Daily Lessons from Life 27 April 2010 - Hero left to die on the street

"Tue, Apr 27, 2010 The Daily Chilli - Hero left to die on the street

NEW YORK, USA - A Good Samaritan, who was seriously injured after rescuing a woman from an armed thug, was left to die on the streets of New York.

A surveillance camera had captured 25 people walking past the man but none of them lent a helping hand or called the police.

One of the passers-by even stopped to snap a photo of the dying man and went off, New York Post reported.

The woman to whom he helped ignored the fallen hero and ran away!

He died when the police came to him 2 hours after the incident!!"

It is a very sad story. The worldly wise would have counselled the dead hero to just ignore anyone who get mugged in New York especially when the mugger is armed. Maybe he should be street-smart enough to be living in NY to have perfected the art of ignoring injustice and crimes in the middle of everyone! Well. He did not. He did what he thought was the right thing to do - to come to the aid of a woman who was getting mugged!

Lessons for me are:

1. street-smartness vs. numbness! Which path should we choose? Natural sense of justice should prevail or the nurtured sense of 'when to intervene and when not to' or 'do not intervene at all if it does not concerned you living in NY'? What path would I have chosen? Would I be ashamed that I did nothing or would I be glad that I am still alive as I minded my own business?;

2. are the passersby numbed by the scene as it is so COMMON in NY? Or did they think that the fallen hero was the mugger? What went through mind of the lady who were helped by the hero? Was she a veteran New Yorker who were simply glad to be 'out of troubles' regardless of if there were helps being extended? How would she feel now when she learned that the fallen hero had died from helping her? If she has any sense of decency, she might be guilt stricken. But then it is not to her benefit to be guilt ridden as she still needs to continue her life and her rat race and taking her chance of being mugged again in the big city called NY!;

3. back to the passer-by, especially the one who stop to take the picture. Another veteran New Yorker or a curios but frightened out-of-towner? Is '911' so hard to call in NY? I shudder to think if, touch wood, that man whose sense of righteousness overcome his sense of fear and 'appropriateness' of his risky action were me! Would I be dead as no one. No one at all bothered to call '911'!

May this never happened in Singapore. May the social norm always be: when there is a crime, we call '999' the police. There is no place for fear of the criminal over shadowing the sense of decency to do the right thing!

Rest in peace to the fallen hero. May someone in NY come to recognize your heroic action.