Why Don’t We Help?

The Importance of Helping Those in Need

By Brendan O.

Just before 6 a.m. on a Sunday morning in Jamaica, Queens, a man died trying to save a woman who was being attacked by a knife-wielding assailant.

The Good Samaritan’s name was Hugo Alfredo Tale-Yax; he was stabbed several times in the chest and collapsed as he attempted to stop the assailant. He lay in the street bleeding to death for over an hour. During this hour many people walked by him, they ignored his cries for help, and when he lay there unconscious, waiting to die or for someone to save him, not a soul stopped to aid him. Nobody even called 911 for over an hour. It wasn’t until 7:21 a.m. that police arrived to find Hugo already dead. Even the woman he saved didn’t help him, she simply ran off.

We may never know how many people saw Hugo die and did nothing. We may never know how many people knew he was dying but did not lift a finger to help, not even to dial 911. A surveillance camera recorded the entire scene. Its tape showed many people stopping to look at Hugo; one man even took a picture of him lying in a pool of his own blood.

Hugo was a 31-year-old Guatemalan immigrant, and he was homeless. Friends said that he was a day laborer and he often slept in public parks.

This isn’t the first time that an event like this has caught media attention. Back in 1964, on March 13, Kitty Genovese was murdered. She was driving home and was followed by a man named Winston Moseley. Moseley attacked her as she got out of her car to enter her apartment. As Genovese was being stabbed repeatedly, she screamed for help. There were over 38 witnesses and countless others who must have heard her screams, but not a soul intervened. At one point her attacker fled and she was able to crawl into the foyer of her building, at this point if she could have gotten help, she may have survived. However, Moseley returned minutes later to finish what he started. Later, Moseley told police that he went back to finish her off because “it didn’t seem like anyone was going to stop me.” Moseley was right; nobody did stop him.

Both of these incidents are examples of bystander apathy. Some experts claim that this apathy is a psychological phenomenon that has to do with the number of witnesses present. The experts say that it’s not that the bystander doesn’t care; he or she just doesn’t act. In a study conducted at Columbia University, it was found that in a situation where somebody is in danger and needs help, the more people that are around, the less likely anyone is to help. They are afraid to help, and they assume that somebody else will.

Another theory regarding this apathy is that society, these days, is in a moral decline. People just don’t care about one another anymore. Many bystanders who witnessed Hugo die and were later interviewed by reporters, said things like, “I didn’t want to get involved,” or, “It was none of my business.” It may not have been Hugo’s business either when he intervened, but he saved a woman’s life. Hugo is a hero.

After reading Hugo’s story I was appalled at the fact that nobody helped him. How could it be that so many people saw the event, or walked by him bleeding to death in the street in broad daylight, but not a single person offered a helping hand?

I looked into how this was possible. That’s when I came across these two theories. Neither of them made sense to me. I couldn’t see that these people were too overcome by fear to simply dial 911 or that everyone just assumed that someone else would help. It also didn’t seem possible to me that people are that thoughtless and uncaring.

It’s depressing that when a man is injured while coming to the aid of a woman in distress, no one came to his aid. We may never know why all of those people chose to ignore Hugo and Kitty’s cries for help, but we do know how to avoid making the same mistake. We need to care for our fellow man and woman. We need to be aware and always willing to help those in need. We should all fear evil people, but what we must fear more is the indifference of good people, because it will be a sad day when nobody in the world cares about anyone else.