The latest faux heroes reveling in their 15 minutes of fame are the four horsemen of the Idaho wilderness who ran into Hannah Anderson and her “Uncle Jim” DiMaggio in the backcountry.
The four are retired sheriff-turned-rancher Mark John and his wife Christa, and Mike Young and his wife Mary. Perhaps you’ve seen them on TV regaling viewers with their heroics from that chance encounter.
Here, in part, is what they’re saying:
I seen on her face was pretty much fear. I didn’t like what I’d seen on his face. She was in survival mode….
(NBC, August 17, 2013)
Unfortunately, all reporters are such saps for a good story these days that it never occurred even to seasoned NBC reporter Kevin Tibbles to ask: why, if it was so obvious that this teenage girl was in distress (or even danger), did you not try to rescue her?
After all, according to them, it would have been 5 against 1; and, with one of them being a retired sheriff (and I assume at least two of them armed with shotguns), surely they would have been able to detain him, no?
Instead, they left her in the wilderness with a man they reasonably suspected was her abductor — who they had to have known would either rape and abuse her, repeatedly, or kill her. And they only called the cops “the next afternoon” – after they were safely back home and just happened to see the Amber Alert on TV.
Heroes? I don’t think so.
Related commentaries:
Hannah Anderson, rescued…
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