TOM MAGUIRE has a post responding to my post below on the Central Park jogger case, and various other bloggers’ commentary on it. And reader George Zachar sends this first-hand account:

Away from the suddenly nighmarish legal turn in the Central Park Jogger case, I want you to know there really was terror, in the pre-9/11 sense, in the park that night.

I was jogging up the west side of the reservoir just past 9:30 pm when an approaching runner began gesturing frantically for me to turn around.

As he passed me, he said there was a gang of kids attacking joggers at the northern end of the reservoir, and that he’d just barely escaped them. I, of course, turned south and ran to the nearest park exit.

When I saw the next morning’s papers, I learned the man who’d warned me was a former track star whose speed had saved him. And that if I had left my apartment 10 minutes earlier, reaching the reservoir’s apex before him, *I* would have been a victim, with no chance of eluding the wilding youths.

Just offering a local, non-legal perspective to the events of that night.

I may post more on this later. I’ve gotten some email charging me with being unfairly biased against prosecutors, and I’m trying to decide whether to respond with some anecdotes from my time working in a prosecutor’s office or not.

UPDATE: Here’s more on the subject, with the amusing title “Central Park Bloggers.”