DENVER – A good Samaritan who helped push three people out of the path of a pickup truck before being struck and injured has gotten a strange reward for his good deed: A jaywalking ticket.
Family members said 58-year-old bus driver Jim Moffett and another man were helping two elderly women cross a busy Denver street in a snowstorm when he was hit Friday night.
Moffett suffered bleeding in the brain, broken bones, a dislocated shoulder and a possible ruptured spleen. He was in serious but stable condition Wednesday.
The Colorado State Patrol issued the citation. Trooper Ryan Sullivan said that despite Moffett’s intentions, jaywalking contributed to the accident.
Moffett had been driving his bus when the two women got off. In the interest of safety, he got out and, together with another passenger, helped the ladies cross.
Moffett’s stepson, Ken McDonald, said the driver of the pickup plowed into his stepfather, but not before Moffett pushed the two women out of the way.
When he awoke in intensive care, he learned of the ticket. “His reaction was dazed and confused. I was a little angry,” said McDonald.
The other man also was cited for jaywalking, while the pickup driver was cited with careless driving that led to injury. Sullivan said the two elderly women haven’t been cited but the investigation is ongoing.
The city probably issued it because they foresee the possibility of a lawsuit against them. A citation may help protect them from liability to any of the parties.
if they needed the help, they should not have been j-walking. They should have used a cross-walk. They are there to stop these kinds of accidents from happening.
Exactly, and helping them j-walk doesn’t make it any better.
It’s like the morons who stop on a multilane street to try and let someone turn left across the lanes of traffic. Guess what, you only stopped one lane, and the guy you’re “helping” is about to get plowed into by all the cars going around the moron who stopped for no reason.
dude, this seriously happened less than 20 feet from my car a week or so ago.
Cars in the 2 main lanes were stopped to let a guy pull into a driveway. However, there was a right-hand turning lane, guy sneaks past the cars that were waiting for him, WHAM, woman in a red civic cruising down the turn lane t-bones the fuck out of him. Little girl in the back and everything. Airbags flew, lady was F-ed up. Guy was extremely disoriented. fucked up.
Happens turning into my street all the time off Main Street by the 198. Someone tries to be nice and stop their lane of traffic but don’t realize that there is 2 other lanes of assholes that are flying around them and they sit at me looking and wonder why I am not going for it and wanting the smashed front end mod.
I dunno. 5 or 6 years ago i was driving home, it was raining/icing, and i hit a patch of slush followed by a patch of ice… I spun out, went across the double yellow, flew off the road into a bunch of trees. It was a rural road, around 11pm, no other traffic, etc. I was doing 5 under the speed limit, but still totaled the car and sat in pain for a few weeks.
I got a ticket for failure to keep right. While i wasn’t saving anyone’s life, i don’t feel i deserved the ticket… but technically, i did fail to keep right. meh
^ Just because you’re under the speed limit does not mean you’re traveling at a speed safe for the conditions. The fact that you went crashing off the road in fact proves you were going to too fast for the conditions. It would be nice if the cop cut you a break on the ticket since no one else was hurt, but you were definitely at fault and guilty of the offense (and a few others if he wanted to be a real dick).
yeah. that’s exactly what i just said. and he was a real dick about it, the other 4 officers on the scene even said he was a real dick about it, to his face. fwiw, i was going about 35 mph. the drop-off was about 10ft, and full of trees, which is why the car got totaled, it was a 1998 geo metro.
There were probably a few hundred other crashes that night, it was that really shitty ice storm in early 2002.
but anyway, i was ticketed, then it was dropped in court. maybe these tickets will be too.
Blame the sue-happy people and the ambulance chasers- thats why cops are pressured into giving out tickets like this on a regular basis. I seem to remember cases of cops giving out tickets to dead people.
probably gave them tickets so they couldnt win a lawsuit against the guy who hit them. put them in the wrong. they lived, chalk it up as a learning experience