Last Friday morning as I got out of bed, a familiar despair awoke with me. Instinctively, I scanned photographs of my deceased son, Cooper Stock, which I’d carefully placed in my bedroom. On my worst days, I need to see these images to be certain that he existed. I checked my emails and saw West Side Rag on my screen and read the headline: “Truck Hits Pedestrian,” and my heart sank.
How is it possible, almost 10 years after my son was killed on the Upper West Side by a reckless taxi driver, that journalists, especially the Rag, can publish an article with such a misleading headline? “A Truck Driver Hits Pedestrian” is what it should have read. Has anyone ever read that a gun killed 25 people in a mass shooting? No, because the person firing the gun (or driving the car) is at fault, not the gun or the vehicle.
Dana Lerner is a psychotherapist in private practice on the Upper West Side. She is a founding member of Families For Safe Streets. In 2015 she created Cooper Stock’s Way, a nonprofit that raises money for children in need.