Did Vandalism Cause Mass Death In North Philly?

Eight people are dead and many others are still in the hospital with serious injuries following an Amtrak wreck in North Philadelphia, the biggest US passenger train wreck in the last ten years.

Initially, it looked like operator negligence by the engineer, but now we know that a SEPTA (Philly commuter) train engineer warned the Amtrak train by radio that his windshield had been broken by vandals up ahead. These train engines have very thick glass, so this was more than just a kid throwing an ordinary rock off a bridge; maybe a high powered weapon. We now have to consider the significant possibility that the Amtrak engineer's concussion was caused by criminal action by the same vandals. He claims to remember no details.

I'm sort of kicking myself for not thinking of this sooner. I've been to North Philly, and it's every bit as violent and uncivilized as West Baltimore, East Washington, The Bronx, northern New Jersey, and the south side of Chicago. Nobody is safe in any part of these areas. Every railroad in America passes through the worst parts of every city, but these places are the worst of the worst.

How can Americans deal with a world in which it's become unsafe to pass through large portions of major cities on major rail and highway routes? I find this extremely disturbing. We can't just give up and say we're going to fly over them in airplanes.

 

I dont even believe thugs are that stupid. Someone in their(distant) family could be on that train. I really think they have better sense than that.

About as far fetched as God punishing the engineer because he was gay.

The reward for information leading to the arrests of tampering with a train tracks, and or causing harm to a train is near $100K. IF any one does do something like that, better not tell anyone ..

 

Even more likely with the local SEPTA train.

MSNBC interviewed a passenger train engineer who said he had been shot at many times in his career.

 

I never go there...

 

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Id been in and out the Market St station/Center City on the septa a least a dozen times, while following the Dead.. Seen some creepers on the trains but mostly regular people doing their life. Hard to actaully say what I think about the trips. Mostly paid attention to where I was going and need to connect and less about terrorism... However I was in the philly and new york area around 2005, with a hightened sense of terrorism. I still enjoyed the sight seeing along the rail..

 

My only adventure in North Philly was entirely by accident. We were looking for a jazz venue. People at the hotel told us the location was okay, but we shouldn’t go any further north, because it was near the dividing line between safe and unsafe areas. We missed a turn, then had trouble finding a good place to turn around, and found ourselves more or less in a third world country. It was the worst large neighborhood I had ever seen, and I’ve seen plenty of bad ones. Every building and house looked like it had been abandoned for fifty years, but lights were on inside, and people were going in and out of them. All the pavement was broken with tall weeds and small trees growing through the cracks. All the people looked like thugs, or mentally ill, or completely without hope for the future. A gang was stripping a parked car out in the open, without fear of what anyone saw. They looked at us and looked away, after deciding that we weren’t police.

We safely got back to the venue, but on the inside it looked like it had been abandoned for fifty years, with missing light fixtures and bare wires hanging down. I first thought a bartender was throwing a beer bottle at me from 20 feet away, but the trash can was just below the bar where I was standing. I think he did it like that because I looked like I didn’t belong there; overdressed for the club. I had thought that most people halfway dressed up for jazz bars except in New Orleans. I was wrong. After the show (killer, ass kicking, high quality jazz), I was almost surprised that our car was still there on the street, in one piece.

All I said to my husband was, “I think we fit in better in New Orleans.” Talking about it to a local in a downtown bar the next night, all they said was, “Typical North Philly.”

Even the best parts of Philadelphia are questionable in safety. A street woman spit in my face for not talking to her, directly across the street from the Ritz Carlton Hotel. I wasn’t staying there, but it wouldn’t have mattered.

So, when I hear something terrible about that area, it doesn’t surprise me. I’m not in a rush to go back. Too bad their art museum is so incredible. It and the Rodin Museum and the Franklin Institute are like diamonds in a large pile of shit.

Crime has been a big issue in North Philly for more than 100 years. NBC News reports that somebody there threw something like a pipe bomb at President Theodore Roosevelt’s train as it rolled through.

The SEPTA engineer in this case says he thinks he was shot at by a high powered rifle, and an Acella train just before that reported getting hit by something in that area. So, there’s a high probability that the Amtrak train was under attack just before it wrecked, distracting the engineer from his work.

Can we really mark off major portions of cities like this and declare them a lawless no man’s land? It’s not working in Baltimore.