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When YouTube trumps decency
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Matthew Kruk
Feb 9, 2012, 8:36:22 PM2/9/12
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http://www.financialpost.com/related/topics/When+YouTube+trumps+decency/6123928/story.html
When YouTube trumps decency
Joe O'Connor, National Post · Feb. 9, 2012 |
Last Updated: Feb. 9, 2012 3:05 AM ET
Rick Sherwood is a part-time trucker and a professional therapist. He has heard
some terrible stories and seen some awful things in his time.
But nothing quite like what he saw on Monday in Hampstead. The 45-year-old was
the first person on the scene of a horrific crash involving a van and a
transport truck that killed 11 people, most of them Peruvian migrant workers.
The carnage along Perth Road 107 was unspeakable. Mr. Sherwood leapt from his
tractor-trailer and waded straight into it, moments after impact, calling 911,
checking for survivors and doing whatever he could to help before emergency
crews arrived.
What he can't understand is why nobody helped him.
"In a situation like this, that is all you can do: help. Other people [arrived
at the scene] and they were taking pictures and shooting video.
"And I don't get it. I truly do not get why. If you can't help, if that is not
part of your makeup, then get in your vehicle and keep driving. Standing around
and making a scene doesn't do anybody any good.
"And you are not in shock, because you wouldn't be standing there and getting
your camera out if you were in shock. That's not shock. That's: I want to take a
picture and I want to get a video and I want to put it on YouTube...
"This was real people - and this was real people trying to save real peoples'
lives."
Mr. Sherwood estimates that he was alone, at least in his actions, for five to
10 minutes before emergency crews flooded the area.
Doing nothing is nothing new. The world was aghast at images of Yue Yue, a
Chinese toddler, being struck first by a van and then by a small truck in a
narrow alleyway in Foshan in October. Eighteen people walked past the little
girl's bloodied, unconscious form. No one stopped to help. The video of the
whole sad episode went viral - on YouTube. Yue Yue later died in hospital.
Life seemed cheap in China. In California, a 15-year-old girl was gang raped
outside a school dance in 2009, as 20 people watched. Some onlookers joined in
the assault.
In Hampstead, on Monday afternoon, tragedy turned into a horror movie - captured
on cellphone cameras by passersby for reasons only they can explain. "I am not
sure what they were doing," Mr. Sherwood says. "I can only say what I was
doing."
After taking stock of the situation, the part-time trucker parked himself close
to one of the van's three survivors. Pulling off his heavy work gloves, he took
the man's hand in his and spoke to him in Spanish, the few muddled words he had
picked up travelling.
He kept holding his hand, kept talking, and working alongside firefighters to
extract the man from the twisted wreckage.
"I wanted him to actually feel that there was a person there. That is why I held
his hand, to let him know that it wasn't just an illusion or a delusion that
somebody was speaking to him, telling him that help was on the way," he says.
Later the Good Samaritan found himself leaning against a fire truck, catching
his breath, digesting all that he had seen.
To his left were three people, cameras in hand, filming as the air ambulance
approached.
"I watched them all pan over to the people who were being moved on stretchers,
to the bodies being taken out," Mr. Sherwood says. "Do you need to pan over to
the people who are deceased?"
Time gets disjointed in a crisis. It speeds up, slows down and loses its
definition. If, on Monday, Mr. Sherwood had been able to make it stop, in those
first few lonely minutes, allowing him to step away from a grim task and
confront the others who were doing nothing, or worse - taking pictures - he
would ask them a simple question.
He would ask: Why? "I would ask them that and I would ask them if they were
there, and if it was them who had passed away and if they were the ones being
slid out onto a backboard, what would they want?
"What respect might they hope for? What dignity would they expect? Would they
want their last moments on this planet to be put on YouTube or on Facebook or
emailed around?"
joco...@nationalpost.com
When YouTube trumps decency
Joe O'Connor, National Post · Feb. 9, 2012 |
Last Updated: Feb. 9, 2012 3:05 AM ET
Rick Sherwood is a part-time trucker and a professional therapist. He has heard
some terrible stories and seen some awful things in his time.
But nothing quite like what he saw on Monday in Hampstead. The 45-year-old was
the first person on the scene of a horrific crash involving a van and a
transport truck that killed 11 people, most of them Peruvian migrant workers.
The carnage along Perth Road 107 was unspeakable. Mr. Sherwood leapt from his
tractor-trailer and waded straight into it, moments after impact, calling 911,
checking for survivors and doing whatever he could to help before emergency
crews arrived.
What he can't understand is why nobody helped him.
"In a situation like this, that is all you can do: help. Other people [arrived
at the scene] and they were taking pictures and shooting video.
"And I don't get it. I truly do not get why. If you can't help, if that is not
part of your makeup, then get in your vehicle and keep driving. Standing around
and making a scene doesn't do anybody any good.
"And you are not in shock, because you wouldn't be standing there and getting
your camera out if you were in shock. That's not shock. That's: I want to take a
picture and I want to get a video and I want to put it on YouTube...
"This was real people - and this was real people trying to save real peoples'
lives."
Mr. Sherwood estimates that he was alone, at least in his actions, for five to
10 minutes before emergency crews flooded the area.
Doing nothing is nothing new. The world was aghast at images of Yue Yue, a
Chinese toddler, being struck first by a van and then by a small truck in a
narrow alleyway in Foshan in October. Eighteen people walked past the little
girl's bloodied, unconscious form. No one stopped to help. The video of the
whole sad episode went viral - on YouTube. Yue Yue later died in hospital.
Life seemed cheap in China. In California, a 15-year-old girl was gang raped
outside a school dance in 2009, as 20 people watched. Some onlookers joined in
the assault.
In Hampstead, on Monday afternoon, tragedy turned into a horror movie - captured
on cellphone cameras by passersby for reasons only they can explain. "I am not
sure what they were doing," Mr. Sherwood says. "I can only say what I was
doing."
After taking stock of the situation, the part-time trucker parked himself close
to one of the van's three survivors. Pulling off his heavy work gloves, he took
the man's hand in his and spoke to him in Spanish, the few muddled words he had
picked up travelling.
He kept holding his hand, kept talking, and working alongside firefighters to
extract the man from the twisted wreckage.
"I wanted him to actually feel that there was a person there. That is why I held
his hand, to let him know that it wasn't just an illusion or a delusion that
somebody was speaking to him, telling him that help was on the way," he says.
Later the Good Samaritan found himself leaning against a fire truck, catching
his breath, digesting all that he had seen.
To his left were three people, cameras in hand, filming as the air ambulance
approached.
"I watched them all pan over to the people who were being moved on stretchers,
to the bodies being taken out," Mr. Sherwood says. "Do you need to pan over to
the people who are deceased?"
Time gets disjointed in a crisis. It speeds up, slows down and loses its
definition. If, on Monday, Mr. Sherwood had been able to make it stop, in those
first few lonely minutes, allowing him to step away from a grim task and
confront the others who were doing nothing, or worse - taking pictures - he
would ask them a simple question.
He would ask: Why? "I would ask them that and I would ask them if they were
there, and if it was them who had passed away and if they were the ones being
slid out onto a backboard, what would they want?
"What respect might they hope for? What dignity would they expect? Would they
want their last moments on this planet to be put on YouTube or on Facebook or
emailed around?"
joco...@nationalpost.com
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