General
Grieving Ohio Father Tells Trump and Vance to Stop Talking About His Son
Nathan Clark says the candidates are exploiting his son’s death in a crash caused by an immigrant outside the small city of Springfield. “This needs to stop now.”
Early in the presidential debate on Tuesday, Donald J. Trump invoked a town in Ohio to disparage immigrants and denounce Kamala Harris.
“You look at Springfield, Ohio,” Mr. Trump said. “You look at Aurora in Colorado. They are taking over the towns. They’re taking over buildings. They’re going in violently. These are the people that she and Biden led into our country, and they’re destroying our country. They’re dangerous. They’re at the highest level of criminality.”
Barely an hour before the debate, in Springfield, the father of an 11-year-old boy killed when an immigrant’s minivan crashed into a school bus, lashed out at Mr. Trump and his running mate, JD Vance, calling them “morally bankrupt” politicians spreading hate at the expense of his son, Aiden.
Speaking during public comment at a regular meeting of the Springfield City Commission, the father, Nathan Clark, said, “This needs to stop now. ”
The death of Aiden Clark, who was thrown from the bus after the minivan driver, who is Haitian, veered into oncoming traffic just over a year ago, shook residents of Springfield, a blue-collar town between Dayton and Columbus. And it touched off a wave of angry rhetoric over the thousands of immigrants from Haiti who have settled in the area since the pandemic.
Aiden Clark was killed and at least 20 other students were injured in August 2023 when their school bus was struck by a minivan that had veered into oncoming traffic outside Springfield, Ohio.Credit…Bill Lackey/The Springfield News-Sun, via Associated Press
