From the Florida Sun-Sentinel comes this story of a fatal car crash and the evidence that nailed the person who caused it -- an entry in their personal Blog...
Teen's blog confession forces him to plead guilty in fatal crash
"I did it."
Blake Ranking was a Eustis High School senior and still aching from a horrible crash three days earlier when he posted those words on blurty.com, a site for Web logs.
"It was me who caused it. I turned the wheel. I turned the wheel that sent us off the road, into the concrete drain...," he wrote as his best friend, Jason Coker, 17, lay in a coma at Orlando Regional Medical Center. "How can I be fine when everyone else is so messed up?"
Coker never awoke from the crash Oct. 3, 2004. He died Jan. 11.
Although Ranking later retracted his words -- deleting them from the blog and penning an explanation -- they came back to haunt him, forcing him Monday to plead guilty to DUI manslaughter.
And his 'retraction'
Ranking's blogs hosted by three Web sites, blurty.com, xanga.com and myspace.com, reveal a range of emotions, from rage for friends who blame him for the fatal crash to the joy of his 18th birthday. ("YAY," he wrote. "Now I can get a cool job, buy cigarettes, get a credit card, and order stuff off TV.")
Of his blog confession, he wrote: "People say I 'contradict' myself since I 'already admitting pulling the wheel.' I didn't 'ADMIT' anything. I went on a guilt trip, and I posted the story that I WAS TOLD . . . Nicole told me I pulled the wheel, I believed her."
The cops pulled a screenshot before Ranking thought to delete the post. I love his quote:
"YAY, Now I can get a cool job, buy cigarettes, get a credit card, and order stuff off TV."
Spoken like a true American Product. Stamped from the mold just like every other consumer. Jack in the 'individuality' chip to make them think that they are a trailblazing creative genius and set them on their way to bankruptcy and 3.7 failed marriages. And where have the parents been for the last 17 years?
