Tina Susman

THE CONFLICT IN IRAQ: A martyr and more in his mother's eyes

 an Iraqi widow has been wandering a maze of red tape since U.S. troops killed her policeman son in error.

Thursday, March 06, 2008

By Tina Susman and Raheem Salman   

BAGHDAD -- What makes a martyr?

Batul Abdul Hussein thought her son, Wesam Saleh, was one. On Feb. 13, 2007, as U.S. and Iraqi troops began enforcing a new security plan to quell violence in Iraq, the 25-year-old policeman left for his night shift. He never made it home alive.

As his patrol rounded a curve in southwest Baghdad, Hussein said, it came under fire from U.S. forces who mistook the armed Iraqis rolling toward them in the dark for possible insurgents. The Americans took the wounded Saleh to the U.S.-run hospital in Baghdad's fortified Green Zone, but he died six days later, his mother said, showing photocopies of hospital records and his death certificate.

Now Hussein, a widow whose home is a threadbare room with a concrete floor off a trash-strewn alley, feels lost in a bureaucratic abyss as she tries to get compensation.

Iraq's Interior Ministry has denied Hussein so-called martyr payments because it says Saleh was killed by friendly fire rather than insurgents. It recommended she seek help from the United States.

A U.S. military judge advocate also rejected her claim. "There was no evidence that U.S. forces acted either negligently or wrongfully," says the denial letter, dated July 5 and signed by a U.S. Army captain.

Yet her son gave his life protecting Iraq, Hussein said.

"In all the books of God, if someone is killed even by accident, their family should be compensated," said Hussein, 57, clutching a pale pink folder containing documents about her son's case. On the walls of her home are framed photographs of Saleh, who joined the police force in 2006.

Saleh was unmarried, so he always offered to ride in the front vehicle of police convoys, where it is most dangerous, Hussein said. That's where he was when gunfire hit his patrol.

U.S. officials say the military strives to avoid civilian and friendly-fire casualties. They say intelligence and technology help alert forces to the presence of noncombatants during missions. They also rely on Iraqi security officials to notify them of Iraqi police and military patrols.

But errors and accidents occur, and the system for allotting compensation often fails.

About 60% of claims filed to the U.S. military in recent years, for losses that vary from wrecked cars to civilian lives, were rejected, according to military records. Of 7,103 Iraqi claims filed with the United States in fiscal 2007, 2,896 were approved for payment, and a total of $8.4 million was paid. The previous year, 9,257 claims were filed; 3,658 of them, totaling just over $13 million, were paid.

New law in the works

An official at the Interior Ministry said the Iraqi government decides on a case-by-case basis whether to provide martyr payments to families of police but that those killed in U.S. military action are not given such status. "We are currently pushing a law . . . to change this," said the official, a lieutenant colonel who is not an authorized spokesman and refused to give his name.

The U.S. military said it could not provide the number of innocent Iraqis -- either civilians or members of security forces -- who had been killed by American forces since the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003.

Since October, it has confirmed at least 41 such deaths. They include two cases in February in which civilians who were members of U.S.-allied volunteer security forces were apparently mistaken for insurgents and shot.

The stew of formal and informal fighting forces in Iraq, combined with insurgents' operations in civilian areas, presents extraordinary challenges for the Americans, said Navy Capt. Vic Beck, a military spokesman in Baghdad.

"The level of complexities can't be overstated," Beck said. "You're literally fighting to ensure you and your fellow soldiers come out alive."

In the aftermath of a violent encounter, troops rarely are in a position to immediately assess the outcome.

"By the time you come back and do the battle damage assessment, people have been there, they've moved things. It's not like a crime scene where it's all roped off and protected," Beck said.

Differing stories

Rarely do the versions of events presented by witnesses, survivors and the military mesh. Even if there is no question who fired the shots, critics say, the U.S. program sets up logistical and legal barriers that work against claimants.

Ammar Mehdi Kadhim has been trying for months to file a claim based on a June 30 raid in which he says his mother, father and sister were shot dead by American forces. The military has said 26 militants were killed in the operation.

The first time Kadhim went to the Green Zone to submit a claim, he was turned back because he didn't have two official ID documents to get past the checkpoint.

He returned recently with two IDs and made his way to the U.S.-run National Iraqi Assistance Center, the first stop in the process. An Iraqi working at the claims desk told him he should have brought a "claim card" from U.S. forces acknowledging their involvement in the incident.

Another Iraqi at the desk said his chances of getting U.S. compensation were virtually nil because his relatives' death certificates said they had died in a terrorist attack, not in U.S. action.

Kadhim was told he should submit a claim after getting the death certificates amended and obtaining a claim card. But he was also warned that his chances of getting compensation were slim because of the burden of proof placed on him.

"I have to change the death certificates . . . and I have to get a badge from the Americans, which takes too long," he said. "I did my best. I tried, but there is no hope."

Jon Tracy, a former military judge advocate who processed claims in Iraq in 2003 and '04, said the U.S. system makes unreasonable demands of people living in the chaos of a war zone. Tracy is now a lawyer for the Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict, a Washington-based organization.

He cited the requirement that Kadhim present a claim card signed by a U.S. soldier. "That's ridiculous, because most of the time units don't stop, especially if shots are fired," he said.

Tracy also said commissioners dismiss most claims by citing a "combat exclusion" clause in the Foreign Claims Act. The clause says damages need not be paid if the harm occurred during a combat operation. Commissioners may make exceptions if they find the military behaved negligently or wrongfully -- for example, by using excessive gunfire to stop a vehicle or firing indiscriminately into a home.

"The problem is most lawyers don't do that," Tracy said. "The analysis of most claims is, oh, shots were fired -- combat. There's this presumption that exists, and most cases are denied because shots were fired."

Hussein said she was stunned when her case was rejected, first by the Iraqis and then by the Americans.

For two months after Saleh's death, Hussein was too overwhelmed to do anything. "I did not even cry," she said.

Then she visited the Interior Ministry to collect her son's belongings and was told that police killed by Americans are not considered martyrs. When she went to the Americans, they asked for the relevant documents to process her application for compensation.

Hussein was hopeful, she said, because of the sympathetic treatment she received from the troops involved in the shooting, the 1st Battalion of the Army's 18th Infantry Regiment.

'He asked for juice'

After the shooting, the battalion commander gave her his business card and the phone number of his Iraqi interpreter, which she photocopied and carries in her folder.

"I talked to the interpreter. He told me he [Saleh] was talking. He asked for juice," she said, speaking hopefully as if it might bring him back to life. Arrangements were made for Hussein to visit her son in the hospital. Six hours after she left, he died.

The battalion commander, Lt. Col. George Glaze, has left Iraq and did not respond to an e-mailed request for comment.

A military spokeswoman, Army Lt. Col. Maura A. Gillen, reiterated that compensation was denied because no negligence was found on the part of the U.S. military, and she expressed hope that the Iraqi government would provide for Hussein.

At the same time, she added in an e-mailed statement, "We're concerned that this Iraqi mother has not had resolution to the death of her son." --

tina.susman@latimes.com

In Iraq, a story of rape, shame and 'honor killing'

Impregnated by a prison guard against her will, a woman called on her brother for help. He took care of the problem in a traditional manner, but more modern methods turned up the guilty party.

April 23, 2009

Tina Susman and Caesar Ahmed

Sometimes, it's the forbidden stories, the ones people are afraid to tell in full, the ones that emerge only in fragments, that reveal the truth about a place.

This is such a story.

It's being told now not because the complete truth is known, but because the story nags at those familiar with its outlines, and because it says as much about Iraq's progress as it does about Iraq's resistance to change.

This much is known:

A young woman imprisoned in Tikrit, north of Baghdad, sent a letter to her brother last summer, appealing for help. The woman, named Dalal, wrote that she was pregnant after being raped by prison guards.

The brother asked to visit her. Guards obliged. The brother walked into her cell, drew a gun and shot his visibly pregnant sister dead.

His goal: to spare his family the taint of a pregnancy out of wedlock, a disgrace in Iraq often averted through so-called honor killings of women by their relatives.

For prison guards, the killing was also a relief.

"They believed that her death would end the case," said a lab worker at Baghdad's central morgue, where the victim's body -- still carrying the 5-month-old fetus -- was sent.

The case might have ended there were it not for the morgue employee, who was determined to see those responsible held to account.

At the employee's insistence, lab workers using freshly acquired DNA-testing equipment drew a sample from the fetus. The prison guards were ordered to submit DNA samples and did so, apparently unaware of the sophistication of the morgue equipment and the people trained to use it.

"They thought we were incapable of figuring it out," said the morgue employee.

The DNA results showed that the father of the unborn baby was a police lieutenant colonel who reportedly supervised guards at the prison.

In another society, the scientific evidence would have led to arrests and prosecution. But this being Iraq, the power wielded by men in uniform and the belief that a raped woman is better off dead combined to cloud the truth.

--

Months passed after word leaked of the killing on a sweltering summer day. Just as it nagged at the morgue worker, it nagged at us. But how to tell a story that nobody wants told? Everyone had different, usually conflicting, versions of what had happened.

Only the morgue worker's story remained the same, repeated in phone calls and e-mails as summer turned to fall and then winter.

Then, it was time for one of us to leave Iraq. A colleague asked what the reporter's final story would be. There must be one after so long in the country, he insisted.

"Isn't there a story that got away?" he asked.

It became clear that this was it, even if we still didn't know the truth.

--

About the only thing anyone agrees on is that a young woman was murdered, and that her last days were spent pregnant and worrying about what would happen if she were released into a society that would condemn her for it.

According to a judge in the Tikrit court, the lieutenant colonel implicated by DNA and a police captain also accused in the case were arrested on rape charges but then released for lack of evidence. The judge said a third defendant, a police lieutenant, remained in custody. (It is not uncommon in Iraq for police officers to serve as prison guards and supervisors.)

Another Tikrit court official said the lieutenant colonel and captain remained in custody but were transferred from Tikrit to Baghdad. Col. Hatem Thabit, spokesman for the police in Salahuddin province, where the crime was committed, concurred with this account.

Yet other accounts say the matter was settled through tribal justice. The clan of the accused lieutenant colonel paid the woman's family to drop charges, said some people in the area who are familiar with the case but fearful of discussing it openly.

The morgue worker said those involved in the lab testing understood that all three of the police officers were freed.

"I heard the dispute was solved by a tribal ransom," the employee said.

"The issue bothers me a lot. I'm doing my job, and the bad guys are getting back on the street."

There are conflicting reports on the brother's status. Some say he was jailed for killing his sister. Others say he was freed as part of the tribal deal.

As for the slain woman, several accounts say she was in prison not because she was a convicted or accused criminal, but because police wanted to question her brother about something. They thought he would turn himself in to free Dalal. Nobody has been able to explain why police wanted to talk to the brother.

The prison where she was held houses mainly men. There is a small section for female inmates, usually no more than a few at a time. A female guard is supposed to watch over them. No one could explain how the lieutenant colonel was able to do what he did.

Nor could anyone say how Dalal's brother got into her cell with a loaded gun.

"He was supposed to be searched," said Thabit, the police spokesman. "Where he got the weapon, we don't know."

--

In Iraq, violence against women is a festering but rarely addressed problem. There are no readily available statistics on "honor" killings. The number of rapes reported to police averages five to 10 per month for the entire country, said an official at Baghdad's central morgue, who released the first details of the Tikrit case last summer.

"The actual number of rapes is actually more than we know. There are so many rapes in the prisons, for example," he added before going on to cite the Tikrit case to an Iraqi working for The Times. Realizing he was discussing a case not intended for public consumption, the official urged the reporter not to translate the facts for his English-speaking colleague.

But minutes later, another morgue official and then the lab worker confirmed the case. All asked not to be identified for fear of losing their jobs.

Other workers interviewed during a daylong visit to the morgue, where rape victims are examined, said they had detected an increase in violent crimes against women since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion ushered in a religious conservatism and brought social and economic upheaval.

Most are honor killings, said one morgue employee, who a day earlier had received the body of a pregnant woman with her throat slit.

Human rights advocates say many of these homicides are made to look like honor killings to gain leniency for the perpetrators.

"It's a lot worse now," said Ibtisam Hamody Azzawi, a former engineer who runs a small aid organization for abused women from her home in Baghdad.

"Our society witnessed so much war, and this is reflected in the domestic abuse situation.

"Everything is violence. Even the kids love war," said Azzawi, whose husband, a university dean, was killed by extremists in 2007.

Much of her time is spent answering knocks on her door or phone calls from women looking for an escape from abusive homes. People find her by word of mouth. She does not tell her neighbors what she does, lest extremists attack her or one of her daughters.

Iraq has no shelters for battered or threatened women, and the war has splintered and displaced families who might have taken in female relatives. Amid the turmoil, homicide has become an easy out for husbands wanting to end their marriages, Azzawi said. It's cheaper than divorce.

"Women get killed, but often it is reported that they are missing," she said. "It's all part of the chaos. Some husbands kill their wives and say maybe she was kidnapped, maybe she died in a bombing.

"A husband and wife will have domestic problems. All of a sudden, the wife will disappear."

At the women's prison in Tikrit, Saturday is visiting day. On a summer Saturday, a brother came to see his sister, her stomach swelling with her unborn child.

She trusted him.

--

tina.susman@latimes.com

Susman recently returned to the U.S. after a two-year tour in Iraq. Times staff writers Usama Redha and Ned Parker in Baghdad, and special correspondents in Samarra and Tikrit contributed to this report.

 

Zen in their bedside manner

At New York's Beth Israel Medical Center, Buddhist chaplains offer prayers, meditation, massage and other assistance to the sick. 'We focus on listening,' one says.

June 19, 2009

Tina Susman

It was 8 a.m., and the subject was death.

A 55-year-old man was wasting away from lung cancer and cirrhosis. His weight was plummeting and his brain was swelling. But he was in denial, refusing to discuss hospice care or consider a "do not resuscitate" order.

A bright pink vase filled with yellow mums sat near the window, belying the grim task facing the healthcare workers at Beth Israel Medical Center who had clustered around a conference table.

"This has been really sad," said the Rev. Robert Chodo Campbell, a large man with thick brows who was wearing what appeared to be a cross between a judo outfit and hospital scrubs. He told the group that when faced with a similar case in the past, he had decided to disclose his personal battle with alcoholism to the patient -- also an alcoholic -- in hopes of spurring a conversation that might help ease the man's mental anguish and prepare him for whatever lay ahead.

"Is that a good technique?" asked a doctor, sounding slightly incredulous.

A psychologist interjected. "In this case, it could have been a gift," she said. "Psychologists don't disclose anything. Chaplains operate under a different set of rules."

And Chodo operates under a different set of rules than most chaplains as he spreads the spirit of Buddhism through the halls of Beth Israel, a 1,368-bed medical center in Manhattan. "If it seems appropriate in the moment and one is sure of one's motives -- the well-being of the patient -- then why not?" the Zen chaplain asked.

According to the American Hospital Assn., about 68% of public hospitals have a chaplaincy program. But few have Buddhist monks, and none compares with the program at Beth Israel -- where more than 20 Buddhist chaplains and chaplains-in-training offer bedside meditation, interdenominational prayers and other assistance to pregnant women, dying cancer patients and even stressed hospital workers.

"There is one rabbi and two Catholic priests. They're great people, but the rabbi sees Jewish patients. The Catholics anoint the sick. Then there's everybody else," said the Rev. Koshin Paley Ellison, co-founder with Chodo of the New York Zen Center for Contemplative Care.

Last year, Chodo and Koshin began bringing students into the hospital as part of the country's first Buddhist chaplaincy training program accredited by the . "We're really trying to create a cultural shift," said Koshin, who like Chodo uses the name given him when he took his vows to become a Buddhist priest.

--

Advocates say the availability of alternative treatments is crucial at a time when millions of Americans are struggling to pay for healthcare. Instead of relying on drugs and hospitalization, the Zen center encourages stress- and pain-relief through meditation, breathing exercises or simple conversation. Even if such methods cannot provide a cure, they can make patients more comfortable. And the Zen chaplains are able to spend more time with patients, time that busy doctors and nurses often cannot spare.

"We focus on listening," said Bob Allen, a chaplaincy student who has spent much of his training time on Beth Israel's oncology floor.

Not everyone, however, has welcomed him.

"I just started eating!" Allen recalled one patient yelling when he entered his room on a recent day. "I'm Jewish! Get out!"

In the tranquil manner that is pervasive among the Buddhist chaplains, Allen put a rosy spin on the patient's reaction. For someone facing death, throwing an unwanted visitor out of the room "can be empowering," Allen said. So if it made the sick man feel better about his situation, that's a good thing.

Some doctors too are skeptical about so-called integrative medicine, the melding of alternative care with traditional Western medicine.

Teaching relaxation and pain management is good, said Dr. Bruce Flamm, an obstetrician-gynecologist at Kaiser Permanente in Riverside, who has been an outspoken critic of studies suggesting prayer and spiritualism can heal the sick. But, he said, encouraging patients to pursue "kooky" approaches with no scientifically proven benefits would be a problem.

Flamm said integrative medicine programs reflected the competitive nature of the healthcare industry. Some mainstream medical centers, he said, have introduced alternative approaches in hopes of "trying to recapture some of those patients that are veering off."

"You can get your chemotherapy . . . and also get your acupuncture and therapeutic touch and reiki healing," Flamm said, drawing a picture of one-stop shopping for the ill. "The question is, is that really ethical?"

Beth Israel's Zen chaplains say they are careful in approaching patients and would never dream of countermanding a doctor's advice. But their differing approaches are clear.

During one meeting at Beth Israel, Koshin suggested that a severely diabetic 63-year-old woman who refused insulin might benefit from a visit to the alternative-care facility that is affiliated with the hospital and offers treatments such as herbal medicine and leeching.

A doctor disagreed. "She needs really good medical care to get her diabetes under control," the physician said.

So Koshin gently pushed his own theory that the woman might become "more compliant" if she received some sage advice from practitioners at the holistic center.

The discussion was left at that.

During a recent round of visits on the oncology floor, Allen, the chaplain-in-training, knocked lightly on patients' doors before entering. He moved silently into their rooms and sat beside them, ignoring TVs blaring pop music or squeals from "The Price is Right."

On this day, the patients included a Burmese man with nasal cancer who had requested time with a Buddhist chaplain. The patient appeared weighed down by the white sheets atop his slender frame. "You seem very tired. Do you feel bad today?" Allen asked the man, who requested that his name not be published. The patient nodded. He was too sick to eat, but he wanted to practice breathing exercises to relieve his pain.

He struggled to sit up in bed. Then he closed his eyes as Allen coached him in a soothing voice. "Take a nice, deep, cleansing breath," Allen said. "Blow out all that toxin from your face, your nose, your eyes, so you can bring peace and calm to yourself."

Next, Allen visited Victoria Exconde, who was facing breast cancer surgery. A Roman Catholic from the Philippines, Exconde broke down in tears as she discussed her condition and the difficulty of going through it without her late husband by her side.

The two then recited a Christian prayer together.

"Thank you, father," Exconde said.

"You don't have to call me father," Allen replied good-naturedly as he got up to leave.

Supporters of the Zen chaplains program say the monks' presence brings a calming influence to the often frenetic hospital floors, and that patients, for the most part, are open to them.

"I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that a lot of our patients don't really know what a Buddhist monk does," said Terry Altilio, a social worker in Beth Israel's palliative-care department, which focuses on relieving suffering of seriously ill patients. "For a lot of patients, there's a curiosity and an openness you don't necessarily see with rabbis, priests, etc."

--

The Zen chaplains do not limit their services to patients.

Koshin recently accompanied a Catholic priest to tend to a couple whose infant had died at the hospital, explaining that "the priest didn't want to go alone because he'd never been with a dead child."

During morning rounds, when medical teams gather to discuss their cases, the chaplains sit in. In the case of one 30-year-old Chinese man with cancer, Chodo advised that they needed to be careful because in Chinese culture, "you don't normally discuss death in front of the patient."

Once a week, Chodo visits the Robert Mapplethorpe Residential Treatment Facility, part of Beth Israel's AIDS treatment program.

Most of the patients, whose harsh lives show in their tired eyes and bodies, have spent time in prison or on the streets.

But here they were, sitting in a dark room, chanting the lotus sutra while having their heads massaged. As Chodo's soothing voice filled the room, their chatter gave way to dreamy murmurs.

"When I meditate, it takes me to some beautiful places, even though I'm from Brooklyn," said Kevin, one of the center's residents, ticking off his visions of paradise: Paris, Rio, Jamaica.

George, another resident, asked everyone to remember the 228 souls lost when an Air France jet vanished over the Atlantic Ocean. The crash was a reminder of how life can be cut short without warning, Chodo said, urging those around the table to be kinder to themselves each day -- perhaps by having one less cigarette or doughnut, or making one less trip to Starbucks.

Then he cleared the room so he could meet privately with Rafael, an AIDS patient whose clothes hung from his once-buff frame. Rafael wept as he spoke of his fiancee in the Bronx, who no longer visited or returned his calls.

Chodo held his hand and simply listened, saying nothing.

After a few minutes, Rafael thanked Chodo and shuffled back to his room.

--tina.susman@latimes.com

 

Questions after homeless man's lonely death

Bystanders helped prevent a blast in Times Square, but no one helped a Guatemalan immigrant who was stabbed on the street.

May 11, 2010|

By Tina Susman, Los Angeles Times

Were it not for a surveillance camera, Hugo Alfredo Tale-Yax's death may have passed as anonymously as his short life.

Instead, as he lay crumpled outside the doorway of an apartment building, bleeding from a stab wound to the chest, the camera recorded every excruciating minute: Tale-Yax staggering after being attacked, collapsing, then lying on the sidewalk for more than an hour as one person after another walked by without calling for help.

Most glanced curiously at the 31-year-old Guatemalan immigrant sprawled across the sidewalk in the working-class Queens neighborhood. Many slowed down. Someone took out a cellphone and snapped a picture of Tale-Yax before moving on. One man shook Tale-Yax vigorously, then rolled him over to reveal the blood beneath his chest before walking away.

By the time firefighters arrived nearly 90 minutes later, Tale-Yax was dead, leaving behind relatives, friends and strangers shaken by the behavior of people living in one of America's safest big cities, where signs and announcements in public areas and subway stations urge people to report suspicious activity.

Less than two weeks after Tale-Yax's April 18 death, bystanders quickly alerted police to a suspicious vehicle in Times Square, preventing what officials said could have been a devastating car-bomb blast and further highlighting the disinterested behavior toward Tale-Yax.

"With each person who walked by, a little more of our humanity slipped away," said Kevin Dotson, one of several strangers to the Tale-Yax family who made the trip to Brooklyn to attend a wake for the slain man.

Tale-Yax, who had come to the United States six years ago, lay in an open casket draped with red and white carnations. A dark suit and yellow tie covered his wounded chest, and his black hair fell across the white cushions. "Descance en Paz," read a note beside the coffin. Rest in Peace.

Cousins, brothers and other relatives milled about, speculating on the reasons for Tale-Yax's lonely death. None saw the pedestrians' inaction as a uniquely New York trait. Rather, they said it was evidence that New Yorkers, like people across the country, are so concerned with their own problems that they ignore other people or blame them for their woes.

People like Tale-Yax, an immigrant who in recent months had become homeless, are prime scapegoats, said the family's pastor, Rev. Luis Fernandez.

During the six-hour wake on April 28, which was paid for by the Guatemalan Consulate, Fernandez delivered a passionate sermon in Spanish, the mother tongue of most people at the funeral home.

"My community is here to work," said Fernandez, who says Arizona's passage of strict anti-illegal-immigration legislation and a series of hate crimes against Spanish-speaking immigrants in New York are evidence of the disdain some people have for them.

"You see what happened in Phoenix," said Fernandez, referring to the Arizona law. "The people here know about that, and when they saw Hugo they're probably thinking he's a criminal. They're not thinking of him as a man who needs help."

Police received 911 calls after Tale-Yax's stabbing. One reported a woman screaming, and one reported a possibly injured man. But both sent police to the wrong address, and it's clear from the video that the overwhelming majority of passers-by made no attempt to call for help.

One of Tale-Yax's brothers, Rolando, 28, said he was mystified as to why the woman involved in the incident, who apparently was under threat from an unidentified male until Tale-Yax intervened, has not come forward to identify the stabber.

"I'd ask her: 'Why didn't you call? Why didn't you help?' " Rolando said.

Police have yet to find the woman, or the man with whom she was arguing that night, despite airing the video taken from a nearby building's surveillance camera that showed the pair.

The images are grainy but clear enough to see the squabbling couple: a young woman with long, dark hair in a short skirt and jacket and a man in a short-sleeved shirt and cap.

"She may only be alive today because he [Tale-Yax] stopped someone from hurting her," said Rosa Akidil, who did not know the slain man but came from Manhattan's Upper West Side to sit in the front row at the wake and pay her respects.

Like many New Yorkers old enough to remember it, Akidil said the case was reminiscent of the slaying of Kitty Genovese in 1964. Genovese was 25 when she was raped and stabbed on a Queens street. Most of the people who heard her screams did not call police, and the case became a symbol of what many considered New Yorkers' unique level of callousness. It also prompted studies into reasons behind bystander apathy.

Dr. Paul Fink, a psychiatry professor at Temple University and a past president of the American Psychiatric Assn., said Tale-Yax, like Genovese, may have been doomed because, unlike the vendors who reported the Times Square car bomb, people who saw Tale-Yax or heard Genovese were not in peril themselves.

"If you feel endangered, you're going to do whatever you have to do to help yourself," said Fink, adding that the tendency is the same whether you live in New York or a small town.

Even Tale-Yax's relatives and other mourners at the wake admitted that they rarely stop to check the well-being of someone lying on a sidewalk in New York City, where the homeless population is in the tens of thousands and where immigrant workers fear ending up in jail if their working papers are not in order.

"I've been there," said Byron, 24, one of Tale-Yax's brothers, who acknowledged that fear could have prevented people from alerting police to his sibling's situation. Still, he said, "human beings are supposed to help each other."

Byron is one of the five Tale-Yax brothers, two sisters and several cousins who made their way to the United States separately over the years, all for the same reason.

"Everyone is trying to get a better life," he said as people continued to file past the casket. Asked if he planned to remain in the United States, he said, "I'll make a decision after this."

tina.susman@latimes.com

 

Once a rider, now a 'ghost bike'

 Advocates hope memorials to those killed will lead to safer streets

September 30, 2010

 

 Tina Susman

The well-trod sidewalk beside a busy urban boulevard is an unlikely place for a young man's memorial, but there it is, chained to a signpost outside a furniture store: a man's bicycle painted ghostly white. Flowers cover the frame and snake up the signpost, and a rust-colored shawl is tied carefully to the handlebars.

For months after her son Asif's death on the adjacent street, Lizi Rahman would visit the bicycle at least twice a week. Sometimes she would stand in the middle of the wide, buzzing avenue and visualize Asif, 22, riding alongside the buses, trucks, cars and other cyclists.

"When I go there, it's like I see him," said Rahman, who still can't believe that anyone could have missed her nearly 6-foot-tall son as he pedaled home one afternoon in February 2008. But a truck driver hit and killed Asif, and the so-called ghost bike erected in his honor is now one of nearly 70 in New York City, planted near the spots where riders were killed.

The practice began here in 2005 after 28-year-old Elizabeth Padilla died beneath the wheels of an ice cream delivery truck in Brooklyn. It was started two years earlier in St. Louis, where volunteers began erecting ashy white bikes to remember fallen cyclists. Now, there are ghost bikes in as many as 134 cities in 35 states and 21 countries, according to www.ghostbikes.org, which tracks the activities of the volunteer groups that maintain the bicycles.

Few have as many ghost bikes as New York, and as with most things that occupy precious public space in this overcrowded city, they have caught the attention of city officials. In June, the Department of Sanitation said it planned to remove "derelict" bikes, including ghost bikes, saying they denied other bicyclists parking spots and could block sidewalks or streets.

The department backed down this month after biking advocates argued that ghost bikes are memorials, not abandoned piles of steel. But people like Mary Beth Kelly, whose husband, Carl Henry Nacht, was killed while bicycling, said the battle showed the difficulties of getting the city to spotlight the hazards cyclists face, even as it encourages cycling and creates new bike lanes.

"We are trying to make New York a more livable city, and that means alternative means of transportation have to be made available and safe," Kelly said. "These bikes serve as reminders that we're only halfway there."

The challenge of keeping growing numbers of bicyclists safe is not confined to New York, where commuter cycling has more than doubled since 2005. Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa broke his elbow in July when he crashed his bike while avoiding a taxi that pulled in front of him. City biking advocates said the incident underscored their demands for more bike lanes and better enforcement of laws to prosecute drivers who endanger cyclists.

According to ghostbikes.org, there are at least seven ghost bikes in Los Angeles, in addition to smaller collections of bikes in Newport Beach, San Clemente, San Diego, Bakersfield and Fresno. The latest Los Angeles ghost bike was erected in February 2010 in memory of Ovidio Morales, 34, who was hit and killed by a driver while riding his bike in Compton.

Nationwide, the bicycle fatality rate has topped 700 annually since 2004. In 2008, the last year for which figures are available, the number was 716, including 42 in New York and 109 in California, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Lizi Rahman hadn't heard of the ghost bikes before her son was killed in New York, but now she views them as a way of raising awareness among pedestrians, cyclists and drivers. She still visits Asif's ghost bike a couple of times a month, and she keeps an eye on it when she drives by to make sure it hasn't been knocked over. She notices when someone has left flowers or other mementos.

The scarf appeared recently. "It's nicely wrapped around the front," Rahman said. "Someone who loves him, adores him, came and in his memory put a scarf around it."

Such gestures are common for the ghost bikes that dot New York's five boroughs. With their white frames and tires and garlands of flowers, the bicycles are startling amid the gray and black of the city streets. Passersby sometimes stop abruptly, then move closer to read the signs that accompany each one. Rahman and Kelly say the bicycles could save lives by reminding people of the hazards on New York's crowded streets.

But not everyone who has lost a loved one to a cycling tragedy embraces them. The parents of 8-year-old Alexander Toulouse still try to avoid the Brooklyn intersection where their son was killed by a post office truck in 2008, and they declined the invitation to attend his ghost bike's unveiling.

"Alexander Toulouse. 8 years old. Killed by truck. Sept. 6, 2008. Rest in peace," the sign on the white children's bicycle reads. On the anniversary of his death, someone left a cup filled with colored daisies on the sidewalk beside the bike.

"It is a good idea to highlight cycling fatalities," Alexander's father, Chris Toulouse, said in an e-mail, but he said ghost bikes were no substitute for the city making drivers more aware of bike lanes and making cyclists more diligent about obeying traffic rules. And for him and his wife, at least, they are more of a painful reminder than a pleasant memorial.

Though most ghost bikes are old and donated by bike shops, the bicycle memorializing Nacht is one the doctor used for commuting. It replaced the original donated ghost bike, which was smashed by a car even though it was off the street and beside a designated bike path that skirts the Hudson River in Manhattan.

Nacht and Kelly were pedaling along the popular path in June 2006 when a police tow truck turned onto the path from the street, hitting Nacht.

"That bike has particular meaning to me," Kelly said of the current ghost bike, which she offered to volunteers after the first one was wrecked. Nacht would have turned 61 on Sept. 10, so Kelly did what she always does to memorialize his birthday: She visited his old bike and filled its basket with flowers.

But memories are only part of the reason Kelly says the ghost bike must remain. "It has a very important message, which is that cyclists even on a bike path cannot be protected enough," said Kelly, who like Rahman was active in the campaign to preserve ghost bikes.

They are resting more easily now that sanitation officials have changed their tune, but Leah Todd of the Street Memorial Project said there could be battles ahead as the number of ghost bikes grows to match the number of bicyclists killed.

"I'm never confident that there will be a last fight," Todd said.

Police, meanwhile, announced the death of another cyclist on Sept. 11: a 23-year-old woman run over by a city bus after being knocked off her bike by a driver who opened a car door into her path.

tina.susman@latimes.com

Shanina Gilmore

October 29, 2002

Shanina

Gilmore lived a short, troubled life in Camden, N.J. Could enforcement of her school's truancy policy have saved her?

By Tina Susman. STAFF WRITER

Camden, N.J. One year ago, 14-year-old Shanina Gilmore walked out the flimsy front door of her drafty, rundown rowhouse, strolled down the sidewalk toward high school, and never came back.

As the days and weeks passed with no sign of Shanina, her mother, Charlotte Gilmore, learned something about her troubled daughter. She learned that Shanina, who liked to be called Nina, had rarely attended school since classes opened Sept. 7, 2001. She learned that most days, Shanina had taken the lunch money her mother had given her, stuffed the bills into the pockets of her size 5 hip-huggers, walked in the direction of Camden High School, and then changed course once she was out of her mother's sight. She learned that when Shanina came home at 3:15 each afternoon, she was not coming from classes but from a day of hanging out with friends.

By the time she disappeared that Oct. 15, Shanina had racked up more than 20 absences. Yet,

Gilmore says, the school never notified her, despite school board bylaws mandating that parents be alerted by phone after three unexcused absences and by a hand-delivered note after 10 absences. Gilmore says the school never contacted her about Shanina's excessive truancy until it sent a letter to her dated Nov. 2 - coincidentally, the same day a girl's warped remains, the remnants of duct tape still wrapped around the hands, rolled with the waves onto the cold Jersey shore.

More than three months later, they were identified as Shanina's."What was the school doing?" says Gilmore, a high-school dropout who was so determined to keep her daughter in school that she had taken her to Camden County Superior Court's family division earlier in the year, after she caught Shanina cutting class.

Under a Family-in-Crisis contract signed Sept. 26, 2001, by Shanina, her mother and a court officer, the court could have put the girl in a facility for troubled teens if she kept skipping school.

"If they [the school] had notified me that my daughter didn't show up, if they'd have come here and notified me, I'd have called the police. My daughter would have been saved," says Gilmore, who learned of the continued class-cutting when she visited Camden High School Oct. 16, the day after Shanina failed to come home.

The school produced attendance records showing Shanina had not been in class since Oct. 1.In August, Gilmore announced plans to sue the Camden School Board and the state's Department of Youth and Family Services for the wrongful death of her daughter. Under New Jersey law, the state has six months to reply by offering a settlement, something Gilmore's attorney, John Klamo, says is unlikely. Hence, he says, the lawsuit will be formally filed in February, and will accuse the school board and the social services agency of not monitoring Shanina and not warning Gilmore of her daughter's behavior.

The school board would not comment on the case, and police have yet to file charges in Shanina's death. Gilmore says her goal is not to assign blame for Shanina's death but to force schools to pay more attention to truant kids. Ultimately, she wants a national law requiring schools to notify parents of truant pupils in person, and to do a better job of maintaining records to ensure they can reach parents. She would call it the "Nina Notification Law."

"Why not? They have the Amber Alert and Megan's Law," she says, crouching close to the tiny space heater that provides the only warmth in the home she now shares with Shanina's black and white cat, Two-Tone, and her dog, Minnie.

Gilmore is the first to admit that Shanina's problems began here, in the same abusive, poverty-wracked household where she grew up. Gilmore's own mother had her first baby at 13 and left school shortly afterward when her mother abandoned her and the infant. Gilmore's older sister had two babies by 16. Gilmore was pregnant with Shanina at 13, gave birth at 14 and left school in the 11th grade.

Shanina's father, also a teenager, never helped out.So troubled was the family that in 1989, Philadelphia Magazine profiled them in a nine-page article on the perils of teenage motherhood. Gilmore, pictured holding baby Shanina, vowed then to improve things for herself and her daughter. "I wanna graduate from high school, maybe go to college," she told the magazine. "I want to succeed. Maybe I can't change my life a lot, but I can change it some. And I will."

Now 30, Gilmore is still trying to change, and she has come a long way. In recent years, she has kicked a crack habit, held regular jobs and begun night classes in hopes of passing her GED exams.

All were part of an attempt to provide a better home for Shanina. She also divorced Shanina's stepfather, Henry Christopher Stubbs III, and reported him to police in 1999 after Shanina said he had molested her. Stubbs, who pleaded guilty to child endangerment, is in prison awaiting trial for the December murder of a girlfriend and her 6-year-old daughter in Wilkes-Barre, Pa. He also has been questioned in Shanina's death, but has not been identified as a suspect.

"I always had good intentions, but something always sideswiped me," Gilmore says, casting frequent worried glances through the glass pane on her front door. The sagging house is in one of the poorest neighborhoods in New Jersey's poorest city. It's not unusual for drug dealers or thugs to come bursting through doorways as they try to evade police patrols, Gilmore says warily as a police cruiser idled across the street.

She's hoping to sell the house and would be happy to get $9,000 for it. Even at that price, she isn't optimistic. "Nobody wants to buy a dump," she says.

Piled in a corner of the living room are stuffed animals, dolls and cards. Most were brought by friends and neighbors after Shanina was confirmed dead, and they form a makeshift shrine to the teenager, whose last class photo adorns a heart-shaped plaque hanging above the sofa.

It shows a softly smiling girl with dark, wide-set eyes and neatly combed black hair curling around her chin.According to Gilmore, Shanina's problems were rooted in a lack of self-esteem, in a belief that she wasn't pretty enough or well-dressed enough to compete with her classmates. It was, Gilmore says, a result of her inability to buy her daughter the stylish clothes, jewelry, gadgets and other trappings so crucial to adolescent life.

Gilmore says she knew the feeling and was determined to give Shanina more than she ever had, even though it meant turning tricks as a teenager to earn extra money for baby toys, clothes and plastic sandals picked up at local dime stores.It wasn't nearly enough, though, and by the eighth grade, Gilmore says, Shanina was hinting at wanting to drop out of school. That's when the truancy began.

Test scores from her final year in middle school showed her in the lowest category - partially proficient - in all subjects. Nevertheless, she was passed on to ninth grade and entered Camden High School when she was 14.The school is one of the state's most troubled. Last year, it had a 36 percent dropout rate - the second-worst in New Jersey - compared to a state average of 3 percent for ninth- through 12th-graders.

That statistic prompted the school board to announce new anti-truancy measures earlier this year, and school board spokesman Bart Leff says they had brought sharp declines in dropout rates. The measures include regular sweeps by school officials of city streets during school hours, and the threat of court action against parents whose children are caught cutting school too many times. He reiterated school board policy of notifying parents after just three unexcused absences and said it is almost always done in person, not over the phone.

Gilmore, however, says school officials didn't visit her until Dec. 13, when someone brought a letter warning that Shanina had 23 unexcused absences. A final letter, dated Jan. 2 and signed by Camden High's vice principal and principal, announced that Shanina had been dropped from school for poor attendance. It listed the days she had supposedly attended class and included Nov. 20 and Dec. 12 - long after her death.

To Gilmore, that's evidence the school had no idea what Shanina was up to, despite the board's own guidelines on attendance and despite the Family-in-Crisis contract, which her lawyer says had been sent to the school board and should have provided a warning about Shanina.

Legal experts say the lawsuit would be the first of its kind. Other wrongful death suits against schools have involved students killed in violent incidents or accidents while on school property or on field trips.

While she waits for the state's six-month response period to expire, Gilmore goes to work, attends night school and supplements her income by selling castoffs she collects on trash nights from the surrounding middle- class suburbs. She has stacks of TVs, VCRs, toys, an old poster from the movie "Casablanca," even a wedding dress and veil.

In addition to saving for a better place to live and for college, Gilmore says she wants to buy a fancy urn to replace the brass one currently holding Shanina's ashes.

Despite their sometimes volatile relationship, Gilmore says she and Shanina were close, and she fondly describes the last day she saw her, when she handed her lunch money, gave her a hug and sent her off to school.

"I don't only miss my daughter, I yearn for my daughter," she says, puffing on a cigarette and staring toward the space heater. "I just want to see her, to smell her one more time. I just want to smell her one more time."