A death in Phoenix

A little before dawn Thursday morning, Byron Yellowhair pulled his car to the shoulder of the well-lighted Papago Freeway in central Phoenix, got out and started walking down the shoulder. Maybe he was drunk or high, and maybe he weaved out into the traffic -- he definitely had a troubled past. But he was 24 with life still ahead, dreamed of becoming a teacher back home on the Navajo reservation. He was an individual sacred to God.

Hit so many times, by so many cars, he was dismembered to an extent that even hardened DPS officers had never seen before.

The Republic reported, "officials said they will likely never know how many cars hit the man." Bedazzled by streaming video of school lunch menus or whatever, the state's biggest newspaper pays less attention to journalism basics. So one must hunt around for the "where" (near 24th Street), and it's never made clear how many motorists involved actually pulled over to wait for the law.

Even if some did, more, perhaps many more, drove on. Phoenix has a tremendous problem with fatal hit-and-run "accidents." One family lost two brothers, over a period of years, to hit-and-run drivers. Many never seem to be caught (story idea for a newspaper, Phoenix, if you have one). I remember another case involving a person in a wheelchair. The tone seemed to be set by Bishop Thomas O'Brien, who hit a man on a well-lit part of Glendale Avenue (speed limit 35 or 40), drove on and tried to get his secretary to arrange for his shattered windshield to be quietly fixed while his car was stashed in his garage. He claimed to have thought he hit a dog.

Crisis reveals character. Had O'Brien stopped and given aid and comfort, he would have been a hero. He didn't. Yet he is only one of a seemingly large cohort of vehicular assailants. Most of these murderers seem to get away with it.

It is no coincidence that most of the victims are poor. Pedestrian accidents on Camelback by the Ritz Carlton caused the city to build an elaborate tunnel to Biltmore Fashion "Park." No such luck at, say, 16th Street and Broadway. Some are "drunk Indians," as Anglo Phoenicians quietly assure themselves on the way to their white, suburban megachurches (each individual sacred to God). Class and power are critical to undertstanding a place that was conceived as egalitarian.

Once upon a time Phoenix was a smaller city instead of a sprawl of real-estate ventures connected by six-lane highways ("city streets") and freeways. People stopped to help if your car was off the road. Nobody honked -- that was something Easterners did. I spent four years as an EMT and paramedic, usually in the worst parts of town, taking the worst trauma calls. Hit-and-runs were rare. The worst pedestrian trauma happened on unlighted highways.

Now Phoenix has built an urban form that encourages, almost demands, high-speed driving for long distances. But there is something more. Sometime between the time I left in 1978 and returned in 2000, Phoenix became a really mean place. Maybe Detroit is worse, but I haven't experienced a meaner city.

Very rapid population growth and the sprawl urban form discourage connection to other people or the sense of place that nurtures mutual obligation. (It makes it nearly impossible even to have the neighborhood bar where one can walk home.) The resort mentality not only brings a sense of entitlement, seen so often in nasty Scottsdale, but a sense that one can "get away with it." One can do things you would never do "back home," where friends, family, social ties and front porches enforce a certain decency. What happens at the "resort," stays there -- including, apparently, leaving the scene after striking a pedestrian (sacred to God).

Hot weather always brings out the worst, even in average, decent folks. The macho, contractor/real estate culture adds fuel to the selfish meanness. Working in a big metro area with the worst wages among its peers, many people are desperate and angry every day.  And they're all behind the wheel, often in big pickups and suburban assault vehicles (SAVs). The result is a certain self-selection: people who want such a "city," where they can be left alone and have minimal obligations in common, move there. Most who are horrified by it, leave. Yet as a poor city, Phoenix has many, many pedestrians out on the streets, even when it's 140 degrees surface temperature in July, waiting for public transit pitifully inadequate to such a populous place.

Now I realize there's something else at work in the meanness. So many people who moved there realize they've been had. It's not really a resort, except for the mega-rich. Much of it is ugly. Smog clouds the sky. Beautiful, wild Arizona is ever more remote and always under attack. The summers are hell. The economy is crap. Right-wing government has not created the promised land. A gathering storm of problems, from climate change to water scarcity, are bearing down. No wonder they're mad, in every meaning of the word.

Comments

[Joanna]

I don't know what to say other than I will pray for Mr. Yellowhair and his family. This article explains why when my boyfriend and I stopped after we saw an accident near Lake Pleasant, the people in one of the cars seemed so surprised at our concern.

I've been told that observation of acts of kindness has a positive impact even on the observers.

Bless you for writing this article Jon.

[Joe Schallan]

Phoenix, the nightmare city of the New West.

It could have been different.

As a long-time resident and current public reference librarian who gets PLENTY of contact with our population, I'll concur with Jon's remarks about meanness and nastiness. Combine transient, rootless people with a local ethic that spurns connectedness and community in favor of a fantasy of rugged individualism, and you have the formula for creating a very unpleasant place indeed. I've traveled a lot in the U.S., and no place tops Phoenix for boorish, narcissistic, mean people. I have to be here for a number of reasons, and I haven't given up all hope, but for those considering a move here, I can only say think again about it. This is a terrible place, and a move here will be the biggest mistake you'll ever make.