J.P. Rosciglione

You can see the white cross better in this Google Earth image. Sorry for my terrible photo!

This was one of the first memorials I noticed on my morning commute to St. Charles on I-370W. It took me a while before I was able to make out the name on the memorial, and finally I thought to snap a quick pic whilst driving by since the idea of pulling over on the side of 370 gives me the heeby jeebies!! The memorial itself is a simple white cross with his name on the horizontal portion and the word "Colts" written on the top part with their horseshoe logo. Apparently the victim was a fan of Indianapolis Colts football.

This memorial is for John "J.P." Rosciglione. He was struck by a drunk driver while on his way home from work on February 5th, 2005, westbound on 370 near the Mills Mall exit. He was headed to a friends house to play cards when another driver struck the back of his Nissan Pathfinder, causing J.P.'s car to roll over and impact the median. Poor J.P. was ejected from the car and landed on the other side of the highway where he was hit by a minivan and a tractor trailer heading eastbound. I pray that he died quickly and with minimal pain...

Photo source: www.bpusastl.org/images/Newsletters/Webcopies/BPStL_J-F_06.pdf

I see his memorial every single day on my way to work now. I began to wonder who he was and what sort of person he was like.... so I read some news stories online. In one such article, he was described as having a "big heart" by his family. His father, Jay Rosciglione said, "J.P. was the son every father dreams of having. His sister said he was "the life of the party." How tragic that he had to perish like this...reminds me of the importance wearing a seat belt. Seems like most of the victims who are ejected from a vehicle are without seat belts. Of course airbags play a significant role in saving lives but perhaps due to the nature of J.P.'s accident, even the airbags couldn't save him. Seemed like it was an older vehicle and once airbags deploy, they cannot be redeployed as far as I know...Oh well, this is just speculation on my part, and not the purpose of my blog. But I definitely think of him everytime I drive past....

J.P.'s 1998 Nissan Pathfinder post-accident:

Truly terrible! And unfortunately the man responsible for this only got two years in prison after he fled the scene of the accident. If it weren't for witness testimony, the drunk driver might have gotten away with this!

New Story

An older one, so whole article isn't available but here's the gist of it:
http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/gi_0199-9304367/Driver-in-fatal-crash-gets.html

J.P. is survived by his mother, father, sister, and other numerous family members. His family owns a bakery in St. Charles called Rosciglione Bakery and his father, Jay Rosciglione, was a power weight lifter. I am sure his family holds him in their hearts and treasures their memories of him dearly.

Rest in peace, J.P.

Kidnapped/murdered child?

A friend of mine saw this descanso recently in the city of St. Louis and he decided to take me to the spot so I could see it too. It's in a really bad neighborhood so I didn't get out of the car despite it being daylight. I snapped the photo quickly with my phone and he drove off.

This photo also begs the question: How does one make a descanso in the city? You rarely see white crosses on street sides.... and I have a feeling if there were, people could more easily deface or remove them versus say on an interstate where it's sort of dangerous to pull over even just to snap a photo (a whole separate post on that later!) It seems like photos of the deceased, some words written paper and taped to a telephone pole or tree, and stuffed animals in abundance are all common sights for a "city descanso." We saw another one like this but apparently the stuffed animals had since been removed/deteriorated/whatever and all that remained was a photo of the woman who was killed. But I couldn't really get a clear photo due to the photo being high up on a tree and partially obscured in darkness from the leaves and branches. But it seems like stuffed animals---maybe not just for kids---are a big part of the city memorials. I am not sure what happened to this little girl (or maybe she was a teen? or adult?) but there is a tiny white cross pinned to the side of the pole and one of the bears has signatures of friends and family all over. A crimestoppers yellow tape is wrapped around the top suggesting foul play. I don't think they've caught the criminal yet....it says call to leave tips.