Jae Senn
How does it look like when someone is being forcibly dragged out of his seat, or out of a vehicle? Just look at the pictures below.
When someone is being dragged out of a plane, out of a bar, or out of a car, both their hands won’t be there to defend the body. It’s either because the victim is being dragged by the hands, or if he’s being dragged by his hair or neck, both hands will be grabbing on to the assailant’s wrists or forearms as a defensive instinct to free oneself.
If a person is being dragged, and was simultaneously assaulted by the assailant’s other accomplices, will there be defensive injuries on the victim’s arms?
Obviously not.
On the night of the temple riot, the fire truck and EMRS van were overrun by a mob. They smashed the windshields of the vehicles, beat up the sides, attempted to climb on the vehicles, attempted to open the doors, etc.
In the melee, the driver of the van saw that Adib was no longer in the passenger seat and the van’s side door was open. If Adib was dragged out, how do you think his body position would be? Quite likely, similar to the pictures here. Hands unable to shield his body and face, body facing upwards or facing down, vulnerable and unable to guard his torso.
A witness said that he saw a boot mark on Adib’s chest and a very obvious bruise along with it. What if he got stomped by an assailant while being dragged, his body wide open without his hands guarding it?
Or, let’s consider the worst-case scenario. What if one of the assailants in the mob had climbed onto the van’s roof and upon seeing Adib being dragged out, in his drunken rage he jumped off the van’s roof and landed on his chest?
The result is in the other accompanying picture. A 180-pound adult, jumping off a height of 6 feet, and landing onto an object that arrests the fall that is 1 foot off the ground, will impart a force of 1260 pounds.
That is a force of over 570 kilograms.
If a guy had leaped off the roof of a van, and descended from a height of just 6 feet onto another person’s chest at a height of 1 foot off the ground, the poor victim would have had an equivalent force of over 570 kilograms slamming onto his chest in that split second.
The force needed to break the strongest bone in the human body, the femur, is around 4000 Newtons, or around 400 kilograms.
A force of 570 kilograms is more than enough to break and fracture ribs.
And this can happen without the victim having any chance to deflect the attack, without being able to shield himself with his forearms and hands. The injury would be caused by a falling object/person or an accelerative force (e.g. a powerful boot stomp) that’s enough to generate a few hundred kilograms of force.. producing a localized blunt trauma with massive damage, but without any defensive injuries on the victim’s limbs.
What if this was what happened to Adib?
Disclaimer: This is just my assumption and hypothesis, and the assumed mechanism of injury may no longer be relevant as we gather more facts along the inquest duration.
