A seriously ill society

[aventis]

'A seriously ill society': hit-run case of little Yueyue shocks China - and the world Megan Levy October 18, 2011 - 1:20PM A two-year-old girl who was struck by a vehicle in a hit-and-run accident in China was ignored by more than a dozen passers-by as she lay critically injured on the road. Surveillance footage of the horrifying incident on Thursday has sparked outrage and disbelief on China's hugely popular social media sites, where an anguished public debate has broken out about the state of Chinese society. The footage shows the young girl, named Yueyue, toddling into the path of a van outside her family's shop in a busy wholesale market in the southern Chinese city of Fosham. The van hits the girl and momentarily stops, before the driver continues, crushing the child again beneath his rear wheels. What unfolds next is arguably even more shocking. Up to 18 passers-by are seen in the footage ignoring Yueyue as she lies critically injured and bleeding on the road, with several even changing their walking path to veer around her body. A man on a scooter steers around the toddler and looks at her body before continuing down the street, as a second van approaches and drives over the girl's legs. Another motorcyclist applies his brakes and clearly looks at the girl, lying in a pool of blood, before driving off. The scene is repeated as rickshaws and pedestrians give her a wide berth. It is not until seven minutes later that a street cleaner, later identified as 58-year-old Chen Xianmei, comes to the girl's aid and lifts her from the road, calling for help. She was ignored by several shopkeepers before finally tracking down Yueyue's mother who took her to hospital. The Shanghai Daily reported that Yueyue was in a coma in the intensive care unit of a military hospital in the city of Guangzhou but had shown some improvement. Her mother, Qu, has reportedly set up a blog to post updates on her daughter's condition. More on : Source

[Rajiv]

Unreal, those caught on camera should be jailed. Same happens in India too, but for reasons of being harassed by cops etc

[aventis]

Video Added : Warning : Not for Faint Hearted l2DbzHz_m-I&feature=mfu_in_order&list=UL

[Aaku]

wtfffffffffffffffffff whats wrong with people ??

[Rajiv]

Damn, showed to a colleague in my office and she started crying. She was pretty pissed at Chinese society and said how emotionless they are..look at them, u can't even tell anything

[Asim]

OMG! unbelivable... those people passing around are worst than animals...

[Cricket Tragic]

This is sad but it's not the first time I've seen something like this. :((

[Pagalpanti]

God help those people who could care less about a child lying in a pool of blood in middle of a road. Surely no humanity in them.

[Sid]

Shocking.

[CSK Fan]

Heard that the child has passed away in the hospital. Chinese laws are very tough and people helping others have in the past been prosecuted for interference. Having said that, how can someone not help a child lying injured Edit, from another site

this has to do with a very long series of widely publicized cases in the People's Republic of China where good samaritans were successfully sued by car accident victims for huge sums of money. In many cases rescuers took victims to the hospital, or attempted rescue, only to have the victims latch on to the rescuers accusing them to be the offending driver, etc., and the courts have ruled in favor of the victims (possibly in an effort to show that they have solved the case).

[Rajiv]

Heard that the child has passed away in the hospital. Chinese laws are very tough and people helping others have in the past been prosecuted for interference. Having said that' date= how can someone not help a child lying injured

Serious? for helping others

[coffee_rules]

Reminds me of the time I tripped and fell down in front of an ongoing train in Singapore metro station. Nobody looked at me and tried to show concern. They kept walking around me without any eye contact. In India, atleast a twenty people would come and help you up and ask if you needed any help. But this is unbelievable..

[Rajiv]

Blame it on some idiot judge http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503543_162-20121691-503543.html

[ganeshran]

I have seen people move on after accidents in India too, or even worse form a crowd without helping the injured. But I doubt if anyone could be so heartless as to leave a child injured and just walk away without a trace of emotion. Seriously something wrong with the passerbys if they are able to live peacefully after what they just did.

[ganeshran]

I just saw the video. This is disgusting to the extreme. B@stards like the car driver who actually drove over the child after hitting her once should be put to death.

[Number]

disgusting beyond belief.

[Rajiv]

I just saw the video. This is disgusting to the extreme. B@stards like the car driver who actually drove over the child after hitting her once should be put to death.

how abt the 2nd van? unreal

[satishg]

Something inside me just died on watching the video :(( I cant believe we live in a world like this, i am feeling numb. I just cant imagine what would be the child's parents reaction on watching this video :((

[ganeshran]

The 108 service in some of our states is good in this respect. Even if someone is hesitant to help the person themselves, they can call the ambulance which takes care of the accident victim- atleast administer first aid which can save the victim's life. I saw it first in Andhra where Satyam was part sponsoring it with the government

[Brainfade]

Callousness at its worst I am not sure what drives these people to be as callous as they are. And then, I read this ... and it makes me feel even worse about humanity in general: http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2011/10/18/philly_police_disabled_victimized_by_theft_scheme/

Philly police: Disabled victimized by theft scheme PHILADELPHIAñhiladelphia police have released the identities of four mentally disabled adults who authorities say were locked inside a cramped basement as part of a horrific fraud scheme. Police identified the victims as 41-year-old Derwin McLemire of Florida, 40-year-old Herbert Knowles of Virginia, and two Philadelphia residents, 29-year-old Tamara Breeden and 31-year-old Edwin Sanabria. Three people have been charged with kidnapping and related offenses after a landlord discovered the weak and malnourished victims locked behind a steel door in the basement of a northeast Philadelphia apartment building. One was chained to a boiler. Police say they believe the suspects were keeping the victims imprisoned while wresting control of their Social Security checks. A woman convicted in the starvation death of a man nearly 30 years ago is facing charges of kidnapping and false imprisonment for allegedly preying on four mentally disabled adults, locking them in a basement and wresting control of their Social Security disability checks. Linda Ann Weston was charged Monday with kidnapping, false imprisonment and other offenses, with bail set at $2.5 million after her landlord stumbled upon the four adults, all weak and malnourished, in a dank, foul smelling boiler room on Saturday. Also charged were Eddie "the Rev. Ed" Wright, 50, whom Weston described as her boyfriend, and Gregory Thomas, 47. Detectives also found dozens of ID cards, power-of-attorney forms and other documents in the apartment, suggesting the alleged theft scheme involved more than just the four captives. In 1983, a 13-year-old Philadelphia boy testified that his older sister had beaten another sister's boyfriend with a broomstick and locked him in a closet. The man died of starvation weeks later. Linda Ann Weston was convicted of murder, but it's not clear from court records how much time she spent in prison. She's now behind bars in another heinous scheme that echoes the earlier case. Weston, now 51, is accused of preying on four mentally disabled adults, and locking them in a basement crawlspace in northeast Philadelphia. A landlord found them Saturday, weak and malnourished. Police suspect Weston and two others were keeping them in squalor while wresting control of their Social Security checks. One victim said he met Weston through an online dating service. "That was real dirty of (her). That was wrong," Derwin McLemire told KWY-TV on Monday. "I escaped one time to one of the house that we used to live in, of hers, and I didn't get away so they got me." He and two others told the station they had been on the move for about a year with their alleged captors, traveling from Texas to Florida to Philadelphia. "They moved them around," Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey said Monday after examining the boiler room-turned-dungeon inside a small apartment house. "Whenever it looked like people knew what was going on, they moved." The landlord found the victims Saturday morning after he heard dogs barking in the area. He found the door to the foul-smelling room chained shut. Inside, Turgut Gozleveli lifted a pile of blankets to find several sets of eyes staring back at him. One man was chained to the boiler. Philadelphia police soon arrested Weston at her daughter's apartment upstairs, along with two other men. "Without a doubt. This is just the beginning of this investigation," Lt. Ray Evers said Monday. "She's been out of jail for a period of time, and we think she's being doing this for quite some time." Exactly how long, how much money the scheme brought in, precisely how the disabled were deceived, and how many people in all were victimized are still unclear, investigators said. The FBI has joined the investigation. "Talk about preying on the weak and weary," Evers said. A Florida girl missing since July 4 from West Palm Beach, where neighbors said the group had come from earlier this month, was also located by Philadelphia police. The mother of 15-year-old Benita Rodriguez told WPTV-TV her daughter had been friends with Thomas' son. Rodriguez was not in the basement with the adults and it wasn't clear how she connects to the case. As of Monday, the defendants did not appear to have lawyers. The victims, a woman and three men, were found in a crawlspace that reeked of urine and was too shallow for an adult to stand up. There were mattresses and blankets, but the only food found was a container of orange juice. The adults shared their space with three dogs. Gozleveli called police, suspecting they were squatters, then watched as officers and ambulance workers helped them up the steps to the street in a working-class section of the city's Tacony neighborhood. The victims, ages 29 to 41, had the mental capacity of 10-year-olds, along with some physical disabilities, authorities said. One could barely see. Neighbors said the defendants and their alleged captives had arrived in an SUV from West Palm Beach about two weeks ago, though it does not appear the victims spent the entire time in the basement. Danyell "Nicky" Tisdale, a block captain in the neighborhood, said that about a week ago, a man and woman and four mentally disabled adults held a yard sale, selling piles of shoes, jackets and other clothing on the sidewalk. Since the arrests, police have slowly and patiently been trying to elicit information from the alleged captives. All four were treated at hospitals and placed with social service agencies. The woman had been reported missing by her family in Philadelphia in 2005, police said. One of the men was also from Philadelphia, and a second one from North Carolina. Their relatives were contacted. Police were having trouble finding family members for the fourth victim, 40-year-old Herbert Knowles. According to an investigative report obtained by The Associated Press, Knowles was reported missing in Norfolk, Va., in December 2008 after a mental health case worker couldn't reach him and family members failed to hear from him. The case worker reported that Knowles' Social Security checks were going to a Philadelphia address. The report said Philadelphia police went by the address and were told no one there had ever heard of Knowles. Knowles' government benefits were stopped at one point after his mail was forwarded to Philadelphia, but Weston took the man to a Philadelphia social service agency in 2008 and showed identification, and the checks resumed, Norfolk police said. Norfolk police spokesman Chris Amos said police did not continue looking for Knowles because as an adult he was under no obligation to report to his case worker. "It's not illegal to be missing," Amos said. "A lot of people are missing by choice." Scam artists can get control of a disabled person's checks by visiting the Social Security office with the victim, who then designates the other person to receive the payments, said Nora J. Baladerian, a clinical psychologist in Los Angeles and advocate for people with disabilities. Only if there is a report of suspected abuse would social service agencies enter the picture, she said. In Florida, Weston and Thomas appeared to live with several disabled adults, including a man and woman who had bruises on their faces, neighbors in a poor section of West Palm Beach said. The woman also had what looked like a large burn mark on her face, neighbor Ronald Bass said. He said he often heard yelling, apparently from the disabled women, and that police frequently went to the house. Another neighbor, Sadie Pollard, said she saw bruised lips and other facial injuries on the disabled people, but was told they had been fighting with each other. Mark Riordan, a spokesman for the Florida Department of Children and Families, said a search of its databases as well as vital statistics and school records, found no record of the alleged perpetrators, the victims, or the children who lived with them. "This family has clearly led a nomadic lifestyle and had become quite adept living beneath the radar. Until now," he said.