There are a lot of indications that we’re having some serious societal issues at this point.
But perhaps nothing indicates that more than a video showing an allegedly horrible crime in Las Vegas.
The crime happened on August 14, but the video of the incident is just now being spread. Police allege that two teens were in a stolen car in Las Vegas, that the driver hit another car first, and then intentionally hit a man on a bike. You can see that all play out in the alleged video here. Police said they believed it was intentional after looking at video they said was on social media, but the media hasn’t published or confirmed the video.
The video being spread is disturbing. It’s like they think they’re playing a video game; you can hear one say “Ready?” and the other says, “Hit his a**” about the biker, and one of them giggles.
Then, after the car hits him, they seem to realize the seriousness of the action, with one saying the man was “knocked out,” and the other saying, “We have to get out of here.”
The teens fled the scene after the incident. But the vehicle was located a few miles away and the teen driver was arrested.
The biker, 64-year-old Andreas Probst, was taken to the hospital but later died.
The driver, a 17-year-old boy, is now facing a murder charge. His name has not been released because of his age.
Probst was a retired police chief. He was riding his bike for exercise because he is now doing a remote job in global security. His daughter Taylor Probst got an alert from her father’s Apple Watch when he went down, so she knew he was in trouble. Taylor and her mother Crystal Probst went looking for him at the site of the incident, about three miles from where they lived.
“I come from law enforcement as well in my younger days,” Crystal Probst said in an interview Friday. “I was able to ascertain, there’s his bike, his helmet is way over there, his phone is way over there. I’m like, this is not good.” [….]
Taylor Probst said her dad was everyone’s dad, as he welcomed any stranger into their home.
“Being around him, it was like being next to a ray of sunshine,” Taylor Probst said. “He was always laughing, always smiling, offering you support, life advice, career advice.”
What are we to do about young people, who have so little conscience that they would do something like this? Unfortunately, we’re seeing a lot of behavior where kids just do whatever they feel like doing without caring about the consequences of their actions. Then someone like Probst, who has given so much in service, is killed for no reason, and we lose everything else he would have brought to this life.
We sometimes hear about crime being blamed on poverty. But this isn’t about poverty or want. At least not “want” in an economic sense. What do you gain by killing someone for fun, and filming it? This is about the poverty of the soul, that this teen would have so little regard for life, who would think this was somehow “fun.”
