention that CHP had to shut down that tunnel and route for an entire month? Everyone loves a good road closure, and time and gas lost.)

Courtney’s conclusion was: why bother, if we might not win? NO CHARGES AT ALL WILL BE FILED. The dead people, drivers, city, county, and state can just suck it. Saved the county some work, I guess. And saved both Reyes and Saia millions of dollars in legal fees. Los Angeles liberal? Nah.

I looked up Saia Truckers. They make over $976 million (MILLION) annually, with over 10,000 trucks. Yeah, they’re on top of every detail. They’re intrastate and go everywhere. I’ve investigated intrastate trucking before, and the FMCA has almost no power over them. And the state only has jurisdiction when the company is located in that state. This is how and why moving companies are able to literally HIJACK their customers’ goods, quite often, as it happens. (Happened to me with my car.)

I just got my new car insurance bill yesterday. Car is older, but insurance is up. Now we know why, and what I’m paying for: scuzzy truckers and evil truck insurance companies.

It’s obvious Saia isn’t interested in what happens in California. They will probably blame every accident they have here, or have had here, on our deserts, or mountains, or tunnels, or those damn lemon trees. Even when one of their drivers and one of their trucks is involved. Death and destruction? Not their problem. I suggest that the State of California ban Saia Truckers from ever doing business here again. That way, they don’t have to be concerned with our people or topography. And they can go make barbeques elsewhere. Win-win.

Hat tip to LA Observed. He scans the news so I don’t have to.

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Halloween is over, but I’m not.

Donna Barstow — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 00:24:46 +0000

I’m starting a new category here, From Beyond the Grave. Who isn’t fascinated with death? And who will speak for those who have departed untimely? I am, and I will.

I spotted this item in the LA Times first, but instablogs has more details. Simon Rios is was an illegal who killed his wife with a pipe and strangled his 3 daughters. A week earlier he had raped and killed a neighbor girl:

An illegal immigrant serving five life terms for the strangling deaths of his wife, three young daughters and a neighborhood girl apparently took his own life Thursday by hanging himself, authorities said.

Simon Rios, 36, was found in his cell at the Pendleton Correctional Facility northeast of Indianapolis after noon Thursday, prison spokesman David Barr said. Rios was pronounced dead about 40 minutes later after guards and medical personnel couldn’t revive him.

There were no signs of foul play, Barr said…

Here’s the part that proves selfish, nationalistic urges never end:

Rios’ attorney, Michelle Kraus, said he left a note requesting that his remains be returned to his native Mexico.

Oh, okay, will do! Only, I wish you had done us all a favor, and walked back there on your own two feet before things, shall we say, got out of hand.

“I’m very sad. I know he did a very evil thing, and he always knew he did a very evil thing,” Kraus said.

Hey, you and me both, Michelle. Can you hear me crying?

More details and facts about his defense here.

Simon Rios, the one in the orange stripes. Maybe they should be yellow. Photo from fortwayne.com.

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Hellfire in LA, the Devil in Manitoba.

Donna Barstow — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 00:27:33 +0000

lao found a fascinating article in the Ventura County Star today.

Firefighters are monitoring a patch of land north of Fillmore where the ground climbed to 812 degrees on Friday for unknown reasons.

Possible theories include that natural hydrocarbons such as oil or gas are burning deep in the earth. But nobody knows for sure what might have ignited the materials.

Let’s see, it’s 812 degrees underground, and could be as deep as 100 feet. There are wisps of smoke coming from cracks in the ground. Hmm, what could this possibly be? It doesn’t take a cartoonist to figure out it’s obviously a portal to hell. /raises hand excitedly, proud watcher of Reaper, best show on TV.

Man with bad back complains in hell

I mean really, they have NO explanation at all for this. So funny how they write about it, all deadpan-like, even though the science is vague.

But I’ll tell you who wouldn’t be ashamed to talk about hell: Canadians. (Where Reaper is filmed, btw.) I’ve been following the story of Vince Weiguang Li, who stabbed Tim McLean on a Greyhound bus in Canada. From CNN:

Witnesses on the bus said McLean had been sleeping with his head leaning against the window when the attack happened.

Colwell said there was no immediate indication of what prompted the attack. He said he didn’t know how many times the victim was stabbed. Witnesses described the weapon as a large butcher-type knife.Colwell praised the “extraordinary” calmness and bravery of the bus driver and passengers.

Bravery? I don’t think so, Colwell. So 37 passengers are helpless against this man, hearing and seeing him kill someone? Calm because they were in shock, perhaps. However, that didn’t last long, because then they trampled others running up the bus aisle, including at least one woman on the floor.

Here‘s a full report with all the details. (Warning: GRAPHIC DETAILS.) The video of one witness, Garnet Caton (what a great name) is the best. News sources wrote that after Li stabbed the sleeping victim (who screamed in a horrible fatal way), oh, 40 or 50 times, he cut off his head. By this time, everyone else was off the bus, so Li ran to the front of the bus and held the head aloft. Then he just dropped it. (and people got sick.)

The internet found a police scanner recording before the MSM did: (WARNING- DO NOT WATCH the images there), which said Li (who they call “Badger”) is cutting the victim with scissors. And then eating him.

You can’t tell me this is the first time he’s done this, at 40. Let’s get some history on this immigrant.

There are comments at all the sites, although I found this one from C.B.C Canada particularly enlightening. The interesting thing to me is how so many Americans thought as I did: why didn’t the other bus passengers do something?? One commenter there re-enacted the bus scenario with chairs and a friend to see if anyone could have stopped Li! And I may have fallen just a little bit in love with this commenter:

Just try getting out of your seat on a bus with a passenger beside you, and making your way to the toilet on a moving bus. That alone merits a medal of some sort.

Canadians are responding by saying Americans are gun-happy liberal killers – oh, hell, I’ll let them speak for themselves:

It is despicable – but all too predictable – seeing liberals finding something in this horrifying incident to bash the Conservatives, Americans (as if the US has anything to do with this), gun-owners, or whatnot…

As sure as the sun rises and sets every day, a dangerous criminal in Canada will be coddled. Hugs for the criminals, kicks to the breadbasket for the victims…

People who are Christians follow Jesus Christ whose stated aim was to have followers who were FREE of the Jewish law…

Those who follow the bible and Christ are true christians. They are not killers, liars, and thieves…

The last two comments are ones I don’t often see on American blogs! No one bashes any of these religious commenters, either. I guess it’s okay to talk about God there.

And if any of them hear about our own private underground fire here in lawless LA…well, I can’t wait to read their comments!

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