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From The Daily Times
Nicest kid you’d want to meet
LINDA REILLY , Times Correspondent 08/15/2004
UPPER DARBY -- The building manager of the apartment complex where the
man who confronted police in the station house lived shuddered to think
what would have happened if he had threatened others.
Louise Stromberg, who manages the Long Lane Apartments had nothing but
favorable recollections of the tenant who was shot and killed by police.
Fundador David Torres, 21, of the 100 block of Long Lane, Upper Darby,
was pronounced dead 2:31 a.m. Friday in the lobby of the Upper Darby
Public Safety Building, 7236 West Chester Pike by Delaware County
Memorial Hospital paramedic Tim Quinn.
Bennett Preston, M.D., of the county’s medical examiner’s office
conducted the autopsy on Torres and pronounced the cause of death a
gunshot wound to the chest and the manner of death a homicide -- shot by
police officer.
Police officials called it a "classic suicide by cop scenario."
According to police accounts, Torres threatened the building security
personnel, a police officer and a civilian jailer working the midnight
shift, allegedly waving a .357 magnum and breaking a beer bottle against
the safety glass of their office.
When patrol officers responded to the assist officer call Torres was
ordered to drop his weapon.
"The suspect turned and pointed the loaded handgun at officers,"
Detective Lt. George Rhoades Jr. said. "Lt. (Anthony) Paparo and another
officer fired. The suspect was shot once in the chest," Rhoades added,
noting Paparo suffered a shoulder wound and fractured clavicle from one
of the three bullets fired by police.
Paparo is recuperating at home.
According to Rhoades, Torres never fired his gun noting all three rounds
discharged have been accounted for.
Torres’ gun was loaded with six hydra-shock rounds, described as "highly
lethal projectiles," and he had 75 rounds of ammunition, both .357 and
the hydra-shocks, in his pockets.
All the projectiles have been sent to the Pennsylvania State Police
ballistic lab for inspection along with the officer’s weapons. Torres
was identified through the firearm he purchased legally.
"His family told us he had recently lost his job and was distraught and
was drinking heavily," Rhoades said. "We believe he came to the police
station with the intent to die."
Stromberg remembered Torres moving into the building a little over a
year ago.
"He was the nicest kid you’d ever want to meet," Stromberg said. "You’d
never, never know he had a problem. He was never once a problem. He must
have just flipped. It was just a freak thing. You just never know. He
just lost it.
"He lived here by himself and when I saw him last, on Wednesday, he was
fine," Stromberg said. "He was an awesome kid. He came in last week and
paid the rent."
She remembered that when Torres applied for the lease he presented
excellent references from his former employer at Le Petite Café, a
restaurant in Terminal Square, where he worked as a bus boy for about
five years before it closed a couple of years ago.
Stromberg contacted Torres’ mother, who lives in the neighborhood, after
hearing about his death and after police came to inspect his apartment.
"I called her just to talk and let her know I was there for her if she
wanted to talk," Stromberg said. "He had a small kitten inside his
apartment and I told her I would take care of it until she was ready to
take it."
©The Daily Times 2004
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Commentary:
Bush Stumbles Again
Bush’s verbal gaffes are no longer a laughing matter.
By Gerald Rellick
At a bill signing ceremony in the White House on August 5, George Bush
pulled off his latest verbal gaffe. Captured on film and shown worldwide, as
well as on Jay Leno, Bush remarked with his patented smirk, "Our enemies are
innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about
new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we."
The same day I read this, I had just finished an article by Charley Reese,
Vote for a Man, Not a Puppet, written in May. Reese, a staunch conservative
and formerly a columnist with the Orlando Sentinel, writes, “It’s no wonder
the president avoids press conferences like the plague. Take away his cue
cards and he can barely talk. Americans should be embarrassed that an Arab
king (Abdullah of Jordan) spoke more fluently and articulately in English
than our own president at their joint press conference recently.”
Jay Leno joked recently that hearing Bill Clinton during the Democratic
convention “made you nostalgic for a time when presidents could speak.”
Last April, the Los Angeles Times published a letter from a 73 year-old
woman, Phyllis Lilly, of Ridgecrest, California. No one could have captured
any better the essence of our hapless president than Ms. Lilly when she
wrote, “I watched President Bush’s April 13 press conference. In my 73
years, I have never seen or heard such stumbling, bumbling ignorance by an
American president. He never fully answered one question and deliberately
rambled on in order to kill time and answer fewer questions. This illiterate
man is an embarrassment to our country.”
And mind you, these are not the words of one of those “pointy-headed liberal
intellectual elites.”
But the sheer frightfulness of George Bush isn’t just found in his language.
Consider one very alarming example. Nearly everyone has now seen, or heard
of, the scene from Fahrenheit 9/11 where George Bush sits passively and
glazed for seven minutes in a Florida school room after he has been informed
of a second hijacked plane hitting the Twin Towers. The words spoken to him
were, “We are under attack, Mr. President.” As one movie reviewer remarked,
this scene is almost surreal; it has to be seen to be believed.
The 9/11 Commission Report tells us that during those dreadful minutes, Vice
President Cheney was, in effect, calling the command shots from Washington.
But Cheney lacked good information and was understandably bewildered and
confused. Nevertheless, he at least was trying to do something to protect
America, while the president flew around in Air Force One wondering where to
land and what to do.
Consider our nuclear weapons system, which is designed so that the president
always has the nuclear code with him in the form of the so-called
“football,” handcuffed to a military officer so that the president can react
to a nuclear threat within minutes, perhaps even seconds. But after Bush’s
performance on September 11, 2001, perhaps it would be better to have the
football travel with Dick Cheney, or perhaps the Deputy Secretary of
Agriculture--anyone but George Bush!
So, who are these people who still support George Bush for four more years
of dis-service to this country? Do they believe that stupidity pays some
dividend in the end? Are they so frightened of the Democrats that they
prefer a virtual moron as president--a man who has his finger on the nuclear
trigger and who has already demonstrated that war is not his “last option”?
Do they concede that Bush really is stupid but otherwise just a harmless
dupe or puppet who will be held in check by Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and
the Republican forces in Congress--and so, is still better than any
Democrat, who as we all know will raise our taxes, take away our guns,
release all the felons from prison, give abortion on demand, promote
pornography, … ?
Millions of American voters are in some form of deep denial due largely to
fear growing out of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. America the brave has become
America the afraid, and it seeks comfort in the known and familiar, just as
the abused wife futilely seeks comfort in her abuser.
And make no mistake, Bush and his cohorts have orchestrated this perfectly
for political purposes, from the nonspecific terrorist alerts, which have
become the butts of comedians’ jokes, to the pressure being put on Pakistan
President Musharraf by the Bush administration to capture “high-value
targets before the November elections,” as reported by The New Republic. One
such HVT captured was Ahmed Ghailani, an Al Qaeda operative wanted in
connection with the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
TNR reports that although Ghailani was captured on July 25, announcement of
his capture by Pakistan’s interior minister took place on local television
about five hours before John Kerry gave his acceptance speech in Boston on
July 29. The announcement was at midnight Pakistani time. Is there is any
doubt that it was intended for American audiences?
Bush is now furiously playing catch-up as he loses ground on this one last
issue of combating terrorism that Americans still give him some credit for.
And, as Bob Herbert writes in the New York Times, “The nation seems
paralyzed, unsure of what to do about Iraq or terrorism…. Nobody seems to
know where we go from here.”
Like one giant ball of loosely wound string, the myth of the warrior-hero is
unraveling.
Gerald S. Rellick, Ph.D., worked in the defense sector of the aerospace
industry. He now teaches in the California Community College system.
Posted Thursday, August 12, 2004
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