Runner Interferes With Service Dog, Suing Disabled Veteran for Having His Dog in a Race.

Hello all,

Hello. I am Tom Hafemann and I am fundraising to pay for legal defense for myself and my service dog Jetta.

Civil Action Case No.: 2021-CP-10-03-03463. Filed in Charleston, SC.

Jetta and I were running in the Kiawah Island half marathon when someone came between and interfered with my leashed service dog. All three of us tumbled to the ground. She claims she was hurt, yet finished the marathon. She is stating that Service Dog or not, Jetta has no business being on the course.  She is suing for damages, punitive damages and the cost of the lawsuit. Here is a bit more to the story.

Anyone who knows me knows a few things about me.  First, I have a trained Service Dog, Jetta.  Second, she goes everywhere I go, including running.  

I served in the US Navy aboard the USS Nevada, SSBN 733, Gold crew. (1988-1992).  Jetta received her Service Animal diploma from Service Dogs 4 Veterans (www.sd4v.org) on August 22, 2018.  Since that time, she has gone with me everywhere I have gone.  She has traveled on planes, ships/boats, trains, cars, kayaks, escalators and elevators.  She goes with me to restaurants, sports events, and even to the bathroom.

Jetta is a Black Lab, Whippet mix; affectionately called a "Whipador".  She loves to run and so do I.  So I have been running with her attached to my 4 foot running tether leash.  She is well trained, follows my commands, and does everything I ask her to do.  She will run in the heal position in tight quarters and run in the lead left position when we run in the open.

On December 14th., 2019, Jetta and I ran in the Kiawah Island Half Marathon.  Traditionally, dogs are not allowed to run in races.  However, Jetta just isn't a dog.  She is my personal trained ADA Compliant Service Animal.  ADA, American Disability Act, requires that a service animal be given access to or given accommodation to any public place or event.  ADA Law 2010 .  I told Kiawah Island Half Marathon officials about Jetta, and they made accommodation.

So, here is what happened.

Jetta and I were running.  At around mile 7, things began to get a little tight.  I reeled in Jetta to run in heeled position.  This made us double wide.  At 7 miles into a half marathon, there really aren't many people passing.  The field has spread out a bit and most everyone at 9 miles is going to finish where they are.

However, there was this one person, Patrice Corriera of Madison, Connecticut.  She was in front of Jetta and I.  Jetta and I were running very well, feeling good and still on about a 9 minute mile pace, and we caught up to Patrice around mile 10.  Watching others in front of me have difficulty getting past her, as it appeared she would attempt to block their efforts, I knew it might be a bit difficult for me as well.  As she slowed from her pace, it seemed like she didn't want anyone to pass her.  For the next 1 to 2 miles I had been trying to pass Patrice with, "On your left" or "On your right".  Each time we tried to pass, she would move toward the side where we were going to pass, thereby blocking our ability to pass.  Again, we were relatively tight quarters.  Jetta was running in the heeled position.

Between mile 11 and 12, roughly, I saw an opportunity to pass.  This time I wanted to get thin and let Jetta out into the GO position as we set off to sprint to pass Patrice.  As we got closer I yelled "ON YOUR LEFT!"  This time, Jetta got past her but I didn't.  Patrice moved and positioned her between Jetta and I, again seemingly to block our pass, got tangled in our leash; both Patrice and I fell to the ground.   I stopped and asked if she was okay, she said no.  At that time I signaled for a race official that came over to take care of Patrice.  I asked the official if they got this situation.  They replied yes, so I carried on with the race, but very angry that she came between me and my service dog.  The extra anger adrenaline drove me to finish with sub 9 minute miles.

Both Jetta and I, and Patrice finished the race.  

A few months later I get some harassing letters from attorney's telling me that I need do this that and another thing because my dog had no business being on the race field.  They said they were/are going to sue me for medical injuries sustained by Patrice.  After talking with an attorney, they said these were just scary lawyer letters intended to rile me up.  (Remember, she finished the race!)

Well, I keep getting harassing letters, along with telephone calls, insurance company letters, and USA Track and Field, Inc. letters telling me that they are putting me on notice.

I have not run much with Jetta since this incident.  I haven't run a race.  While Jetta loves to run and can do fine with nobody else around, as soon as there is another runner in sight, she cowers and is severely distracted with her duties. I have been working with Jetta and a few other people to get her use to running in a group again.   Patrice has interfered with the duties of my service dog.  I am still working with Jetta to get her over the incident.  Jetta is now skittish around other runners.

As a result of all of this, my highly trained Service Dog is longer able to provide a key part of this veterans VA prescribed physical & mental therapy because of her trauma caused by inattentive runner that didn’t follow runner protocol.

So I am asking you, my friends for advice.  If you know anyone that can help me, please pass this along.  I am so very upset that I keep getting these harassing lawyer and insurance letters.  I sure would appreciate any legal or professional advice.

Here is my gofundme link if you could help me get through this situation.  Any help would be appreciated.

Disabled Unemployed Veteran Lawsuit defense fund

Tom

What's next concerning Internet censorship?

Hello Friends,

Seeing all that is happening today, in the internet world of censorship, got me thinking.  What's next?  Being an IT guy I can tell you this, as the song says, "Baby, you just ain't seen nothing yet!"

The next thing up is DNS, TCP/IP blocking, hijacking, redirection, along with Infrastructure hijacking and Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDOS) attacks.  Let me set the stage.  (getting a bit nerdy)

The internet world is made up of what is called the 7 layers of the OSI model; sometimes referred to as the "7-Layer Salad".  If you can control, manipulate, corrupt, block, or disrupt any of those layers, you can control what really happens in any network, i.e., the Internet.

DNS operates at layer 7, the Application Layer.  While TCP/IP operates at layers 3 and 4 respectively; the Network and Transport layer.

What happened with Parler and other platforms was most notably at Layers 6 and 7; the Presentation and Application layers respectively.  For my true nerdy folk out there, okay yes.  You can make a reasonable case that the other layers were involved too.   

This is all the nerdy I am going to get in this post.  I am going to show a fictitious, yet real life correlation that might help you understand the next big thing.

Let's start with a shopping mall.  And let's say that they sell everything you are against; whatever your definition of that is.  And you have some pull, influence, interest with the management of that mall.  The first thing you can ask the management to do is to kick everyone out.  This is what happened with Parler, and might happen with many other companies that have "stores" on Amazon AWS, Google, Azure, Apple, etc.  But not only did they kick them out, they cut off all necessary products and supply lines to the store.  This is where Google Apps, Apple Store, Stripe come in.  To add to the mayhem, they cut off all the ancillary ties to the store, such as Twitter, Snapchat, Reddit, Pinterest, Instagram, advertisers, etc.

Let me turn the table on you.  Let's say you were one of the store owners that was thrown out of the mall, got their necessary and ancillary products sources cut off.  What would you do?   It is the hope that those that kicked you out of the mall would see you give up, go home, and get on board with what they want you to do and how they want you to behave.  But you are strong, resilient, and believe in your product so much that you are going to build your own infrastructure, and team up with other stores that were kicked out and build your own mall.  That way you can run your business the way you want.  This is where it gets interesting.

So you build your own mall, and nobody comes.  The mall is completely empty even though you had such a great business.  You even received money to build the mall.  You think, WHAT HAPPENED?  Let me tell you.  😡😢

The same folks that kicked you out of the mall may have put up barricades and road closed signs.  They may have even turned off GPS navigation (DNS) to your mall.  Or even better yet, they re-routed (hijacked) the traffic that was going to your mall to their mall.  And your customers think that they are actually supporting you, when they have no idea they aren't.  What they really have done was create a somewhat sophisticated live version of the gameshow called "To Tell The Truth".  (look it up if you don't get the reference) They have manipulated the internet paths so much that you think you are going to where you want to be, when in reality, they have taken you to where they want you to be.  At the end of every show, the host would say,  "Would the real (person), please stand up?"  And inevitably only one person would stand, the studio would be surprised, and a lot of yuks would happen.  The only difference is in our example, you would have many, hundreds or thousands of this person, place, thing stand up to be acknowledged as the "real" one.  And here is the kick to the head with a boot, the "real" one may not even be in the group!

And why can they get away with this?  Because once someone(s) is able to manipulate one layer of the OSI Model, they are now empowered to manipulate/change the entire OSI model as they see fit.  

The even more scary part of this is that there are certain people that think that as long as I agree with what is being censored it is okay.  What I think they fail to realize is that it can, and will, easily happen to them too.

Now you might say, "Tom, you are a paranoid conspiracy theorist" and I would agree with you.  But I have seen this in action on a smaller scale.  I have also seen technology that is very very good for mankind be equally horrific to mankind.  The scalpel the cures is also the scalpel that kills.

As I said, "Baby, you just ain't seen nothing yet!"  There is more, much more beyond this.