Scary Stuff
June 21, 2007
Last night I was out with Chris and some friends getting frozen yogurt (I deserved it after bootcamp!). We were walking down the street eating it when we noticed two guys across the street.
Everyone stopped to look at them because it looked like they were play fighting but quickly everyone on the block realized that one guy was beating the crap out of the other guy. I don’t think I’ll ever forget the sound of a boot kicking this guys head in.
People shouted for the man to stop. The guy started running away and some of the people tried to follow him a bit to keep their eye on him while me and some others flagged down a passing cop car.
The victim looked bad. Laying on the sidewalk, blood coming from his head. The police called the ambulance and drove off to look for the perp. I hope they found him, the passers-by were not able to keep an eye on him after he took a quick turn down an alley.
I was pretty shaken up and my group of friends talked about it on the ride home. We wish we had reacted differently. We wish that we had gotten our side of the block (with a good amount of people) to charge the attacker. We wish we had followed him more closely so that we could have pointed him out to the cops. I felt helpless. I wanted to run over and tackle this guy but I was frozen. Too afraid to cross the street because what if the guy had a knife, or a gun, or turned and started running at me? What would I do?
Today I’m feeling like I let the victim down. Sure, we yelled and flagged down the cops but surely there was more we could have done. In the end it came down to trying to help but being very aware that we need to save our own butts first.
What’s the right thing to do in this situation?
June 21, 2007 at 4:27 pm
Don’t beat yourself up. You did what you could and what you did, did help.
June 21, 2007 at 5:31 pm
You DID the right thing. You helped as best you could without putting yourself in danger. If y’all had gotten shot or stabbed you would have had a hard time flagging down that police car!
June 22, 2007 at 2:01 am
What ever happened couldn’t have happened in a better way ! I would have done the same if I were you!
June 29, 2007 at 9:17 pm
Hey lady. Your a famous blogger now. You can’t just disappear like this! Where are ya?
August 7, 2007 at 7:44 am
I know what if feels like. A couple of years ago I was walking home at night when about 10 metres ahead a of me a woman had her bag snatched. Luckily it was over in a second and she wasn’t physically hurt, I called the police and stayed with her waiting for them etc. But afterwards I was thinking why hadn’t I run after him so that I could direct the police to where he went etc. I had just frozen - that is what is so horrible, the shock and fear immobilizes you. Horrible feeling.