Slow and painful were the medical examiner's determination - an expert in death.
My guess is that his body showed evidence of frostbite, which would be painful initially, on autopsy.
Slow and painful were the medical examiner's determination - an expert in death.
Is the family either pressing charges or filing a lawsuit? With the information I have, the power company has blatantly broken the law--and it cost someone his life. His life matters more, not less, because he was old. The fewer moments one has left, the more precious they become.
Ah. I see your point, then. We old hens really do need a place to cluck.
Bartholomew, according to Michigan law. (I posted the link above.) If the guy wasn't making the required payments, then the law in Michigan does allow the company to shut off services. Sorry, but Michigan law does allow the company to cut off power if no payment is being made. Until we have record of whether or not the man was making any payments at all, as required by Mich law, then we can't assume the company broke the law.
Hm.
This is why I'll always support the tiniest bit of socialism. Just enough, see, to prevent crap like this. Would heating his home in the dead of winter really have cost that much? They saved a penny--earned a penny--but at a much higher cost than two cents. Sure, THEY don't have to pay for the funeral and the post-mort services, but the family does. That could have been any of our grandparents, and some of our parents.
In my book, if you kill someone--even on accident--you pick up the bill.
I think preventing "crap like this" would require more than "a little" socialism, and more than socialism, period.
The law can't discriminate cases like this. If there's a 1000$ unpaid heating bill... maybe the guy's moved on, maybe it's an empty shack, maybe a megacorp forgot to pay the heating for one of their large-scale facilities.
[...]
We cannot design a welfare state around statistical edge cases that happen to evoke strong emotion from us.
I'm all for heating as a basic human need that should be subsidized, mind you. I'm just saying that it sounds like there were things going on here other than lack of social services, and blaming the power company is specious.
Multiple people failed this guy--his family, his neighbors, his friends.
I don't expect anyone to call me up on a daily basis to ask "are you still alive?"
IIRC, you're in college and healthy--so I would think there was something distinctly odd if you did expect that. But that wasn't the case here. And there's a lot of territory between infantilizing someone into dependency and abandoning them to this kind of death.
It's not that they didn't care--it's just that they didn't know. Yes, it's unfortunate, but I don't think blaming the family is fair.
Perhaps not, but how do you get to the point where you don't know? (I know, multiple anecdata about estranged crazy cousins will follow).
The coroner said he died from the cold, yes?.
All I can think, whenever I see this header, is how lonely and scared he must have been at the end.
I agree, Claudia, it is a very sad death, very lonely.
But who is the coroner in that particular location? Here it is an elected position with no educational requirements.
So what's so unreasonable about the utility company simply allowing the electricity to remain on until April 1? Were they worried that maybe the unpaid bill by April 1st would amount to as much as $2,000? or $3,000? Big frickin' deal! They couldn't spare two-and-a-half more months of electricity???? I highly doubt that utility was on the verge of bankurptcy. I highly doubt three thousand frigging dollars was going to drive them to the poor house.
But who is the coroner in that particular location? Here it is an elected position with no educational requirements. Usually it's a mortician (here). If that story happened here, I would not at all be surprised that
1, A superviser at the electric company reviews the shut-offs at the end of the week and says, "What? You shut off the electric to old Clem's place? We'd better go check it out.
2, Coroner walks in after they find him dead and says, "Man it's cold as hell in here. I can see my breath."
3, Deputy says, "He's frozen stiff."
4, Coroner glances at the man and announces, "Must have died from the cold."
5, the family would demand an actual autopsy done my a Medical Examiner.
6, the autopsy and review of information might show that the guy died of old age and it happened to be in the winter and he kept his place cold to keep heating costs down. There was a coincidence of timing and someone shooting off their mouth.
I'm not saying that is what happened here, just that we don't have enough information to reliably say anything other than an old man died. Now if there is an actual autopsy and it shows more, then...
I can clarify some of the questions asked here. Now I can't quote the article, because it's from a source which rhymes with ABI.
However, from my paper:
He had no children. His wife died a couple years ago. He did have relatives.
The power company did not turn off his power. They installed a limiter device, which pops like a circuit breaker after a certain amount of power is consumed.
[...]
No social program can help folks like this, because it would take a caretaker per person, and we just can't afford that. (He had enough money to hire .
I started to contemplate what was going through his mind when he realized that the power was out, and he likely had no clue as to how to get it back on, and perhaps his phone was also turned off so maybe he couldn't even call anyone. And so all he could do then was just lie down in the dark and freeze to death. After only ten seconds of imagining that, I couldn't think about it anymore...
If he was that lucid, perhaps he thought about how he wished he'd paid his bills on time.