This was written one night a few weeks back while suffering from insomnia; I tend to get like a dog with a bone when this happens - apologies if it reads like it was written by one.
AngelAlice said:
Vid on Youtube. Apparently after stabbing the guy the twin jumped off a motorway bridge into traffic - and was unhurt...
This isn't right. On jumping from the bridge Sabina Eriksson sustained broken ankles and skull fractures (
here and
here, etc) - pretty much what you might expect with a fall from height. She was arrested in hospital on June 6th, and charged with murder on September 11th, the day she left hospital. She was still in a wheelchair when she appeared in court again in late September (
here). So, far from being unhurt, she was hospitalised for over sixteen weeks, and was still using a wheelchair after that period: sixteen weeks doesn't sound indicative of minor injuries (relatively or otherwise) to me. You could argue that she was lucky to have escaped even more serious injury, but then you could probably argue this in
any case where someone recovers from a violent incident.
This was undeniably an incredible series of events - however, on many of the blogs, websites and discussion boards that cover the subject, there's a growing orthodoxy, which seems in many cases to have become a 'truth' via repetition, that neither twin was seriously injured - which is simply inaccurate - or was somehow not injured enough. This latter is a slippery one, because in any scenario where the potential for death is so strong, then any outcome other than mortal injury could be interpreted as 'relatively' uninjured, however serious the actual injuries are; it's a self-serving argument which relies on the proposer arbitrarily fixing a floating datum themselves and then continuing as if it represented a self-evident truth - and it's very common in subjects like this.
For example: with regard to this story you will find many people claiming - as has happened on this thread - that being run over by an articulated lorry will without question result in only one outcome (i.e. death) and that therefore any other result is unquestionably suspect. Sounds reasonable at first - and I certainly wouldn't recommend tangling with an artic - however, it's not true:
Bromley cyclist’s leg crushed by lorry in hit-and-run.
Lorry 'ran over driver's legs'.
Pensioner gets trapped under truck.
Motorcyclist run over by semi.
Teenage cyclist run over by lorry says thank-you to his rescuer.
Cyclist run over by semi-trailer, survives.
The conclusion therefore has to be that either it
is possible for a person to get run over by an articulated lorry and survive (sometiems 'relatively' uninjured), or that there are a lot more graphene boned super-soldiers than we think - including at least one Scottish pensioner. (I should point out that I've deliberately chosen stories where the victim has actually gone under the vehicle.)
There are inevitably going to be many variables in the circumstances of each individual incident, and I have no doubt that someone is going to counter the examples provided by claiming that this incident was somehow more serious than them - however, on the information provided no-one can possibly know this.
And I think this leads to another problem with the whole story: I suspect that the undeniable drama of the footage, and the constant repetition of the same two segments makes us believe we have seen a lot more than we actually have, and are better informed than we actually are - this goes for the earlier, much less clear footage of them running into traffic before the main incident.
For instance, the footage of Ursula Anderson running into the lorry makes it pretty obvious what is happening, but we don't actually see much of it. She obviously runs into the side of the trailer (which I suspect is an important factor) and is then carried along the road for something like one and a half times the length of the unit. However, we don't know if she's actually been dragged between the wheels or if she's been caught up on the landing gear or in the ramp racking (the latter scenarios might be what saved her life, as might have the reactions of the driver, which were very quick - possibly a case where rubbernecking saved someone's life).
Regarding the earlier incident, what we actually see is one of the women hit the side of a moving vehicle and the other walk across the road apparently oblivious to the traffic, but untouched by it. I related once on the FTMB how I was shoved (accidentally) into the side of a fast moving vehicle and came away nothing but pretty angry - I've also been standing next to a guy who absent-mindedly stepped onto the road and directly into the side of a fast moving sprinter van (okay, it was in Italy - I don't think they have a translation for road-safety) the end result being a comically dazed expression and one of the loudest bangs I've ever heard. So, I'm quite impressed, but not that much.
Ursula Eriksson, the twin who tangled with the lorry, was reportedly taken to hospital in a critical condition (e.g.
here at 15:07 - this is actually mentioned in several other sources, although you wouldn't guess that from reading much of the internet chatter on the subject) with severe leg injuries, (leg injuries seem to be a fairly consistent factor in the incidents mentioned above) but it's difficult to find precise details and the amount of time she was hospitalised. There appears to have been a lot less media interest in Ursula - very likely because she was not involved in the later incident;
this English language Swedish news site suggests she was hospitalised in the UK for seven weeks - I am pretty sure that I've read that she was then transferred to a hospital overseas - possibly in Sweden - but cannot now find a source for this.
There's absolutely no denying that Sabina Eriksson was extremely lucky indeed in the motorway incident. However, she was what I believe some emergency service workers (according to my lodger who is a paramedic and has seen the footage) call a 'bouncer' - that is, she hit the windscreen of the car and was thrown forward. Bouncers are often killed by being knocked into the path of other cars, or static objects, or by being run over by the car they bounced off, if it does not stop in time. However, if none of these things occur then it's not unheard of for a bouncer to get up and walk away.
If they are lucky. And therein lies the rub - Is luck in this instance evidence of superhuman abilities or sinister government programs, or is it a consequence of the fickle nature of circumstance and the contradictory mix of fragility and resilience which is the human body (combined, in this case with a violent paranoia, an apparently psychotic determination, and, one presumes, huge doses of adrenalin)?
To my mind what we have here is a very strange and interesting story, which is fascinating in its own right and as it stands - I can't help thinking that the addition of sometimes utterly ridiculous conjecture only really serves to obscure that fact: it's like finding a Siberian tiger in your garden and saying - no man, that's too weird, it must be a unicorn in a skin.
(As to the press not being informed of Sabina Eriksson's release, well - and I'll stand correcting - I'm pretty sure there is no onus on the prison authorities to inform the press of the release dates of particular individuals - in fact I strongly suspect it's actively discouraged, especially if the original crime was the subject of a high level of media attention.
And as to her looking a bit masculine - Well...please?)