‘Bro, you scared to see a dead person?’: Teens film, mock man as he drowned, police say
About seven seconds into the video, a teenager raises the specter of death.
“Get out the water, you’re gonna die,” one of the teens shouts to a disabled man whom his friends are watching struggle fully clothed in a fenced-in pond. “You shouldn’t have gone in,” says another. The kids laugh.
“He keeps putting his head under,” another says. “Wow.” Once the group realizes the weight of the situation, one of the boys prods another.
“Bro, you scared to see a dead person?” he asks.
Jamel Dunn, 32, drowned on July 9 in Cocoa, Fla., a coastal city east of Orlando. The teenagers, aged 14 to 16, filmed the incident as they laughed and mocked Dunn, then posted the video to social media. The video, which police called “extremely disturbing,” was found by detectives and handed over to Brevard County State Attorney’s Office, which recently released it to Florida Today.
“He started to struggle and scream for help and they just laughed. They didn’t call the police. They just laughed the whole time. He was just screaming … for someone to help him,” Yvonne Martinez, spokeswoman for the Cocoa Police Department, told the paper, which posted only audio of the incident . Both the police department and attorney general’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The teens were identified and questioned by detectives investigating the case, but they are unlikely to face charges. They were not directly involved in Dunn’s drowning, and good Samaritan laws — which typically involve protections for bystanders helping on the scene of an emergency — don’t apply to the case, police said.
Dunn was at the pond following an argument with his fiancee shortly before the incident and walked in on his own, Martinez said.
“They were watching him,” she said about the teenagers. “Everybody is just horrified by this.”
Dunn’s fiancee filed a missing people report on July 12 . His “badly decomposed body” was found on July 14, and a family member identified Dunn from the video circulating online. Dunn walked with the aid of a cane and had two young children, Florida Today reported.
Police said there appeared to be little regret from the teens involved during and after the incident. One of the teens stared ahead while he was questioned while his mother cried next to him, Martinez said.
“There was no remorse, only a smirk,” she said.
Simone Scott, who identified herself as Dunn’s sister, lambasted the teenagers for not contacting first responders.
“(Okay), I agree they don’t have to help, but they should have called 9-1-1,” she wrote Thursday on Facebook. She also expressed frustration with the lack of charges and slow pace of authorities.
“No one never reached out to my family to come identify his body before it hit the news, and until this day we haven’t identified his body,” Scott said.
Scott posted the video, along with a black image with white text: “How could you witness someone die and not be charged with anything? #share”
The state attorney general’s office said that “While the incident depicted on the recording does not give rise to sufficient evidence to support criminal prosecution under Florida statutes, we can find no moral justification for either the behavior of people heard on the recording or the deliberate decision not to render aid to Mr. Dunn.”
According to the police, Dunn was last seen in a red hat reading “Only God can judge me.”
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Police said there appeared to be little regret from the teens involved during and after the incident. One of the teens stared ahead while he was questioned while his mother cried next to him, Martinez said.
Listen to the audio in the link. What is this country becoming?
We as a nation have devalued human life; and there is a GREAT HYPOCRISY that is partially attributable.
How the F can we have so many "people" who simultaneously call themselves "Pro-Life," Pro-gun," "Pro-torture," "anti-health care as a right," "anti-science" and anti-environment?
Then, we have the euphemistic apotheosis of the so-called "Single Mom" … divorce and widow/widower events aside … Single Moms, really?
And we have the APOLOGISTS on both sides of the political aisle … and, the HYPOCRITES who will blame those for "not pulling themselves up by their bootstraps" while making it difficult to receive the kinds of wages enabling them to own boots.
We worship athletes, celebrities, love bullshit, hate substance, loathe and deny the inconvenient truths and envy the wealth of the greedy and criminal rich.
And some are just proud to be a part of it all.
I'm just gettin' started …
It's truly sad that parents have failed in raising their children, have not taught them basic human kindness and compassion. The biggest problem? That generation will be in charge one day.
Times have changed. With two parents working to afford rent, health insurance, etc., or worse yet - single parenting, kids have too much unsupervised idle time. That's not necessarily a parent's fault. At some point you need to consider that the kids need to learn to be responsible for themselves, and show empathy towards others.
Both my (ex-) Wife and I worked full time, and we still raised children that know the difference between right and wrong. Saying that it is or might not be their fault as parents? They chose to have children, one way or the other and are responsible for raising them to know what the right thing to do is.
Kids don't just receive enlightenment via osmosis.
I didn't receive much enlightenment from my parents. I was a shit and was frequently in trouble. However, I would have never have watched and mocked a stranger while they drowned to death. Unless the parents taught the kids such deliberate callousness, I wouldn't be quick to blame them for their kid's abhorrent actions.
I was a latchkey kid, too, and while I got into mischief, my parents still taught me how to be a good person. These kids are missing a empathy.. which is sociopathic.
Apparently they failed to teach them how to speak English too.
Here is the video. You see the man's head bobbing in the water and then disappear.
The "kids" seem to be of particularly low intelligence.
The article says they cannot be charged because this was not an "emergency". Since when is someone drowning in plain sight not an emergency?
In NY, the charge for not helping is depraved indifference. I think these sociopaths should get it.
Absolutely sickening!
This is a good case for Karma.
Disgusting. Sometimes, it is so easy to blame the parents, but we don't live in the same world anymore. There isn't the same family unit and kids have the outside help from social media outlets. Suicides, bullying, pornos, murders are shown on these outlets and this is the world a lot of kids live in. These kids seemed to be disappointed when the man didn't bob up to the surface, again.
We as a nation have devalued human life; and there is a GREAT HYPOCRISY that is partially attributable.
How the F can we have so many "people" who simultaneously call themselves "Pro-Life," Pro-gun," "Pro-torture," "anti-health care as a right," "anti-science" and anti-environment?
Then, we have the euphemistic apotheosis of the so-called "Single Mom" … divorce and widow/widower events aside … Single Moms, really?
And we have the APOLOGISTS on both sides of the political aisle … and, the HYPOCRITES who will blame those for "not pulling themselves up by their bootstraps" while making it difficult to receive the kinds of wages enabling them to own boots.
We worship athletes, celebrities, love bullshit, hate substance, loathe and deny the inconvenient truths and envy the wealth of the greedy and criminal rich.
And some are just proud to be a part of it all.
To quote the late George Carlin …
"If you're pre-birth you're good …
… if you're pre-school … your fucked!"
I'm just gettin' started …