The incident marked the second straight year that a drowning occurred during the city's initial Oktoberfest weekend. Exactly one year ago Sunday, University of Wisconsin-La Crosse student Luke Homan disappeared after a night of drinking. His body was found two days later in the Mississippi River.Last year when this happened, there were several "town meetings" to discuss the "epidemic" and how to stop it. Telling kids to stop binge drinking by the river wasn't on the table--townspeople wanted increased nighttime patrols in the area, free cab rides, big fences, etc. Great ideas, except it looks like they didn't work. I suggested filling in the river--yeah, it might slow down some barge traffic, but aren't the lives of these "good young men" worth economically crippling neighboring states? The only way to keep drunk "kids" out of the river is to remove the river.
Homan, 21, became the eighth college-age man since 1997 to turn up dead in a river after going missing from a tavern. The deaths led to persistent rumors of a serial killer roaming the area, but police and the FBI continue to insist there is no evidence to suggest the deaths were anything but accidents.
Blaming Oktoberfest seems disingenuous; it's not like there's no binge drinking the other 51 weekends a year.
Anyway, I feel really bad for their mothers. While the sad fact that sperm has never hit my eggs makes me unable to comment on anyone else's children (or so I'm told, daily), I can imagine that it must hurt like hell when someone knocks on the door to tell you that the baby you carried for 9 months has killed himself by his own stupidity.
1 comment:
It's almost surprising, especially with young men, that there are not more deaths along this order. Daredevil stupidity knows few bounds. Drunken daredevil stupidity knows none.
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