Jerome Tate
This is literally a case of the mentally handicapped robbing the visually handicapped.
A Boston man, Jerome Tate, 47, was arraigned yesterday in the West Roxbury Municipal Court for assaulting and robbing Donald Dawes of West Roxbury, MA.
On June 20, 2009, at around 1pm, Mr. Dawes thought it was just another day as he withdrew cash from his account at an ATM on Centre St in West Roxbury. Apparently, he was wrong…
Suddenly he felt something around his neck and heard a voice say “This is a stick!”
Whoever it was started choking him and he felt like he was “falling through air.”
Donald never saw it coming. Seriously. Why? Donald Dawes is legally blind.
His attacker then proceeded to steal his ATM card and $74 dollars in cash, unaware that something was watching him.
That thing was a bank surveillance camera. It caught the suspect’s smiling face full on. Who might this man be? None other than Jerome Tate. Even his own sister had to admit it was him after viewing the surveillance footage.
She stated in an interview that she was stunned that her own brother, apparently handicapped himself, had attacked a blind man.
Jerome was diagnosed with schizophrenia as well as other mental handicaps. Evelyn, his sister, told the interviewer that he had problems starting around age five.
Unfortunately for Jerome, however, this does not prevent him for being responsible for his actions. He still has to stand trial for assaulting a fellow handicapped individual.
Donald Dawes had this to say, “If he is a mentally disturbed person, he certainly ought to be committed to a place where they can take care of him, and not let him out on the streets to continue doing his pillages.”
Maybe.
I do love the final nail in Jerome’s coffin, however, the proof that his own sister couldn’t deny. A picture is worth a thousand words, isn’t it, Jerome?
Editor’s Note: Jerome Tate, who according to a Boston Police report weighs 300 pounds, was charged with armed robbery and assault and battery on a disabled person.
In court, Tate’s attorney, Davis C. Bruce pleaded with the judge to send Tate to a supervised group home, not to jail:
“I don’t think he will do too well (in jail). He appears to be severely mentally retarded.’’
Not so retarded that he couldn’t do a bit of planning before his big caper. Assistant District Attorney Mark Swadling said that police interviewed Tate’s caretakers at the group home where he lives and learned that Tate had asked some crucial questions before the attack on Dawes.
“He questioned [staff] about how blind people use ATMs.”
Judge Ernest L. Sarason Jr. set bail at $10,000 cash and ordered that Tate be examined at Solomon Carter Fuller Mental Health Center in Boston.
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64 Comments »
Wolf…. I gave this guy a pass for only one reason.
The Blind man didn’t die.
Assault is bad, assaulting a blind man is bad, but he didn’t manage to kill the blind man. He’s a danger, but he’s the sort of danger that needs to be in a mental hospital under heavy, heavy drugs.
I totally agree with you, Jason…..
“No” on the hell for me :-)
He does look pretty dopey. And he must have a screw or two loose to not think there would be a camera watching him at a bank…that is just common sense. That would be his best defense in court. I don’t think he is quite hell-worthy yet…maybe just padded room worthy. Do you think he meant to say “This is a stick-UP?” or was he really saying “This is a stick.” What a goober. I bet he wanted the money to buy some crazy shit like 27 jugs of ketchup, or 97 thousand rubber bands
I have to say that I laughed pretty hard at the thought of 27 jugs of ketchup. Thanks for the smile.
:)
Hahahahaha
lol the ketchup
I agree he is not hell worthy and hopefully he never will.
I hear it is hell trying to get out of those rooms with the padded wall they provide for your safety, topped with the too tight jacket they provide for comfort.
I seriously fell out of my chair while writing this… Just the look on Jerome’s face is priceless!!! And he really did say “This is a stick!” I heard about it on a Boston radio station… The host said “I hope there’s a ‘special’ place for this guy.” Hahahaha!
“This is a stick”…oh my God ! I nearly pissed myself reading that.
I almost ALMOST feel kind of sorry for poor old Jerome. Yes he should be held accountable, but certainly no hell…and I prefer that he be kept in a mental hospital Micheal Myers style. – Without the escape mind you.
Think of what it would be like to be blind and to have someone destroy whatever sense of safety, security, or independence you have.
And what can you do ? I had a friend who was (RIP) severily and physically handicapped and he was robbed by his paid caregiver.
Brains in a blender ? Jerome Tate knew what he was doing was wrong when he did it.
No hell on this one. He is clearly not all there mentally, and although he should be punished, in a lot of ways I think he needs to get taken care of more.
That smiling face in the picture says it all. They are truly right when they say ‘a picture is worth a thousand words.’ Obviously, mentally handicapped or not, this guy is a creep. Being Skizo is no excuse, he knew what he was doing and apparently, he LIKED what he was doing. Throw him in jail, maybe he can become the prey for a change instead of the predator.
How about Mr. Dawes, any update? I hope hes doing OK…
Mr. Dawes is fine, he actually feels pity for his attacker. Damn. I woulda bitch slapped Ol Jerome in court. >:)
I’m not as generous as some others. I voted yes for hell. He didn’t kill the blind guy – probably didn’t even intend to hurt him, but he deliberately preyed on a handicapped, vulnerable person. To me that puts him in a special category of “bad”. Just like someone who will hurt a child because the child is weaker and less able to protect themself. (To the grammar police – I know that is NOT supposed to he themself, but I hate using “themselves” when referring to a single individual!)
Anyway, this big buffoon targeted a vulnerable person and that is a big hell-worthy flag for moi.
(But I won’t hold it against the rest of you who voted no, lol).
I voted no, because he belongs in a mental institution. But not one of those nice ones where they treat you like a human and do things like let you look out windows and have regular baths. Something more along the lines of that big room where Freddy Kruger’s mother was raped by 1000 lunatics to produce him. That would be worth the taxpayers money.
This shoud be interesting…. this case should split the bleeding hearts club….. one group will be for the mentally impared while the other group will be with the physically challenged victim.
I guess it will all come down to which side of one’s heart they bleed from or which part of their brain one is missing….
I am really not a 100% sure that the guy is actually smiling in the tape….it looks like he may be just straining… like the blind guy was struggling or something and he was just trying to keep hold. I am not defending this waterhead either way…
THIS IS A STICK !
PIMP
I feel bad laughing, but that is just too much
Everybody, get your hands!
This is a stick!
Give me all the money or I’ll blow your brains!
“Gime your purse before I bust a cap in you, cracker!”
Yeah, I saw this on the news yesterday.
What do you do in this case where a physically-challenged man robs another phisically-challenged man? I’m puzzled.
Something to consider here,
Armed robbery can legally be a matter of subjective perception- if you stick your finger in your coat pocket and tell someone it is a gun while demanding money it is still armed robbery even though you did not use a weapon.
Perhaps Tate informed his victim it was a stick because he is not as stupid as he makes everyone believe. Gonna just take his sisters word for it ? His problems started when he was about five ? Well, what a coincidence, that is about the same time all my problems started too !!
Lantern: I doubt that. Part of the crime of robbery is the use of force OR fear to compel the person to hand over the goods. Even if this guy really was wielding a stick, if it caused the blind man fear, then the crime of robbery was committed despite the nature of the item used to elicit the fear. That’s why you could use a bb gun and it would still be robbery. Also, either way I believe that robbing a person at an ATM is a felony.
Sorry to sound like a retarded 1st year law student. =(
That was not my point- about ten years ago a lady near where I lived was at a coin-laundry when she saw a kid on a bicycle get lifted off it by a group of teens who took off on the bike. She took out her cell-phone and fortunately an entire squad of police units were around the corner cleaning up another scene. The 18 year old on captured on the bike was charged with robbery as physical force was used to take the kids bike. I recall the 18 year old’s mother at the scene pleading for her thug saying, “He does not need this right now.” The police officer pointed out that the kid, who was sitting on the curb nearby crying- did not need it either.
My point is that in most jurisdictions, if a gun or other weapon is used there is an enhancement penalty- additional charges and time to be served for using a deadly weapon.
Someone explain to me what “who according to a Boston Police report weighs 300 pounds” has to do with teh case? We see TONS of skinny folk do some incredibly stupid stuff, why bring his weight into it? We see the picture and can tell he’s heavy.
I think it’s kinda like when a boxer punches someone his hands are considered lethal weapons. This Guys girth and craziness made him like King Kong raging down on a blind man. that’s just my opinion though.
I see he’s heavy but wouldn’t have guessed he was 300 pounds.
OK…I’ll buy that…just seemed like a cheap shot to me. I mean…when it’s a really obese parent convicted of starving their kid, sure…make all teh jokes you want. But here it just seemed…off.
Nah, it wasn’t a cheap shot at the guy Kenny, I was just trying to show he was a big guy and could have hurt Mr. Dawes pretty badly. I’m a 300 pound fat bastard myself, so I wouldn’t make a crack about his weight. Unless, of course, I could get a good laugh at my own expense at the same time. :>)
There is strength in fat too.
I figured as much, but it concerned me. Thanks for clearing it up Max :)
Is there a Hell light? like we have the special needs short bus..he might belong there perhaps.
LoL@Hell light – Burns Great! Less Fire! The pitchforks have their prongs dulled. The demons are all retired part timers. You get weekends off to hang out in purgatory. There’s no stabbing below the waist…….
lol!! ..every one has to hold hands before crossing the lake of fire, every other day they get to mold sulfuric clay in to farm animals, it’s a kinder gentler hell.
Disability or not, he has proven himself to be a menace. If he is able to live in a group home, he knows society has rules that must be followed.
Hell is probably full of mentally unstable people – we can make room for one more. I’ll just scoot my chair over a little bit.
Oh, it’s definatly time to get him out of the group home, for sure. Back to the mental ward with you sir.
Hell, I don’t know. That was a horrible, dispictable thing to do, but like it’s been said before, we’re so damn jaded that the fact that the victim is alive makes us reconsider the hell penalty.
Having spent many years working with the mentally ill and homeless, I guess I have a different perspective on this. He may be mentally ill BUT, he knew what he was doing was wrong. At no time has anyone implied that the guy was under a delusion or hallucination that warped his ability to know right from wrong. He preplanned the attack and carried out against someone he perceived as weaker than himself. He deserves prison not a hospital or group home.
I had no problem voting hell on this guy!
Glad to see that people like you who work with the mentally impared will hold them to a set of standards……
Being “slow” should not be a pass for unacceptable behavior, he still committed a crime and as other posts pointed out he knew enough to seek out a weaker person to victimize.
Also because he does not do it every day, he knows that there is something different about what he is doing….. Like goingto an amusement park,,, it’s just too expensive to do every day…
I was watching an episode of Lockdown (yeah, its one of my many vices, lol), and they showed this guy who was the first person in Alabama to get off death row using the retarded defense.
This guy was able to tell what his IQ was, a whole lot of date/background/legal information about his case, he was able to call out the names of other inmates as he walked down the corridor and into GP, and he was able to correctly use some rather large words. Sure, he seemed rather stupid, but he was not incapable of understanding right from wrong. While he was telling his crime, he carefully managed to say that a “woman got killed”, rather than “I killed a woman”. When the interviewer asked “did you kill her” he finally sort of bowed his head and said “yes”.
IMO, that’s pretty compelling that he knows what he did was wrong.
I am 100% behind the idea that a severely retarded person may not know right from wrong, but this guy was only mildly retarded. He said his IQ was 69-70. That is like having the mental capacity of a 12 year old. (50-70 is considered mild mental retardation).
When you start to get into severe retardation (20-35) you are talking about people who really can’t understand. They should be locked up of course, but not put to death. And probably not even in a jail, but rather in some sort of permanent mental care facility.
12 year old….. at 12 some people can be REALLY driven and smart in certain areas….
At 12 I was at City Hall quite often…. protesting changes to bus service in the City of Springfield MA….. I drew up route plans that served neighborhoods as well as downtown using the existing routes. the maps were on tracing paper (high tech for the late 70′s early 80′s) and were color coded (more high tech)….. over the years some of my ideas have been implimented… again I was 12….. I found out that many adults don’t like 12 year old ideas….. Also I choked when the news cameras were on me….
But at 12 don’t ask me to balance a check book……..
I have to agree with you on this one. I used to work as a legal assistant and I can’t count the number of times people would try to say that they weren’t responsible for their actions because of mental illness, but you could see the crime they committed was premeditated and they would admit to planning it out. When these individuals plan & execute crimes of this nature, they can not claim diminished capacity due to mental illness because the crime was deliberate in nature.
This crime seems like he planned it out by looking for someone weaker than himself and he showed planned intent by asking around about blind people & ATMs before he committed the crime. The problem I have with this is that it seems that he deliberately decided upon a type of victim that he knew he would be able to take advantage of and be able to gain the upper hand. Guys like this give the stereotype picture of mental illness a bad name, but it is important to remember that people with mental illnesses are good people also – there is always bad apples in any bunch!
I really feel for the victim in this case because he has been violated in a horrific manner. Life is already hard enough for someone who is blind, but now he will always be fearful of being attacked again. Jerome Tate interrupted this gentleman’s life and Tate had no right to do this.
I’m a typical dumb racist who looks like Mr. Hankey’s fat cousin, this is the problem with society we let all these people like me run amok in society with the pure blooded and they are robbing raping and murdering our proud and pure blooded race i for one am tired of it and want all that is not pure blooded out of my country i for one am tired of everyone else’s earned tax dollars going into my welfare checks and food stamps and they still rob rape and murder my proud and pure blooded race the white race needs to stock up on guns and ammo and run these white supremacists out and take back what is theirs
WHAT THE FUCK IS THE ARYAN MASTER RACE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
HEIL POP’n'FRESH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
HEIL AL UNSER’S FURER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
edited by your friendly neighborhood wop
-max
Ha ha…gee, should I tell you that I’m a jew ?
Oh noes !!!
I’m not trying to be the grammar police, I’m a typo queen myself but do you know what punctuation mark indicating the end of a sentence or phrase is? Seriously I can’t tell what your saying at all.
maybe it’s just my Irish shamrock’s I’ve been smoking clouding my mind.
I love jews- well one and that’s my husband. He is the epitome of one too…nothing ever goes unaccounted for. A penny is never just a penny to him, that’s copper wire in its purest form. LOL. Anyway Joker reminds me of someone…and if its him hold on to your pants cuz we are in for a ride-not necessarily a good one either.
min_duhh…
Lol…ahh yes, the copper wire joke. God, I love that one. :)
i would have done the same thing blind people dont need money
Get your head out of your ass. Stupid people don’t need money, either, can somebody rob you?
Jimmy your really a retard
Off topic, but you’re a Stephen Colbert fan too?
Stephen Colbert is HILARIOUS!
Love his new haircut! He looks great!
Honestly, I don’t have cable ourt here so I haven’t seen it yet. I follow him on his Twitter though. I see soething on there everyday that makes me roll around in laughter.
He has a very, very close cut now. I’ll see what I can dig up and put it on my myspace. Look up the sharpie bandit.
I didn’t know if any one could see Stephen being my avatar is so small?! Yay!
I love Stephen Colbert, I’m a huge fan!
I just watched all of the episodes of Strangers with Candy over the weekend, omg he (Stephen Colbert akaChuck Noblet) is so great on that show! His lessons were so funny and absurd!
* * * * Chuck Noblet: “Historically, syphilis is right up there with Germans. It wiped out the Romanovs, it decimated our fleet at Pearl Harbor, and of course, Fidel Castro impersonated Marilyn Monroe and gave President Kennedy a case of syphilis so severe that eventually it blew the back of his head off.” * * * *
Well, not sure if you can see mine, but I am my own biggest fan, (well there is someone else, but that’s private unless the windows are open and the whole neighborhood can hear us, if you catch my drift…lol)
Chuck Norris is my other hero besides myself.
That’s awesome Navy Cop! nothing wrong with being a fan of yourself :-)
I have to admit I liked huckabee after he used chuck norris facts in his campaign
Images of Chuck Norris got me through my deployment to the Middle East last year. He is a STUD!
I can understand that, he’s awesome!
I named my on-line Fantasy football team Chuck Norris. I used so many great gems for the fact page on the forums for smack talk! I loved it ’cause they all picked normal names like ‘The Cleveland Tigers’ and I was just one man; Chuck Norris.
“There is no chin under Chuck Norris’ Beard. There is only another fist.”
I used to see those quips scrawled all over the walls in the latrines. “Chuck Norris was stopped at a check point in Russia. Two days later, the Cold War was over.” or some thing along those lines. “Chuck Norris is world’s greatest lover, he can screw a woman in every country at the same time.” That one made me piss myself, I swear.
haha! thank you for the laugh, I needed that
He killed two boys when he was young. He told me so himself when we were in the psychiatric unit together.
*yawns* whatever, dude. And you’re probably in the same psych ward as my fist-fighting granny. Hope she knocks your ass out, punk
*yawn*