posted
believe it was a passenger (not a conductor) that stated he saw Dowd near a door. not sure how a fellow passenger would have known his name. suspect when they could not locate Dowd the next morning, someone started putting two and two together and came up with five. dee
Posts: 460 | From: North Central CT | Registered: May 2004
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posted
This is what happens when news stories are reported initially. Eyewitness statements don't jibe and people conflate memories. This is why news stories are called first drafts of history; the actual facts tend to emerge way down the road.
Posts: 2236 | From: Evanston, Ill. and Ontonagon, Mich. | Registered: Feb 2007
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posted
This also happens when witnesses report emergencies and give witness statements to police officers (including when the police officer is also the witness). Oftentimes, the witness is called a "liar", or worse, the police officer is called "corrupt". I have taken two classes that go deep into the psychological aspect of what happens in our brain when we witness an emergency, or something that happens very fast. Ask 10 people to watch something, make the "incident" happen, then immediately separate the 10 people and get independent witness statements. Care to guess what the outcome is??? Yup, 10 very different stories---every time. Same general topic, but very different interpretations of what really happened. And none of them are lying---they are simply saying what they witnessed as it went through their "filter" inside their head. That's why evidence collection is so important on major crimes. People wonder why the police close a freeway for two hours after a homicide---it's because of evidence collection. Once you open the freeway, your evidence is destroyed/tainted forever and you can't get it back.
Posts: 2355 | From: Pleasanton, CA | Registered: Apr 2007
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posted
In this case, I agree that the conductor may have been mistaken.
I've taken Expert Witness classes in my career, and the first thng they teach you is what Smitty refers to.
Posts: 2428 | From: Grayling, MI | Registered: Mar 2002
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When I taught journalism to college freshmen, one of my classes involved the age-old trick of having a confederate wearing odd clothes and a hat and waving a cap pistol burst into the classroom and deliver a short but profane tirade against me, the instructor.
Then after he had run outside, I had the students write a news story about what they thought they had seen and heard.
Naturally no two stories were ever the same.
In the age of the iPhone and streaming video, this is beginning to change. A little.
Posts: 2236 | From: Evanston, Ill. and Ontonagon, Mich. | Registered: Feb 2007
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posted
Oh, I would have loved to have read those stories about what they witnessed! Something similar is done in the police academy, but you write a report instead. Sorta the same thing in many ways. The differences are astounding!
Posts: 2355 | From: Pleasanton, CA | Registered: Apr 2007
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posted
Waaay off topic, but perhaps the best movie about mistaken identification by eye witnesses is the 1956 Hitchcock film noir classic, "The Wrong Man," with which I have some up close and personal familiarity.
posted
In a class for teenagers in a church youth program on the point of missing something because you are not looking for it a relatively short video was run showing two groups of about 4 to 5 each, one group wearing white shirts and the other wearing black shirts passing a basketball between them. The question asked at the start was see if you can tell me how many times the basketball was passed by somewone wearing a white shirt?
After the clip was run, there were several guesses make, generally in the same range of 12 to 15 passes. The next question he asked was, how many of you noticed a gorilla? Dead silence followed. He then ran the clip again. About mid way through a person in a gorilla costurm danced across through the middle of the group and make faces in the middle then went off.
The point made was only about 10% of the people that watched this video even noticed the gorilla at all because they were concentrating on something else altogether. (I did not see the gorilla.)
Posts: 2810 | From: Olive Branch MS | Registered: Nov 2002
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quote:Originally posted by Henry Kisor: You are saying that I should write a story about Old People Being Old People? Hell, I am living that story!
Chapter One: The car keys are always in the last place you look.
Here's a trick I started using, when I find something, I put the item in the place I first looked, so next time it will be where I think it's going to be. It works!
"Amtrak officials had told Dowd's family that a door of the train was found ajar and passengers saw Dowd acting disoriented near a door.
On Friday, the body was spotted by a railway worker in the western Nebraska city of Haigler, the family said."
It's sad, but accidents happen.
No blame game, you can't lock the doors because people may need to escape. Same as restaurants, businesses, schools, public places, which must have exits available! (hey anyone ever read about the Cotton Club fire or the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire?)
Posts: 23 | From: Milwaukee-North | Registered: Apr 2012
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