“Have you seen the video of the woman texting in the mall and walking into the fountain?” Barb, Sun reader

This comment was sent as a response to the recent column about texting. Yes, that video, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPW8xmI4w6U went viral in January 2011. It’s a classic and deserved another view. The security people at the mall recorded it from their monitor with a cell phone and uploaded it to youtube for all of us to enjoy. You can hear the security people’s comments as they viewed the video.

I was curious and wanted to know the rest of the story. Do you remember, Paul Harvey’s radio show, “… and that is the rest of the story.”? What happened to the lady? She was interviewed after she had her swim in the fountain and there really was a lot more to this story. During an initial interview on the street by a local television station, she stated that she was texting someone at her church. I wonder if the text was by divine intervention?

During a later interview on a major television network, she was present with her lawyer. She wanted to find the people responsible. It appeared as though she expected mall security to post lifeguards at the fountains to save texters who fall in mall fountains. If she looked in the mirror, she would find the person responsible for her actions.

Here is the rest of the story. The lady in the fountain had some legal problems. She used a coworker’s credit card and rang up $5000 in fraudulent charges. She was under court order to pay for the charges but she hadn’t made any restitution to her victim. She also had other charges of theft and a hit and run charge against her.

The security guard who posted the video was fired. It’s too bad that the security person who posted the video didn’t profit from the situation because he did the public a favor and exposed a criminal.

There are a lot of lessons that you can learn from this situation but the most important is; texting is a distraction. If you are performing a high priority task, concentrate on what you are doing. This situation could have been avoided if the woman had gone to a bench or other place that she could concentrate on what she was doing.

Being distracted while texting can also have very serious consequences. In a recent court case, a Massachusetts teen was convicted of vehicular homicide while driving. The teen did not intend to kill anyone. The courts are not accepting, “I was distracted” as an excuse when someone is injured. Let’s learn from this situation and keep our texting to when we aren’t driving.

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