Man beaten to death at San Antonio Station

[RickIronton]

My source was Breaking news, newsroom: (210)366-2002, KENS 5.

 

[Paulus]

There's no mention of this on the KENS 5 website. Another brilliant piece of reporting from Breitbart, no doubt.

Reading comprehension would serve you well. OP explicitly said this would be aired later.

 

[gmushial]

I just got off the phone with the news desk at KENS 5, the local CBS affiliate in San Antonio and they have verified the authenticity of the Breitbart article.

Their report will be on the news on their late news hour.

Is this confirmation that some incident happened? Or that the Breitbart article is correct? ... and "will be on their late news hour"... 5 days later? Is that news?

 

[PRR 60]

It is now being reported by MySA (San Antonio Express-News).

 

[PRR 60]

Sadly, the story has been confirmed. I will reopen this topic and merge the new topic in.

 

[Aaron]

It's nice to see a more thorough story with details and confirmations and information from the police report and things. Those are the things we expect from all journalists. Apparently the more thorough journalists are the same ones that take long holiday weekends off, though, since there was a three day delay in reporting this. Even making excuses for the current state of the journalism business, that's appalling.
In the meantime, a cat dies Sunday morning and they've got it on the front page by Sunday afternoon:

http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/local/article/Alamo-s-official-cat-dies-5603339.php

 

[CHamilton]

Previous commenters are correct that this tragedy could have happened anywhere, especially since it was apparently a random act by someone with mental problems.

That said, I've spent a lot of time in a lot of train stations, and San Antonio station is the only place that I've ever felt unsafe. In addition, it has a history of theft from trains that have been reported here before. The combination of its lack of security personnel, its smallness, and its crowds (especially in the middle of the night) make it a station that I try to avoid.

Amtrak and the local community should review how the station is managed, and improve its security, especially since it is a major layover point.

 

[William W.]

Hopefully this will be the wakeup call that they need. They need to make sure that they have armed security on the platforms during station hours, and during large volume times, have the local police patrol the most crowded areas. What happened seems like it was completely preventable. If there had been security on the platform, they would have noticed the suspect's odd behavior, and thrown him out of the station.

 

[Devil's Advocate]

Hopefully this will be the wakeup call that they need. They need to make sure that they have armed security on the platforms during station hours, and during large volume times, have the local police patrol the most crowded areas. What happened seems like it was completely preventable. If there had been security on the platform, they would have noticed the suspect's odd behavior, and thrown him out of the station.

According to the article he was already outside of the station when he attacked the victim. Nothing about this event strikes me as completely preventable. Crazy people are going to do crazy things. You could say we need more guns or harsher penalties but we're already talking about Texas here. Apparently none of that mattered to this guy. You turn Sunset Station into a fortress of security and they'll kill whoever is just outside the secure area. Solutions to folks like this nutcase probably require long term changes to how we find and manage crazy people in our society. At the moment they mainly vacillate between prison and freedom until they do something heinous enough to be put away for good.

 

[The Chief]

So I dunno if we can trust the San Antonio Express-News.

It is a Texas paper, not an East Coast daily,

and the paper did support George W. Bush in his presidential bid.

Or maybe the OP's source was bright after all,,,

BTW newspapers are slightly staffed these days, and it was a holiday weekend.

 

[City of Miami]

Nothing about this event strikes me as completely preventable.

What might be preventable is the murder of an Amtrak patron waiting for a train.
The only benches I can think of in the area are 2 at trackside, outside the building but definitely in the station.

The station is only staffed from 9pm until 22 departs, usually 7am.

 

[William W.]

I haven't known Breitbart (or any other major US news source, for that matter) to just make up a story out of thin air. Perhaps some do sensationalize a bit, but I think it is pretty clear by now that this story did happen.

If Amtrak isn't willing/able to secure the station grounds, then they need to make it clear that waiting passengers need to stay inside the station building, with other people around. It is never a good idea to sit alone in the inner-city at night.

 

[City of Miami]

There are no 'grounds' William. I think you don't have a concept of this station.

 

[William W.]

By grounds, I mean the property in general. The building, the platforms, etc.

 

[Bob Dylan]

Unfortunately it looks like this story is true and as more details come out the whole thing will become clearer!

I'm amazed that San Antonio's TV Stations didn't banner this story (Man killed in St Paul Square, film @ 10!!!!)The weekend editor @ the SA Express-News which is an old Hearst tabloid ( not sure who owns it Now??) Must have been asleep and missed it or else there was a big Sale @ Sears that was more newsworthy!

With all the people that are around the Sunset Station and St Paul area @ night

I'm amazed that no-one called in an obviously disturbed person going in and out of the station, especially the Amtrak Agents!!!

Contrary to Charlie's views I've never felt unsafe around the area waiting on a Train or visiting as a Tourist! ( there are upscale hotels, restuarants.condos and clubs in the St Paul Square! It is well lighted and there are lots of people around until the trains leave and the clubs and restaurants close!)

What really is amazing is that so many bystanders would be intimidated by a disturbed individual and that no-one intervened! The old New York attirude of "I don't want to get involved!" souldn't apply in the post 911 era!!

My hunch is that the attacker was mentally I'll and/or a junkie or tweeker that just snapped! (Meth is big problem in Texas as is untreated Mental Illness due to our Governments failure to fund social needs!)

 

[VentureForth]

Next, I haven't read anything on Breitbart that was completely conjured up. Amazing that some here would look at Breitbart as tabloid trash and accept the Huffington Post as gospel.

Who said anything about treating Huffington Post as gospel?

How about you try and lay off the political flame baiting and stick to the topic?

Where were (are) you when all these were posted?

Almost as scary as the racist comments at the bottom of the story. Now I know why you chose to hide your link behind a bit.ly relay instead of leaving it out in the open were people could see they were sent into a den of hyper partisan propaganda. Cute but not amused.

An important point in that the story only appears on: breitbart.com, nom.com, politomix.com, conservativecritic.com and vooze.com, but not on any of the San Antonio tv station websites.... an invention maybe?

The source is breitbart.com, which appears to be the originating source in any other news links that show up with a quick search. breitbart.com is NOT a reliable news source; let's leave it at that.

Yup... that breitbart.com makes Fox look like a high integrity high veracity source. :-( Sadly (in my opinion), in days gone by: news [fact based reportage] was what one used to form and correct their world view; nowadays, "news" is used to substantiate or corroborate one's preconceived notions or opinions - with "news" sources for all points of view [at least by those whose world view is not reality based]...

climbing down off his soapbox, greg

Breitbart's problem in the past has been one of spinning events beyond recognition... I guess the question becomes: how unrecognizable does the reporting have to be to be said to be "made up"?

What alarms me more than Breitbart's spin is that it's not reported anywhere else at all. Maybe it didn't happen. But if it didn't, the story mentions an Amtrak employee as the witness; the story also says an Amtrak media relations manager confirmed the incident, so if it didn't happen Amtrak should be disavowing those statements pretty quickly.

OTOH if it did happen, why is no one else reporting it? It's supposed to have happened three days ago so the facts can't be that hard to ascertain. Certainly if it's true it's newsworthy.

At this point only the partisan fringe of the web seems to be reporting this story. That alone doesn't mean it never happened but I honestly see no good reason why numerous local sources would intentionally ignore this. In fact I'd expect a sudden act of murder complete with witnesses to garner more attention than virtually any other type of local story. It's also very rare for the authorities to ignore requests for confirmation regarding acts of violence and/or loss of life in San Antonio. At this point I feel just as safe today as before I read this story. I've visited the area around Sunset Station on more occasions than I can count, including very late at night, and yet I've never witnessed anything worse than the occasional panhandler. Tourism is a big deal in San Antonio and even if the city council wasn't enthusiastic about spreading word about a murder our news media generally go crazy over anything that bleeds. Time will tell if there's anything to this but so far I haven't seen anything conclusive.

 

[Devil's Advocate]

I haven't known Breitbart (or any other major US news source, for that matter) to just make up a story out of thin air.

These are some of the claims levied against Breitbart back in their heyday...

http://mediamatters.org/research/2010/07/21/big-falsehoods-an-updated-guide-to-andrew-breit/168051

 

[William W.]

I haven't known Breitbart (or any other major US news source, for that matter) to just make up a story out of thin air.

These are some of the claims levied against Breitbart back in their heyday...

http://mediamatters.org/research/2010/07/21/big-falsehoods-an-updated-guide-to-andrew-breit/168051

It's difficult to use one ideological source to try to discredit another ideological source. I automatically don't trust anything from Media Matters, and am only willing to trust things from sites like Breitbart when they have corroboration.

 

[the_traveler]

I don't want to get into "they're not real news" arguments, but if it was "confirmed" why by only one source? Why not by every local channel and newspaper? And why was it not reported by CNN, NBC, CBS or Fox News - especially after 5 days? Were they off for the holiday also? (In RI, I've seen stories from Tampa or Omaha or Spokane - and even San Antonio!)

And if the passenger just bought a ticket, they knew where that passenger was headed. Was it reported in that location? "A local was killed in SAS." On 9/11, some of the passengers from BOS were RI residents and stories were for them. A women from Newport, RI was injured in the Boston Marathon bombing, and there were stories on her recovery. I have also heard about a local RI resident killed in (say) San Diego.

 

[Ziv]

the traveler, part of the reason this rankles conservatives is that we have to listen to biased media all the time. Obviously, bias doesn't seem as noticeable if you share the same bias, then it becomes "common sense". In this case the bias is due to the fact that liberal media sources tend to not want to name names so to speak when it comes to protected classes. When a terrorist attacks a synagogue, the news sources refuse to give the suspects last name due to the fact that it will frequently be a name that sounds like it is probably a muslim. If there is a knock out attack, they frequently will not name the racial background of the victim and the attacker, because it will be obvious then that the attack was racist.

Over the past 10 years the Instapundit has had a game he calls "Name the Party!" The game is that if the politician caught in a lie or breaking a law is a Republican, the party affiliation is in the headline or the first paragraph. If the offender is a Dem, the affiliation tends to be in a paragraph buried in the article. This isn't 100%, but it is frequent enough that it is not an accident.

If it turns out that this attack was done by a black guy on a white guy, expect to see that particular aspect buried or omitted. I think the attacker is probably mentally ill and the victims race may have nothing to do with the attack. But the reason this story got buried was probably due to the racial aspect of it. If a white guy attacks a black guy due to his race it will be on the news for weeks. If the reverse, it gets buried. They were able to get out an article on a dead cat in less than 24 hours on a holiday weekend, but they took 4 days to write an article regarding a particularly horrific murder. Why do you think that is? I recognize that racism is not dead in America, but we need to address it from all sides, without giving one side a pass. The legacy media is willing to ignore racist attacks on whites and they should be called on it.

I don't want to get into "they're not real news" arguments, but if it was "confirmed" why by only one source? Why not by every local channel and newspaper? And why was it not reported by CNN, NBC, CBS or Fox News - especially after 5 days? Were they off for the holiday also? (In RI, I've seen stories from Tampa or Omaha or Spokane - and even San Antonio!)

 

[Marcus]

Amtrak and the rest of the Sunset Station do have security. However, at the time of this tragic incident, they were patrolling on the other side of the building.

 

[Ryan]

Where were (are) you when all these were posted?

I saw a bunch of legitimate criticisms of the news source offered by the OP.

Who offered up the Huffington Post as a source for the story?

 

[tonys96]

Quite sad that this turns out to be true. Sad indeed. I have never hung around the station. We get off the train, walk to either the Best Western or Holiday Inn Express and get our room. (can't afford the Staybridge Suites) and go on with our business. If we were catching the SL instead of stopping at SAS, we would walk to Denny's or the River.

That said, the station area seems safe.......nothing is 100% safe, looney folks are able to strike any time, any place.

 

[crescent2]

Sad and surprising that such a thing could happen at an open Amtrak station and that a witness or witnesses apparently did nothing to try to stop the attack. Talk about "see something, say something." :unsure:

I also don't understand the almost instant criticism of the original poster or the criticism of the posters who somewhat offered support for him. I have never heard of the source organization of the first link, but I went back and reread the original link and the later link provided by one of the moderators, and I don't see that one is more biased, spun, or inflammatory than the other. This forum can be quick to jump sometimes.

And I cannot fathom any legitimate reason this was not reported by any other media. I googled for it the night it was originally posted and could find nothing else about it. It's certainly newsworthy, more so than many things that instantly make the news.

Edit to add: Just because the perpetrator and victim are of different races does not automatically mean the crime was racially motivated. For anyone to assume so without evidence to support that assumption is sort of racist in itself, imo. Any murder is a tragedy for all involved.

 

[jis]

Actually, the fact that a lot of the media did not report it does not surprise me. They also did not report many dozens of traffic fatalities and probably a few rail grade crossing or suicide or just Darwin Award events. It is in general not uncommon that very few accidental or even incidental fatalities are actually widely reported. So frankly I was sort of baffled by the excitement from both sides and the use of either non-report or report to arrive at all sorts of conspiratorial conclusions. Oh well.....