I have never had to call 9-1-1 before today.
As I was walking out of my apartment, I see an African-American woman in the street about a block away screaming trying to get people to stop and help her. She starts walking down the sidewalk where there are people who shied away from her and kept walking.
Clearly seeing that she’s in serious trouble, I call for her to come towards me. As she approached, I could clearly see that her face was swollen and that her arm was dangling out of its socket. Between screams, I get her to tell me that her ex-boyfriend had ripped her arm out of the socket and punched her in the face in his attempts to try and take her cell phone from her.
Luckily as I called the police, another woman came to try to calm the woman down. As the victim is screaming in pain and at this point, vomiting on the street, I gave the police a description of what I had heard happen and also what the man looked like that did this to her. As I’m trying to talk to them, she’s screaming that the man was stalking her and was going to slit her throat.
The police finally arrived and once I told them what I knew, they told me to leave.
While this was probably only a span of about ten minutes, it felt like an hour. I have never seen someone more legitimately terrified for their own life before. But it wasn’t her fear that shook me so hard; it was the complacency of the people who refused to help her before I got to her.
How can you live with yourself when you see someone screaming for help and do nothing? What if he had come after her and slit her throat in broad daylight because no one would call the police and be with her to make sure he didn’t get to her?
Luckily, by the time I returned from Safeway (where I was originally intending on going when I walked out of my apartment) the police officers were handcuffing the suspect and putting him into their squad car. The woman was no longer there, as I suspect they took her to the hospital to examine her and put her arm back into its socket.
I have never witnessed domestic violence in such a public way before. Knowing that there were dozens of people who could have helped her before I stepped out of my door makes me sick to my stomach. I hope that this man gets what he deserves and that this woman can live her life feeling safe. But the truth is, there are thousands and thousands of women out there who experience this more often than they should ever have to. And usually, it’s not in public.
Makes you think.
