On I-95, four lives converged in a crash that left three dead and a young person facing steep consequences
Communities are mourning the deaths of two Pennsylvania State Police troopers and a ‘happy’ man. The driver’s friends are reckoning with her alleged crimes.
by Ryan W. Briggs , Rodrigo Torrejón, and Max Marin | Friday, March 25, 2022 | 7:52 PM EDT
The story begins with brief biographies of the slain State Troopers and Mr Oliveras, which you can see if you follow the link to the Philadelphia Inquirer original. I have omitted quoting that part here, because I don’t want to cross the line into plagiarism. It’s further down that the infuriating part begins:
- Then there was Jayana Webb, 21, a track star-turned-hair stylist, barreling toward them in a silver Chevy Captiva.
At 12:47 a.m., Webb wrote on Twitter that she had been stopped “doing 110 in a 50″ mile-per-hour zone. While state police have neither confirmed nor denied the stop, multiple news outlets reported that Mack and Sisca stopped the woman for speeding on the interstate that night.
Around the time of the tweet, state police said the troopers were abruptly redirected to assist a man apparently attempting to cross the highway near Lincoln Financial Field. The troopers bolted south, and found Oliveras.
In other words, Miss Webb was about to get away with going 60 MPH over the speed limit. That’s more than just speeding; that’s reckless driving. Unfortunately, reckless did not translate into wreckless.
- Webb, who prosecutors said admitted to drinking Hennessy cognac that night, proceeded south on I-95 and crashed into the three men at such a speed that the impact ripped the doors off their stopped state police SUV and sent the troopers flying over a highway divider.
The troopers and Mr Oliveras were in the left hand median; to have struck them, Miss Webb had to have been driving down the “hammer” lane, the left-hand passing lane. She got away with speeding, and she was speeding again.
- All three men were pronounced dead shortly afterward. Webb and a passenger survived, and, according to police audio recordings, attempted to walk away but were escorted back to the scene.
The ensuing investigation shut down I-95 for nearly eight hours, as investigators attempted to piece together what happened. But days later, why Oliveras was on I-95 at 1 a.m. Monday, and how Webb came to be speeding toward him and the troopers, remain largely a mystery.
It’s not a mystery how Miss Webb came speeding toward the scene: she got away with the initial stop by sheer dumb luck, and then used that luck to prove how dumb she really is.
- Webb now faces three counts of third-degree murder and potentially decades in prison. Her friends are reckoning with how a popular and promising young entrepreneur ended up in jail without bail over the deaths of three men.
“(A) popular and promising young entrepreneur”, huh? Here the Inquirer is trying to humanize her, to make her sympathetic character, not a killer, not a murderess, but just some poor thing who happened to make a mistake.
-
By the time Webb’s mugshot hit national news, she had already shown indications of reckless driving. Tweets from before the crash quickly emerged in which she bragged about drinking and driving. One January post read: “If you ask me, I’m the best drunk driver ever.”
Some in her social circle, meanwhile, were in shock. How could Webb — a track-and-field star with no past DUIs and a hair-braiding business — be responsible for the deaths of three people?
Some said Webb deserves what’s coming. Others, sometimes posting under the hashtag “#TeamJay,” said Webb made a terrible error, egged on by a pervasive culture of casual drunk driving.
“What she did was not right,” said a friend, who spoke to the The Inquirer on condition of anonymity due to the high-profile nature of the case. “But at the same time we’re all human and we all make mistakes.”
It’s really not her fault, you know, she just made a mistake.
A mistake that left three men, three men with families, three apparently hard-working men, stone cold graveyard dead.
The joy that Miss Webb apparently found in doing 110 MPH on I-95, in “tearing up Kelly Drive,” was not mirrored in her face during her perp walk. Even soft-hearted and soft-headed District Attorney Larry Krasner can’t let this slide, though he’ll probably go for sentences less than the maximum. The penalty for third-degree murder in Pennsylvania is 10 to 20 years in prison. Three consecutive 20-year sentences puts her behind bars until she’s 81 years old, but we all know that Mr Krasner won’t go for that. Watch for a lenient plea bargain from the District Attorney.
Me? I have exactly zero sympathy here. If Miss Webb is found guilty, she should get out of jail when Troopers Sisca and Mack and Mr Oliveras come back to life.
“Me? I have exactly zero sympathy here. If Miss Webb is found guilty, she should get out of jail when Troopers Sisca and Mack and Mr Oliveras come back to life.”
Yup.
She made a mistake? No. A mistake is when you do something without understanding the possible consequences, based on faulty information or logic which led you to believe it was the right thing to do, or you simply didn’t know any better.
Knowingly and repeatedly getting behind the wheel of a 3,000 lb lethal weapon with full understanding of the possible consequences (as clearly indicated by the smug tweets) is not a “mistake”. That is, at a minimum, gross negligence, and I have to wonder if, in her alcohol impaired state, if it wasn’t an intentional act of retribution for being pulled over when she saw the police car again on the side of the road.
This is a person who deserves no sympathy whatsoever. Classic narcissistic and anti-social behavior. Her own comfort and convenience are WAY more important to her than any potential danger she could be putting other people in.
That’s not to say she’s not redeemable. If she gets herself into a program and gets help, she could become a viable and productive member of society again, but that in no way mitigates her actions up until that point and has no bearing on facing the consequences for ending three lives and the resulting devastation visited on three families.
Curt wrote:
She could, perhaps, if she is convicted of these killings, realize that this was entirely her fault, and perhaps some organization could set up videos with her presenting her story to adolescents as a warning and imploring them not to make the same mistakes she did, as long as those videos were made of her in prison!
The current charges against her, if reported accurately by the Inquirer do not have her facing a life sentence. It doesn’t take much imagination, and knowledge of the sympathies of George Soros-sponsored District Attorney Larry Krasner, to see a plea bargain which nets a ten-to-twenty year sentence.
Pingback: The Week in Radical Leftism, 4/01/2022 | Welcome back to Day 437 of the President World War III* Junta! Straight to the crazy: 3/24 – ‘Spare us your presence’: Trudeau decimated on world stage as liberty-loving EU members HAVE AT HIM Things I never
Thats just like with a convicted killer who is about to be exicuted for their crimes or when some armed mask youth is shot dead while trying to roba a store the Media nis always parading their families before the cameras and asking for mercy