WWII veteran gets carjacked in Detroit
DETROIT — A World War II veteran said nobody helped him in the minutes after he was attacked and carjacked during daylight at a busy Detroit gas station and he had to crawl across a concrete parking lot to get help.
A roughly four-minute surveillance video shows 86-year-old Aaron Brantley struggling to get from the fuel pump to the gas station’s door as people walked and drove by him Wednesday morning. The video was first obtained by the Detroit Free Press.
Brantley told The Associated Press said several people passed by him as he crawled, unable to walk because his leg was broken in the attack. The carjacker knocked Brantley down, took his keys and drove off in his car about 10:40 a.m.
“I was trying to go in … and see if somebody could call the police and an ambulance because I couldn’t stand. I had to crawl — I tried two or three times to get up,” Brantley said Saturday. He said he was on way home from Bible study when he stopped to put gas in his 2010 Chrysler 200, which he recently bought to replace another car that had been stolen.
“People were passing me just like I wasn’t there. … I was crawling and they just walk by me like I’m not there,” he said.
Brantley said as he approached the building, he asked a woman to open the door for him. He said at first it appeared she wasn’t going to but she did and then kept walking. He found it distressing that nobody helped him.
“Any time a person is crawling on the ground, you know something happened to them,” Brantley said.
Obama: No easy answers for gas
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama says there is no easy answer to the problem of rising energy prices and he’s dismissing Republican solutions as little more than gimmicks.
“We know there’s no silver bullet that will bring down gas prices or reduce our dependence on foreign oil overnight,” Obama said Saturday in his weekly radio and Internet address. “But what we can do is get our priorities straight and make a sustained, serious effort to tackle this problem.”
Oil prices are approaching last year’s highs as tensions increase over Iran’s nuclear program. The rise pushed gasoline prices Friday to a national average of $3.65 a gallon, the highest ever for this time of year. A spike in gas prices is normal in spring, but it came earlier than usual this year in large part because of world fears that the growing confrontation with Iran will crimp oil supplies. Iran is the world’s third-largest crude supplier.
Rising oil prices weigh on the economy, pushing leisure and business travel costs higher. Every 1-cent increase in the price of gasoline costs the economy $1.4 billon, analysts say.
Obama said Republicans have one answer to the oil pinch: drill.
“You know that’s not a plan, especially since we’re already drilling,” Obama said, echoing his remarks earlier in the week. “It’s a bumper sticker.”
RFK son charged after nurse struggle
NEW YORK (AP) — A son of Robert F. Kennedy is facing misdemeanor charges after fighting with nurses at a suburban New York hospital while trying to carry his newborn son out of the maternity ward.
Nurses at Northern Westchester Hospital say Douglas Kennedy wasn’t allowed to take the baby from the ward.
When they tried to stop him, they say, Kennedy argued with them while holding the baby and then became violent on Jan. 7.
One nurse says Kennedy twisted her arm; another says he kicked her in the pelvis.
Kennedy and his wife call the allegations “absurd.”
An emergency room doctor at the hospital who was accompanying Kennedy when the altercation happened said in a statement that the nurses were “the only aggressors.”
He was arraigned Thursday on child endangerment and other charges.
