Death of the Good Samaritan

Last Saturday, 79-year-old Yusuf Hizel was mugged by two people while traveling on an eastbound TTC subway train along the Bloor-Danforth line in Toronto.  According to Hizel, both men asked him for change and when he refused, the young attackers held him down and took his wallet.  Hizel then futility tried to chase down his fleeing assailants.  I am pretty sure there have been many attempted robberies on the TTC subway line but what makes this particular incident standout is that it happened in a subway car full of other people at 8:30pm.  Although there were many people watching the incident, according to Hizel, nobody helped him.

Anybody who has taken the TTC has probably witnessed something similar to what has happened to Hizel.  A year ago I was on the TTC when some big drunk guy was hitting on young women taking the subway.  Everybody watched as his slurred advances were rejected causing the women to get off or move farther away.  Eventually a young woman sat beside him and what started out as slurred advances eventually turned into full on kissing and groping.  Just like what happened to Hizel late last week, nobody else on the packed subway bothered to help the young woman.  Heck, just like the Hizel mugging, nobody even bothered to reach for the silent passenger-assistance alarm. 

The prevailing public opinion borderlines on outrage and shock that the people witnessing the mugging did not intervene.  However, judging by the stories that have recently come from other TTC riders and my own personal experience, the Good Samaritan is going extinct.  It is easy to condemn the onlookers who idly stood by and watched as an elderly man gets mugged.  There is simply no excuse for not helping a human being but it only takes one story like what happened to a New York homeless man earlier this week to help understand what might have been going on in those people's heads.  The homeless man was stabbed after coming to a woman's aid and left to die as at least 25 people walked past him lying in the street in New York. It took ninety minutes before somebody tried to rouse him and contact the emergency services. The Good Samaritan bled to death on the pavement.

I think it is pretty clear that the reason why nobody got involved in the Hizel mugging was a combination of shock and fear.  The mugging probably happened so quickly that half of the people could not digest what was going on in front of them.  The other half were probably too scared to do anything because of stories like the recent one from New York.  They probably thought that the worst thing that could happen was a wallet being stolen with minimal physical harm.  Who knows what the attackers were carrying with them so why get foolishly(?) involved?  I really want to believe that very few people were actually truly apathetic for no other reason other than being complete dicks.  What does not make sense to me is that none of the people, who were not frozen by shock, reached for the passenger-assistance alarm.  Were they also scared that they might be seen by Hizel's attackers?
 
In my apartment building there are sign congratulating the residents for their donations during the food drive.  Heck, millions of dollars were recently raised for Haiti by a Canadian tribute song.  It almost appears that people are willing to be a Good Samaritan only up to a certain point and with incidents like the one in New York, the Hizel onlookers' inactivity almost seems comprehensible maybe even condonable. Maybe the passengers on Hizel's subway are the "donate a can of tuna and box of macaroni & cheese" type of people?..  Willing to do good only up to a certain level of involvement.

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. --Edmund Burke