Christopher Chavez said that while his daughter often came by his home, his daughter was homeless and often slept outside during the daytime.
A spokesperson for the Modesto Police Department said that on Saturday around noon, a landscaper was cutting the grass at Beard Brook Park on a tractor with a pull behind mower when he saw a body in the grass that he had already passed through.
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When I was a kid living in Modesto while my father was overseas, going to Beard Brook park was a real treat. It's located where Dry Creek flows into the Tuolumne, and back then they had a Korean War era fighter embedded in concrete and an old locomotive that kids could crawl all over, fall off of and suffer their first broken arm or a leg. There were playgrounds, wading pools, ball fields and a Sno-cone guy that made a killing on hot summer days.
Nowadays, though? They moved the locomotive to the Amtrak Station off of Claus Rd and I have no clue what they did with the jet. The park's full of junkies, hookers, and some gang kids, with homeless camps all up and down the river and creek banks from one end to the other. No fucking way would I go down there now, much less take a kid.
Ran her over with a bush hog/finish mower? Ewwww.
ReplyDeleteReminds me of the films they used to show in Freshman Ag classes. "Blood on the Corn" "The PTO is not your friend" and the ever popular "Tractor Mayhem"
DeleteGotta search for those classics on YouTube!
DeleteMade me think of Rachel Corrie's experience cept she was plowed not mowed.
ReplyDelete==========
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But she was on the right track.
Dang, now I'm craving pancakes.
Saint Rachel of IHOP.
Delete"“Just because people are unhoused, it doesn’t mean they don’t have family. It doesn’t mean they’re not somebody’s daughter or son,” Martinez said"
ReplyDeleteJust what does this mean with respect to the story?
It means the family didn't give enough of a fuck about them to get them help.
Delete'unhoused' There's your clue. Which sane person doesn't call a spade a spade.
DeleteBack in my farming days I thrashed a lot of jackrabbits with both 16' rotary and flail cutters. The sound and resulting vibration are definitely noticeable from that small "obstruction" even when using a cab tractor. This guy must've just skimmed over the top of this woman, otherwise he would've immediately known he hit something big.
ReplyDeleteI just cracked up when I read that "parts of mom were found all over the place", they were picking up bits of bone and teeth..
ReplyDelete@Luis-WhensMothersDay?
Had a professor that suffered that fate - tractor hit a stump hole, threw him off, knocked him out, and locked the steering all the way over. Brush hog went over him a few times, around and around.
ReplyDeleteIf the family is so outraged, how come she was living in the park? And how is it possible the operator only 'noticed' afterwards, when he drove by on the next pass?
I remember a large locomotive in Modesto. Little 2 lane road near the river/ creek, 2011ish.
ReplyDeleteHow did she not hear the tractor coming, was she already dead?
ReplyDeleteThe family demands answers, well ok.
ReplyDeleteHere's a couple;
Your 27 y/o daughter was probably a junkie and was zoned out, that's why she often slept during the day and didn't hear that tractor.
She was your family so your responsibility, not the town's or the owners of the park to care for
And a couple quick questions
If she has family living so close why was she homeless and sleeping in the park ????
And why weren't you taking her problems more seriously ???
JD
Last winter employees found a dead body in a clothing donation bin here in the county and the daughter said her Mom had her demons and was often homeless. And the de-mil'd F-4 Phantom jet at the county airport is looking like shit due to zero maintenance. You'd think the military academy next door might take up the effort to show it some love. Seems like things are the same no matter where you go doesn't it?
ReplyDelete- WDS
Let's be serious. She wasn't "sleeping in the grass." Does anyone want to take a bet that an autopsy would show that she was passed out in a near drug-induced coma? Sorry. The milk of human kindness isn't flowing through my veins now.
ReplyDeleteI am sure that we will hear that she was "just turning her life around" soon. Family members will hold their hands out and say, "Pay me for the loss of my beautiful daughter/sister."
Have you noticed how several year-old photos are always hauled out for the deceased. It follows the same pattern every time. It was very pronounced during the Trayvon Martin insanity.
Until an autopsy clears her of drug use, I will never believe that anyone in a park could be killed in a sneak attack by a tractor towing a bush hog. No one forced her to do drugs the first time.
I agree with you, she ODed herself with some shit, probably fentanyl, and was already dead and gone before the landscaper got there....
DeleteJD
I remember that park as a kid. I was married there in '91. Fuck.
ReplyDeleteAs one who has spent hundreds of hours mowing hay fields and other areas of tall grass I can personally attest that it is totally understandable that the operator did not see her. Too many times I would come around the field on the next pass only to discover I had hit a fawn that was sleeping in the grass. Over the years, as the tractors got higher and higher in horsepower, the engine wouldn't even flinch. Visibility made even worse when driving into a rising or setting sun. Feel bad for the family. That operator is going to need some help too.
ReplyDeleteI was all over that train even after they tried to fence it off. Moved the whole family to Idaho to get away from that shit hole.
ReplyDelete