Modern Day Kitty Genovese Stories

I actually wanted to post this last week, before any of the Penn State stuff came out, but it's even more appropriate now.

I'm not sure if this made national news, but back in March, a worker at a Lululemon store in Bethesda, MD was murdered in the store, shortly after closing time. One of her co-workers was found alive in the store. After first saying that she was attacked and they were both sexually assaulted, the co-worker was charged with murder. The trial ended last week, with the co-worker being convicted of first degree murder. The jury was out for less than an hour.

While the crime itself was terrible (the victim was beaten to death with a variety of objects and was struck a minimum of 331 times), one of the worst parts was that workers in the Apple store next door, heard screams, thuds and pleas for help and DID NOTHING. No checking the situation out, no 911 call. Nothing.

And now the Penn State horror story.

How do these people who stand by and do nothing live with themselves? I just don't get it. How can you hear someone scream "Oh God, help me" and do nothing? How can you SEE a child being raped and not do something to stop it? Or call 911?

Lots of rhetoricals, I know. Both of these incidents are extremes (child rape, murder), but if people aren't doing the right thing in these situations, when are they?

(For more info on the Lululemon murder, here are a couple of links:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/whats-scarier-the-slaying-or-the-bystanders-who-heard-and-did-nothing/2011/10/31/gIQA9y2tZM_story.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/brittany-norwood-convicted-of-killing-lululemon-co-worker-jayna-murray/2011/11/02/gIQAXdFvgM_story.html)

 

I did some earlier research on Genovese. I think everything that came out after that was proven to be not true. People (less than a dozen) heard things, but no one saw the entire attack and the one who did see anything that was actionable did call the cops.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Kitty_Genovese

 

Yeah, I know. I was going to add a disclaimer at the end about the myth of Kitty Genovese, but I forgot.

 

People assume somebody else will handle it. They don't want to get involved, and they rationalize it morally by assuming somebody else will take care of it. Of course, nobody does.

 

I honestly had never heard of her, or the "syndrome," until someone mentioned it on the PSU thread. So I was googling around today.

 

A while back in the middle of the afternoon near a busy intersection in the Valley I saw a woman in a car being attacked by a guy; long story short, about 20 or more people gathered round while I called 911...when everything was said and done (it's a long story, I think I posted it on here when it happened, on the DocTalk thread) the guy was arrested, the woman was seriously injured, and I had a torn ACL.

The DA told me that she could count on one hand the number of times a total stranger got actively involved to stop a crime in progress. I said that's not believable, and she said, "How many people were there when your situation was going down? How many are here in this courtroom now?"

My point is that by and large, people are sheep. (And I have to admit I've made a promise to my wife -- and frankly, it was a pretty easy promise to make -- that should I find myself in a situation like that again, I'll stay out of it as much as possible).

 

It's true - people are sheep, but how hard is it to call 911? I've done it before. Someone posted on the Penn State thread, I think, that you can remain anonymous. In the Lululemon case, if one of those idiots in the Apple store had just dialed 911, maybe it could have been just a vicious beating and not a murder.

 

There was that case recently in China where a two-year old little girl got hit by a van, then got run over by a second van. She just was laying in the street as something like 14 people walked by before a woman finally helped, just as another car was about to hit the girl.

Sadly, the little girl died a week later. And her death put China in an uproar.

The video is out there. I watched it, with horror. That poor little baby.

 

I referred to this on the PSU thread ... Still relevant ..

David Cash Jr.

http://articles.sfgate.com/1998-09-19/news/17731978_1_uc-berkeley-uc-police-david-cash

 

A few years ago, my sister was driving back to school one Sunday night when someone hit her car. She -- admittedly somewhat unwisely -- pulled into the nearest parking lot, which was on a fairly secluded road, especially at that time of night (it was a brand new car, which didn't help). Sure enough, the guy gets out of his car and starts beating the shit out of her, trying to drag her into his car.

Two guys who happened to be driving by pulled over and chased the guys away. Almost certainly saved her life. Only several years later, randomly looking at her Myspace page, of all things, did I realize one of them had been a HS football player I'd covered.

So sometimes people do help, I guess is the moral of the story.

 

Myth or revisionism? A new book takes another look: