April 10, 2007
Damn kids
This was an amusing story out of Buffalo, and it looks like it's getting closer to being resolved:
Mayor Byron W. Brown on Friday said he gave his son the benefit of the doubt, until a detective led the youth to admit what an entire city seemed to suspect: The 16-year-old, not a random thief, took the family auto and crashed it into three parked cars in the neighborhood. The mayor told reporters that he didn’t learn the truth from his son until Thursday afternoon, after the youth confessed to the detective and six weeks after the crashes.
Had the mayor been covering for his son for the past month-and-ahalf, he and his wife could have risked fraud charges.
Michelle Austin-Brown had told police that the Chevrolet Equinox must have been stolen — even though police said the driver had a key to the vehicle that was headed back to the mayor’s home when the crashes occurred.
“We believed one way or the other the truth would come out. And yesterday, the truth came out,” Byron Brown told reporters at a news conference. “And to our deep disappointment as a family, the truth of this is that our son took the vehicle.”
The mayor said that after his son spoke with the detective Thursday, he told his parents he had driven off about 5 a.m. Feb. 24 to meet a friend, with whom he discussed his high school basketball team’s loss the previous evening.
The youth has no driver’s license, only a learner’s permit. Returning home about 7 a.m., he turned onto the family’s street and crashed into two cars parked end to end. He hit a pickup truck with such force that the truck swiveled 90 degrees.
Young Brown then proceeded down Blaine Avenue, intending to park in front of the family home on Blaine near Jefferson Avenue, but he couldn’t find a space.
Spewing car parts, the Equinox went around the block and was abandoned after denting another parked car in front of 121 Loring Ave., in view of some Canisius College security cameras that showed a dark-skinned — but unrecognizable — teenager get out and walk toward the mayor’s home.
That, friends, is a terrible mess. Not only did some kid take the parents' car, crash it and then drive off, the kid happens to be the son of the Mayor of Buffalo. Mind you, this is a city where incompetence is the norm, so I can't say it comes as a surprise. I think the car in question was also owned by the City of Buffalo, as well. And you thought the Bush twins were shameful political children!
entry no. 814
Posted by oz115 at April 10, 2007 10:42 AM