Hit and Run: Without a Compass
Hit and Run: Without a Compass
If a picture is worth a thousand words, how many are needed to describe the video of a man being struck by a hit-and-run driver and left to bleed unaided in the road, while numerous motorists and pedestrians casually maneuver around him and continue on their way?
Two, according to the blaring newspaper headline in Hartford, Connecticut, where the horrific incident took place: “SO INHUMANE”
At 5:45 on a recent Friday evening in plenty of remaining daylight, 78-year-old Angel Torres was crossing a street in a working-class Hartford neighborhood when he was struck by one of two cars driving recklessly across the center line.
The impact—caught on a streetlight surveillance camera—flipped Torres into the air, then sent him crashing to the pavement. As Torres lay in the road bloodied and paralyzed, the surveillance tape shows approximately nine motorists slowing to have a look at him, then driving away.
Other people are seen on the tape staring from the sidewalk or venturing into the street. Though it was later reported that several witnesses called 911, none of the gawkers halted traffic or aided the severely hurt Torres. Approximately a minute and a half after the impact, a police car arrived. Torres was taken to a hospital in critical condition, paralyzed from the neck down.
“We no longer have a moral compass,” said Hartford’s shocked and angry police chief, after releasing the surveillance tape in hopes of identifying the hit-and-run driver. But the tape—capturing the inaction of so many bystanders—also caught the attention of outraged Americans, who swamped blogs, message boards, radio shows and more, wrestling with the same inconceivable question: Why didn’t anyone give more help to Angel Torres?
Tell us what you think: Is there any acceptable reason not to have helped Angel Torres, or anyone else in a similar situation? Do you think the people seen on the tape have been misunderstood? What would you have done?
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What should they have done?
I’m not sure what you think people should have done. The people driving should have slowed down and stopped, at the very least the person who hit the man. If this was a freeway, it may not have been that easy. The people on the side of the road were at even less of an advantage. Did you want them to run into the roadway and also get hit? They did what they could do and that was call the cops. It’s a dangerous world out there and if nobody cared about the guy in the road, do you think they would care about the person running out to help him? Although I would have been silly enough to run out there and stop the traffic to help the guy, I wouldn’t expect anyone else to be so foolish and think about the welfare of another over their own.
pam tabbutt | 1 year, 3 months ago
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Compassion vs. Your Own Business
My grandfather was thrown from a moving car in France in 1919. He lay on the pavement, apparently knowing his neck was broken, as he asked the other passengers not to move him.
They ignored his request and killed him.
These were medical personnel, as the story goes, though it seems none were doctors.
Calling 911 in this instance was certainly an appropriate response. The man was, we’re told, already paralyzed. Over-eager ignorant assistance might have resulted in an outcome similar to that my grandfather encountered.
Ted Daniels | 1 year, 2 months ago
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compassion is not your own business
Your grandfather’s story is tragic but we’ll never know whether the medicine of 90 years ago would have made a difference. At the time, well intentioned people may not have believed moving him to be harmful, despite his protests. Tragically, it may have hastened his demise, but let’s not put the blame squarely on their shoulders. He died because he was thrown from a car and broke his neck.
I don’t believe today that there are too many over-eager Samaritans walking around — quite the contrary. As for Hartford, it would have been nice to see someone at least direct traffic, or try to talk to the man and console him if he was conscious, until EMT’s arrived. There are many reasons bystanders may have been so indifferent, as detailed in previous comments. Part of it, I believe, is cultural. Depending on where you are, the response will vary. And with apologies to the good folks of Hartford, I don’t think I’d want to live there.
KM | 1 year, 2 months ago
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How is this different? Love is Dead
I see this no different from the many ways we as human beings fail to stop and render aid to those in desperate need around us. The elderly neighbor that is drowning in loneliness, the single mother that flounders trying to balance her income, her job, her children alone—the student that doesn’t fit in.Sometimes people don’t know what help they need but we see and turn our heads. How is that so different than a man lying in the road bleeding and cars maneuvering around him? We do it all the time with our grocery carts. This isn’t anything new but it is IN YOUR FACE—the inhumanities of mankind without love.
In the Quiet of the Night
In the quiet of the night
In my room
Rumpled covers, bed of roses
Fragrant-less roses.
Shadows lay their darkness
On my arm.
Yellow glow of a small bedside lamp.
Pink tinged panels
Lay in order, one to another
Meeting purposely in four corners.
A siren pierces the quiet.
It moves, carrying the squall down Center St.
Turns down our road and stops.
I remember the suicide attempt
Of an unknown neighbor down the way.
I pull the comforter over my head.
It won’t be my blood soaked sheets.
My children’s hearts won’t be shattered like so much glass,
Pieces spiraling, helplessly in a whirlwind.
I’ll not speak of the lack of love and care in this world,
Of fathers who neglect their families
Of mothers who neglect their love.
This is about my peace, the quiet of my room.
Fragrant-less roses.
Covers cool as, let’s say the crisp autumn leaves
That cover the grave of the dead,
Of those who no longer love.
Linda Dulin
Anonymous | 1 year, 2 months ago
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Ashamed By it All
It makes me ashamed that human life is worth no more than that, but we are reaping what we have sown. With all the movies with violence in them and our court systems broken as they are, we no longer care about humanity; it is as if we have become immune to agony and hurting and killing. It has become the “norm”. We have let God be taken out of our lives and now slowly bit by bit the very things that we held dear while I was growing up is being taken slowly away from us.
Anonymous | 1 year, 2 months ago
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The solution is easy
1) I would use my car to block the injured man, dial 911, light the signal flares in my truck and have an attitude to passing motorists who would be upset that I was blocking “their” lanes. (I’ve done this before).
2) I’m not a medic, but common sense is no touch, no move – let the experts do it, but you can talk to the person if but to offer some form of comfort.
2) Publish the photos complete with faces and license plates of all motorist and witnesses for failing to perform their civic duties. I know you cannot legislate common sense or compassion, but since the cameras are already there, no right of privacy is expected nor deserved for these losers.
3) Where are the two cars and drivers and why aren’t they in jail for reckless driving, causing injury/harm to a pedestrian?
Driving is NOT a right, it is a licensed privilege. The reckless drivers (BOTH) should have their privileges suspended until they can prove to be responsible drivers AS WELL as pay all cost for medical and loss. I don’t much care if they have to lose their homes, jobs, savings, retirement accounts, etc to pay for it. Drive stupid, be prepared to pay to be stupid.
Anonymous | 1 year, 2 months ago
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big deal?
Okay, so someone called the cops. What else are they supposed to do? Touching him might hurt him more, and its not like a whole bunch of cars stopping would have helped anything. I really don’t see anything wrong with this picture. I wouldn’t have stopped either. Like I care if someone I don’t know gets hit. Be real people, you don’t really care either.
Anonymous | 1 year, 2 months ago
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The root of the problem
That is exactly what’s wrong. Many people don’t care. I would definitely have tried to help. My god people! He was probably scared! Someone should at least have tried to talk to him, keep him company, something! Did nobody take basic first aid (besides me?)
Anonymous | 1 year, 2 months ago
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I think people get paralyzed with fear.
We can not know what is in people’s minds. We have not walked in their shoes.
I, personally, would have helped, but that is me.
Anonymous | 1 year, 2 months ago
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Different personalities
I don’t believe people have changed so much over time, some are doers, some not. About 5 months ago I was in Ireland, walking down the street and saw a crowd of people watching a man thrashing about in an epileptic seizure on a brick road. I ran up and grabbed his bloody head and kept him from hitting it on the bricks any farther. Immediately, others started helping and offering things to put under him to protect his head. They wanted to help, just was unsure what to do.
Anonymous | 1 year, 2 months ago
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