Missing 16-Year-Old Rescued After Driver Recognizes Her Viral 'Distress' Hand Gesture From TikTok (nbcnews.com) 76
"Authorities were able to find a missing 16-year-old girl after she caught the attention of a driver by using hand gestures popularized on the social media platform TikTok," reports NBC News:
According to the Laurel County Sheriff's Office in Kentucky, the girl was inside a silver-colored Toyota car when the driver saw her using hand signals known on TikTok "to represent violence at home — I need help — domestic violence." After recognizing what the signals meant and seeing that the teen "appeared to be in distress," the driver called 911, the sheriff's office said in a statement. The alert led to the arrest of 61-year-old James Herbert Brick of Cherokee, North Carolina, Thursday afternoon while driving near a Kentucky interstate.
The teenager found inside the car Brick was driving had been reported missing by her parents in Asheville, North Carolina, Tuesday morning, Laurel County Sheriff John Root said in a statement. The girl also told authorities she had traveled with Brick through North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky and Ohio, according to the statement....
The teenager found inside the car Brick was driving had been reported missing by her parents in Asheville, North Carolina, Tuesday morning, Laurel County Sheriff John Root said in a statement. The girl also told authorities she had traveled with Brick through North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky and Ohio, according to the statement....
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Plus not everyone is a TikTok user so that will cause problems as well.
Re: Small children must be in perpetual distress (Score:5, Funny)
When the former President was President, I didn't need *fake* teardrops.
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And now the melting snowflakes are all right wing idiots who think lizard people are going to torture their children to death and drink the resulting brain juices.
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I'm old enough that my first association when hearing about it was "breath mints".
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Not forgotten.
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I lost my password and had to reset it. My captcha here was "retarding".
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Re:Small children must be in perpetual distress (Score:5, Informative)
The hand signal in tfs is quite similar to the way my toddler and infant instinctively hold their hands.
You're only thinking about the final hand position. The signal is the entire sequence - open hand towards the person, tuck the thumb, then fold your fingers over the thumb.
https://twitter.com/HaltonPoli... [twitter.com]
It's also very unlikely someone would see a toddler doing this and think "oh that's the signal for violence at home".
Re:Small children must be in perpetual distress (Score:5, Insightful)
Stop making shit up. This line or argument is about as stupid as saying that deaf people can't possibly use sign language to communicate, because people will just randomly make hand signs that could mean something in sign language.
Like GP points out, it's a very specific sequence of hand movement to make the signal, one of the most unnatural one being to open the hand towards the person that can see you. There aren't many instances where that is done except for waving or signaling someone to stop. And neither does involve the rest of the sequence.
At least that's how it works for hand signs in our Western culture.
Now could someone mistake the wrong or unintended sequence of hand motion for a call for help? Sure, just like any signal can be misread. But this specific sequence happening by random chance is very unlikely.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
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Re: TikTok isn't the creator of this signal (Score:2)
This is not true for Hebrew, Arabic, and Chinese. These languages all have a semantic component in thwir writing system and are not purely about writing as a description of sounds. (For those tgat are wondering, in the case of Hebrew and Arabic I'm talking about roots)
Re:TikTok isn't the creator of this signal (Score:4, Interesting)
"Makes sense that deaf people are less literate. After all they can only read books written in sign language. Spoken languages don't use any visual notation."
I had the opportunity to work with students at a deaf school, coaching them with an FLL robotics team and later helping them learn to code in Java. I was surprised at the limited level of literacy they had with written language. The instructors at the school told me that was a prevalent problem in educating deaf students due to the fact that learning written language is based on knowledge of spoken language, and deaf kids generally don't have much knowledge of spoken language.
The impact of no spoken language and late learning of written language is challenging to overcome, especially when it is mixed up with other obstacles faced by the hearing impaired. If I recall correctly, the roughly 6th to 8th grade (by age) students I was working with were reading at a 3rd to 4th grade level. It is extremely challenging trying to use 3rd/4th grade written language to teach a middle school curriculum.
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I've never seen anyone advocate for both of these positions. I'm not saying such people don't exist - all kinds of people exist. But I'm pretty sure the cochlear implant thing is primarily something that is common in isolated communities of deaf people, and is not a commonly held position amongst people who advocate for social justice.
Personally, I think
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I'm not sure why you think it would be unless you neither read TFS or TFH. TikTok is only credited with popularising it.
Pretty impressive (Score:5, Interesting)
It's impressive the signal exists, even more impressive the girl knew it and tried to use it, even more impressive a passing motorist knew it and called for help (though maybe that last part is less impressive as who knows how many other people were shown the same hand signal who didn't understand it?).
At first I thought maybe the hand signal was a little too simplistic and prone to false positives but if you try it i's not a motion that's very natural to make.
Re:Pretty impressive (Score:5, Informative)
Indeed, and even more impressive would have been if instructions for the hand gesture were included in the OP summary so all would know if they saw it:
1. Hold hand up with palm facing other person.
2. Tuck thumb into palm.
3. Fold fingers down over thumb.
See: pic.twitter.com/gsIgSbXOmc [twitter.com]
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Not about letters though (Score:2)
I don't know what's special about b and n to indicate,"I need help."
Although the signs are the same as those letters, I think it's more about showing the act of trapping the thumb to symbolically indicate they are trapped.
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So you knew that there is a language called sign language, but you still thought there was only one possible language?
"What a maroon."
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From the official page - https://canadianwomen.org/sign... [canadianwomen.org] - they say that they consulted the deaf community about these signs, but it seems doubtful: these are long-established symbols in English finger spellin
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Having been deaf for over a decade, yeah, I'm familiar with sign language.
No you're not, you haven't even figured out that there are hand signs in addition to sign language, you're not even done learning the basics.
It sounds like you could benefit from learning it, too!
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Hey moron, notice the lack of both a gate, and somebody blocking you from going through it?
You just know that's an insult, and you wanted an insult, you didn't even think hard enough to find one that applies!
You should study more and nobody is trying to stop you.
I guess that's your problem; you have multiple disabilities, and being both a dumbfuck and an asshole is a debilitating combination.
Re: Pretty impressive (Score:1, Flamebait)
Re: Pretty impressive (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm impressed it actually turned out to be a legitimate kidnapping and not some a hole spoiled brat trolling their parents.
This kind of sounds like criticising the existence of 112 (or 999 (or 911)) because a call might be "some a hole spoiled brat trolling their parents".
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England has more emergency numbers than genders.
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112 (Score:3)
112 is the European emergency number, so from next year on the UK will use 157079632679 + the number of your private health insurance contract.
Surely..... (Score:2)
0118 999 881 999 119 725 3 ?
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England had no gender: it's a country.
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England, since antiquity, is depicted as a female warrior. So there.
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There's two emergency numbers in the UK (I'll let you decide how many genders there are, but it's at least two...)
112 is the European standard (and also the GSM standard, so should work on any mobile phone). It works in the UK, but the UK number of 999 has been around longer and still gets promoted more - if you asked most people in the UK what number you'd call in an emergency most would say "999" rather than "112". Both numbers go to exactly the same place. 911 doesn't usually work in the UK, though some
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Just get used to the fact that like in real life, a good chunk of the posters here are morons.
Re: How does this even happen? (Score:1)
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Maybe he threatened to do something to her or someone she cares about if she didn't remain compliant. Maybe she is a fearful person. A lot of 16 year olds are not very sure of themselves. What is your point exactly? I may be misinterpreting but it sounds like you are either doubting that the story is true, or blaming the victim. I don't see any reason to doubt, and blaming the victim is totally preposterous.
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She did do something about it. She signaled for help. What does it matter to know whether she tried to escape or not at that point?
If you wanted to come off less of a victim blaming jerk, just ask about what lead up to that moment, without as
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These two things are not mutually exclusive. I'm not saying you were blaming her, I'm also just making an observation.
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And why is he being held on only a $10K cash bond? Did this start off as a Humbert and Dolores kind of thing?
Because he's a white male? The posted story leaves out a little tidbit, so here's another story [somerset-kentucky.com] which fills in a missing piece.
The female juvenile told Sheriff's investigators that she had gotten with Brick and traveled through North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky and into Ohio where he had relatives. The Laurel County Sheriff’s Office said that the juvenile reported that once the relatives realized she was under age and reported as missing, Brick and she left Ohio traveling southbound. The female juvenile then began attempting to get motorists attention to call 911
In other words, none of the relatives questioned why this guy had a 16 year old with him until they realized she was 16 and reported missing, but apparently none of them reported this to authorities nor did anything to stop him.
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I'm a bit worried about this story for that reason. I'm assuming he must have convinced her to meet up posing as someone her age, or convinced her to give him extortion material (i.e. nudes). But how common can it be to know the hand sign, but not know about such common pedophile tricks?
Unless he straight up grabbed her at gunpoint or something, which I suppose isn't impossible.
Re: Behind one's back, too (Score:2)
Are these gestures really a recommended thing?
Apparently they are now.
Re: Behind one's back, too (Score:2)
Seems to me relying on these signals is a good way to stay kidnapped.
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Seemed like one of those fake-but-seems-real bits of advice gone viral, like using a blue jack-o-lantern to signal autism.
Rick: Do autistic people like posting on slashdot?
Morty: Wh...why would you say something like that?
Rick: Because I'm starting to love it!
Re: Ffs, don't SAY it. (Score:3)
Exactly. This should only be mentioned in places that child molesters are known to avoid, like, eh...wait a minute...it'll come to me.
*Facepalm*
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I feel like you didn't think this through very well.
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He's a Brick and he's drowning slowly (Score:1)
I remember when Ben Folds wrote a song about that guy