ANOTHER ELDERLY WOMAN ATTACKED: “WHAT’S GOING ON?”

Audio By Carbonatix

Published: March 25, 2022 | Date of Source Audio: March 23, 2022

Transcribed and modified for publication from the original audio program

Mike Gallagher tries to make sense of random violence against our seniors

Mike Gallagher: A 73-year-old grandmother, beautiful woman. I see pictures of her presenting a big birthday cake in the article I'm reading. She was killed during a carjacking in New Orleans. Her arm and clothes were ripped off. She got stuck by the seatbelt as the attackers drove off. Happened at 1:30 in the afternoon on a Monday. She left a business in the New Orleans Mid-City neighborhood, according to WWL TV. She was dragged for almost an entire block. The police superintendent said her arm was severed from her body.

An eyewitness told WWL that the victim was trying to put something in her car when a person jumped in and kicked her out and she got caught in the wheel well. “I heard screaming like ‘you're about to die’ screaming,” the witness said. The speeding car dragged the grandmother by the seatbelt. “I got out of my car screaming, ‘Please stop. Please stop.’ The grandmother was screaming. She was screaming, ‘Please let me go.’ As soon as I saw her, I screamed. When I looked down, her body was there on the ground. Her arm was, well, it's just not something you expect to see. She was laying there naked. And I thought of the indignity she suffered. It was just too much.” Her husband told WWL TV, “Just to sit beside a woman who's a mother or grandmother and watch her fade away. As my wife said, we were praying. I was telling her to hang in there.”

Police recovered the stolen vehicle about 13 blocks away, but the four carjackers escaped and are still being sought.

"This is not a crime of race. It's a crime of humanity."

Now, critics will say race has nothing to do with it. And I don't know that it does. Happens to be four black suspects and she happens to be a white woman. If it was four white suspects and a black woman, it wouldn't be any less horrific. This is not a crime of race. It's a crime of humanity and race doesn't have anything to do with evil. And yet we're in a country and we're living in a time where we're supposed to correct a lot of the racial injustices of the past. What's the formula for a racial injustice of white-on-black crime, black-on-white crime, black-on-black crime? What about white-on-white crime?

The 26-year-old woman who has been accused of manslaughter, charged with manslaughter, she allegedly shoved an 87-year-old woman to her death. She surrendered to cops yesterday. She's got a very prominent attorney. Great guy, Arthur Aidala. I've interviewed Arthur. I know him from AM 970 The Answer. Arthur, according to the New York Post, told the judge, “pushing someone who's on the sidewalk isn’t the same as pushing someone in front of a cliff or pushing someone in front of a moving train.”

The woman — the 87-year-old beloved woman — she was a famous vocal coach. She taught voice lessons to prominent people like Deborah Harry of the Blondie group. She was knocked to the ground. She hit her head on the curb. She suffered traumatic brain injuries and she died a few days later. Prosecutors said that the young woman, Lauren Pazienza, called the elderly woman — and pardon the language, but just so you know — a “bitch” and then pushed her to the pavement without provocation.

Arthur Aidala said, according to the media reports, the district attorney, Alvin Bragg, goes out of their way to undercharge a case. He's talking, of course, about all the cases where Alvin Bragg doesn't believe in incarceration, the progressive new DA. And in this particular case, he said, they're overcharging. Aidala “questioned whether the manslaughter charge, which carries a sentence of up to 25 years, was due to his client's socioeconomic status, race or media interest in the case.”

The victim, again, this beloved Broadway voice coach Barbara Gustern — her grandson slammed the attorney's argument, telling the Post, “Sounds like a smart guy. How about pushing someone into a curb?”

Now, again, Arthur's a really good attorney. He's a defense attorney. And if you're in trouble, he's a guy you want in your corner. So, he's doing what a defense attorney does. But what's going on with these attacks on our seniors? Asian women, elderly Asian women being brutally beaten, stabbed, knocked to the ground? This woman in New Orleans, carjacked. This woman in New York. …

… What in the world is (the 26-year-old’s) defense for going up to an elderly woman who's trying to cross the street, calling her the B-word and knocking her to the ground and killing her? What do you say? How do you defend that? She has her long, flowing red hair and her hair was over the front of her face, and she's weeping and she's crying.

She, by the way, is out. The judge set her bail at $500,000, which she is expected to post. So, she's well-off or her family is. And she, apparently and allegedly, killed somebody in cold blood. Now, maybe it was an altercation. Maybe, what? What's going on? There is such a void here. What do you attribute this crap to? Post-pandemic? People are depressed? People are angry? What do you make of these attacks that we're seeing all over our country?