More Than 20 People Passed As Homeless New York Man Bled To Death (Video)

Posted by bluemana on April 26, 2010

What does this say about New York (or any other major American city)? Adrian Chen writes in (appropriately) Gawker:

Last Sunday, 32 year-old Hugo Alfredo Tale-Yax was stabbed while coming to the aid of a woman being attacked by a knife-wielding assailant. He bled to death on a Queens sidewalk as almost 25 pedestrians walked by.

Tale-Yax, a homeless Guatemalan immigrant, was stabbed at 5:40 a.m. in Queens after chasing off the attacker. The video shows most pedestrians walking by after with little more than a sideways glance. One man takes a cell phone picture; another shakes him before walking way. Finally, fire-fighters arrived at 7:23 a.m., nearly an 1 1/2 hour after the attack. According to the New York Post, the fire-fighters were “responding to a 911 call of a non-life-threatening injury”. By that time, Tale-Yax was dead. His killer is still at large.

With stories like this, the first impulse is to imagine you would have been the one to stop and help Tale-Yax. That’s probably what these people thought, too. Until they didn’t.

Read More on Gawker

Posted in: Activism, Death, Society, Video

E.B. Wolf

I find it hard to believe that anyone would be surprised at this.
James

what a shame
http://ninure.tk Ninure

Well, I would have at least called 911, there's no doubt in my mind.
malatesting123

people are fucking cowards and heartless bastards. What else would you expect from a society that holds Ayn Rand to be its most prolific and important thinker. Rational self interest….this guy should have picked himself up by his bootstraps and hoofed it to the nearest hospital (as long as he has the money to pay which…..) He didnt make it, which is good. God doesnt want the Galts of this world having to step over people like that on thier way to thier jobs.
krbbagel

Two points of interest

- One, I've passed lots of homeless people sleeping facedown on sidewalks, in bushes and I rarely call 9/11 to see if they're ok… if the guy wasn't obviously bleeding, it's not that strange that no one called…

- Except, what about the woman that he helped… why didn't she call in the attack and report that the guy that helped her got stabbed. If anyone was in a position to know that he was hurt, it would be her.
Word Eater

Who wants to make a fuss or end up being late just because some dude is wallowing around on the ground?

Someone else probably has the free time to handle this, just walk on by and let that other person handle it.
Rags

If there was no obvious blood I can understand it. If you've ever lived in a large city you occasionally see people sleeping and passed out on benches, on the sidewalk, in parks, in doorways – who wants to tangle with a possibly drunk/high/tweaked out person lying on the sidewalk?
Vastarien

I think a lot of people were afraid of getting sued for helping him.
It's been known to happen before. Not only that, suppose someone did call the cops about a dead body?
Would you be willing to be thought of as a suspect, just because you called it in?
What happened was truly wrong, but these days nobody can take the risk of helping anyone else, lest they get sued, jailed by crooked cops, or infected with something if there's blood.
bubbles

Wayyy off topic (I think this is awful), but do ya think that that woman was a hooker?
blv54

reminds me of the story of the good sameritan, its to bad about the kind of country we've turned into I guess none of us can expect any mercy should we end up in that position, could it be that whats being taught in public schools today have anything to do with the lack of empathy were seeing today.
Tuna Ghost

ah, far be it from me to defend Objectivism or novels with 30 pages of speeches, but I find it hard to believe that american society considers Ayn Rand its most prolific (she didn't write that much) or important thinker (many know her name, how many know her philosophy?). She's really not a big deal here, despite what the recent political debates may have you believe.
tonyviner

I am sure the vast majority of the people in this country have no idea who Ayn Rand is, and I doubt that too many of the rest, save for the Glenn Beck and Ron Paul crowd, really hold her works to that high of a standard. I agree that people are fucking cowards and heartless bastards. Hopefully the people that decided to walk past this guy are shown this video and realize that they let a man die because they were too wrapped up in whatever it was that they were doing. Then they get to live the rest of their lives knowing that they could have made a significant difference in a man's life, but were too busy.
mcgibbo

Very sad.
God bless him.
mcgibbo

Very sad.
God bless him.
Hadrian999

things like this happen because every time it is really a person needing help you'll see 20 other times when it's either a con or a set up for their partner to mug you.
jackalope111

I bet the majority of commenters on here do not live in big cities. I live in NYC; in Harlem, and I walk by/or step over people passed out and sleeping every single day. Every day. EVERY DAY. These people who walked by are not heartless cowards. They are New Yorkers. There was no blood, there was no sign of trouble; just a homeless man laying on the ground. I'm sorry, but this is not surprising, and is not disgusting, it is life. If I were to wake every homeless man or drunk or crackhead that I come across on the train or on the street, just to make sure they were okay, I would be the one who was stabbed. It's a major city people, not rural Indiana. We are not friends It is not my job to make sure you are okay. I really, truly don't care. If you were to try to stop me on the street to ask me a question I would ignore you, that's life in a big city. If you don't like it, don't live there. We leave each other alone as a way of life, a way of survival. Unfortunately for this poor man, it cost him his life.
jackalope111

Wow…what a guy. I'm sure that's what your gods “son” would've done, step over him on his way to his job. People like you make people like me happy to be atheist.
jackalope111

The truly scary thing is that this is on film to begin with. A random section of sidewalk in Queens? The scary thing is that we can't be in public anymore without being under surveillance all the time. That is what we all should be worried about, not some guy walking by on his way to work and not waking up what he thought was a passed out drunkard. Why has that not been brought up?
Teresa

f you have ever lived in a city with homelessness or drunks you will see this as a shame and a tragedy, but you will not blame or condemn the people who walked past him. If you wanted to stop and check every person on the street for knife wounds, you would never get anything else done because 1) There are a lot of drunk/passed out/homeless people on the streets of New York 2) Lots of them are shithouse crazy and are liable to fuck you up, and 3) Lots of them might just as soon kill/rape/rob you as look at you.

But hey, have fun with that sense of moral superiority, I’m sure that will keep you safe from all that.
Teresa

f you have ever lived in a city with homelessness or drunks you will see this as a shame and a tragedy, but you will not blame or condemn the people who walked past him. If you wanted to stop and check every person on the street for knife wounds, you would never get anything else done because 1) There are a lot of drunk/passed out/homeless people on the streets of New York 2) Lots of them are shithouse crazy and are liable to fuck you up, and 3) Lots of them might just as soon kill/rape/rob you as look at you.

But hey, have fun with that sense of moral superiority, I'm sure that will keep you safe from all that.
Anonymous

Wtf? Lol…wow, everyman for him self? What about the lady that he was helping? Did she just kinda walk off too?
http://www.facebook.com/aihtnycrt Cynthia Renae

I could be wrong, but I think you missed a whole ton of sarcasm.

More Than 20 People Passed As Homeless New York Man Bled To Death (Video)

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