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The Cincinnati Beacon
White Man Kills Black Woman - No Charges Filed
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
Posted by The Dean of Cincinnati
Yesterday, I was informed about a story that aired on WLWT last week. I was told that a white man driving downtown ran into and killed a Black woman, and that no charges had been filed against the guy. I found that strange—almost unbelievable—thus I wanted to see the story for myself. Unfortunately, I could not find it. So, I called WLWT, and the guy at the web page desk was kind enough to forward me the link. And since yesterday, WLWT has already changed the text of the story. What’s going on with this white guy, and should he get into any trouble for killing an elderly Black woman with his car?
The “updated” story from WLWT can be found here, which still includes these details:
Cincinnati police are investigating a serious incident Wednesday afternoon that left a woman dead and closed a major intersection.
Police said Mary Casey, 79, was crossing Ninth Street near Central Avenue just after 12:30 p.m. when she was hit by a pickup turning onto Ninth Street.
Investigators said Casey was walking in a marked crosswalk, and one witness said the driver, Melvin Baker, 41, of Covington, was going around a stopped mail truck and may not have seen the woman until it was too late.
Now, how do we know the ethnicity of those involved? WLWT has some raw video posted online (at least they do as I’m typing this), and you can see a very upset white man sitting on the bumper of a pick-up truck talking to police. This is likely Melvin Baker.
What about Mary Casey? Was she, as I have been told, an African American? And would that fact shed any additional details on this story? Does the fact that she was 79 years old and living at Uptown Towers give us a likely understanding of her race? Should we care about this detail?
Thanks to MSNBC, we can see an older version of the story, before WLWT updated their own. Here is the first ending to the story:
No charges have been filed against the pickup’s driver, Melvin Baker, 41, of Covington, who was not injured.
Here is the new ending, after I personally called WLWT and asked them to email me the link:
No charges were immediately filed against Baker, but he was cited for failure to yield.
The original time-stamp of the WLWT story still says September 12th, so there is no indication—other than the MSNBC cross-posting—that the conclusion was worded differently just yesterday afternoon. The change came after I called WLWT and specifically asked how to find that particular story.
I am most interested in the word “immediately.” That seems to indicate the possibility that Melvin Baker may be charged with something. Is that true? Did WLWT decide to add this revision only after they realized some people may be paying closer attention to the story?
Thanks to the Google cache, we can see a really early version of the story here. What’s interesting is how, under the original time-stamp, there is the indication of when the story had been updated last. No such indications are currently placed.
The cached story ends like this:
No charges have been filed so far.
The history of this last line is worth noting. First, there were no charges “so far”; second, we were told that “no charges have been filed”; and most recently we are being told that charges were not “immediately” filed.
It may be speculative, but one must wonder what would have happened if an African American male driving a pick up truck had made this kind of driving maneuver and killed an elderly white woman.
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