Would You Save a Stranger?

Doctors, nurses and ambulance staff save strangers every day in their line of work, but I want to know just how many of them would intervene to save someone outside of these circumstances. Last year there were around 700,000 attacks on strangers, and 1 in 3 of us admit that we wouldn't get involved to protect a stranger. I like to think that I would, but like most things I'm sure that this is easier said than done.

I tried to keep out of trouble at school, but trouble always seemed to find me. As part of the "alternative" crowd, it was easy to be singled out. One lunchtime, they started throwing bottles at us. Some people got soaked with water, and to be quite honest it was a little bit funny; that was until they started throwing stones instead of bottles. A rock, roughly the size of my fist, hit me in the side of the head. My vision disappeared for a few seconds and I had this blinding pain in my head. A few friends saw this and gathered around me asking if I was ok, and of course I said yes. I put my hand on my neck and it felt warm and wet, and when I looked at it there was blood. I went off to the toilets with my friend and she helped me clean the blood off my face and neck and I carried on with my day.

One day me and my friend had the afternoon off school, we went to the city centre and bought some sandwiches and some orange juice and sat in the grounds of a large church. It was really sunny and we were laying on the grass in our school uniforms. A group of girls came over to us, they were dressed in tight clothes and short skirts and were swigging cider. There were about 8 of them, all older than us and all very drunk. They started asking for money, and as we'd just spent most of our money on food we didn't have much left. My friend 'Emma' gave them £1, and they were not impressed.

Chav 1 - 'Oh I see you had money to buy food!'

Me - 'Well yeah sorry we've just spent it'

Chav 1 - 'Don't be f*cking cheeky with me!'

She slapped me in the face. The situation very quickly escalated, and soon they were surrounding us, taunting us and provoking us. We couldn't stand up, it would look like we were challenging them, and there were too many of them for us to stand any chance at winning a fight. The first one paced around us and said to me 'You've got nice long hair haven't you?' and pulled my hair, it yanked my head backwards. I didn't say anything, I just looked around us in disbelief. One of her friends took off her shoe and gave it to her;

Chav 2 - 'Go on, hit her with this'

They all laughed, encouraging her to hit me with this shoe. I remember thinking that if she hit me with it I would have to do something, possibilities of what could happen raced through my head and I didn't know how to get out of this situation. A stranger shouted over,

'Oi leave them alone'

I think he must have known them.

'They're not doing anything to you why don't you just back off?'

The girls soon turned away from us and started arguing with this lad, so we got up and walked away. He was holding a bottle of cider as well, and as he was the only one that looked old enough to buy it I assume he was getting it for them. I was so grateful that he stepped in, but I never had the chance to thank him. Me and Emma were so enraged at what happened, but so lucky that we had the chance to escape. Sometimes no matter what you say or do, even if it's nothing, they will attack you just for the sake of having a fight. I suppose it's a form of entertainment.

There was a documentary on this not too long ago, it showed the stories of some extraordinary people who risked their own safety to get involved in a situation where someone was being attacked, with varying consequences. One gentleman talked about a time when he was in a shop late at night and two teenagers entered with a bag and a gun, demanding for the sales assistants to 'Open the safe and put all the money in the bag'. This bloke was the only customer in the shop and decided he had to step in. He said 'Look guys, it's saturday night, these girls probably don't have the code for the safe, cut your losses and go home', at which point the gun was turned on him. The gun was shot, but somehow missed him, so he grabbed the gun with both hands. They wrestled over this gun, smashing each other into the shelves but neither would let go. The robber pulled out a knife and stabbed him. It went into his arm, across his ribs (fortunately not through the ribs), down into his shoulder and then dragged it across his stomach, gauging out a piece of flesh. He let go of the gun and the attacker ran away. Blood was pumping from his wounds, as he tried to hold in the flesh of his abdomen. His girlfriend arrived, then an ambulance, and he survived.

I wonder what I would do. What would you do? I mean, this is England, I've never even seen a gun (much to the amazement of a Canadian fellow I met recently), but this guy was brave enough to confront someone who could have so easily killed him. There are a few clips from the show, unfortunately I can't find the whole thing, but here are a couple of stories. I think for most people, there is an instinct to try and help whoever it is that is being attacked, but after a while think that it might be over soon, and if no-one else steps in it reinforces the feeling that it is ok to do nothing.

I have a friend, I'll call him Pete, who came to meet me during my lunch break while I was a sixth former. We decided to go to the shop down the road and get some ice cream. We made it half way down the road and were walking over a train bridge, when about 40 or 50 GCSE students ran up to us and surrounded us. I was 17, Pete was 18, and these kids were mostly 15, but they were all taller than us. The path was very narrow across this bridge, and they were spilling out onto the road. There were so many of them and there was no way out of this crowd. One of them started accusing Pete of calling one of them a name, something stupid, I think it was 'mushroom head'. Of course he hadn't done anything, and didn't even know this boy, so he denied it. Out of nowhere, one of them threw a punch, I turned to him and shouted at him to stop. I stood in front of Pete, and I started shouting at all of them, I called them names, I think if anything I was just trying to distract their attention from Pete onto me. I mean, they wouldn't hit a girl, would they? I backed onto Pete, trying desperately to stop them from hitting him. Nothing seemed to work, the punches just kept passing my face and hitting his. There was a group of girls on my right, they started pulling my hair and pushing me, I ignored them. I was concerned about these lads punching my friend. On our left, a couple of the boys were threatening to lift us up over the fence. This was a tall bridge with trains passing underneath, if they had actually put us over this fence we could have died, or suffered massive injuries at the very least. One of the larger boys was furious at me, I thought 'Good, it's working'. I heard him pace up and down saying 'I'm gonna f*cking hit her, I'm gonna start on her as well'. What?! I couldn't believe any of this. He came straight up to me and said 'Do you want a f*cking smack as well?' Like a deer caught in headlights I was frightened and I said 'No'. He then turned to Pete and punched him again, then one of them kicked him in the jaw, and the back of his head hit the railings. I thought that if Pete was knocked down to the floor, that would be it, they would be kicking him in the head, they would be kicking me, and they would have probably then put us over the fence. I wouldn't have put anything past them. We were helpless. There was nothing I could do to stop this. I wanted to call someone, I wanted to call my brother, but I figured that if I got my phone out they would just snatch it from me. There were so many people in their cars who could see what was happening, I desperately wanted someone to come and help us. Pete grabbed my hand, and we ran. He saw a chance to go and we pushed our way through all of them and into the road (We were lucky not to get knocked over). We ran as fast as we could, and we escaped them. The adrenaline caught up with me and I burst out crying and panicking. I was so happy that he was ok, but why did it have to happen? I heard later on that the lad who threatened to hit me had started the whole thing. He told his friend 'Oh did you hear that? He just called you mushroom head' and so they all ran after us. Apparently they just wanted to scare us. I don't understand how someone's mind could work like that.

For weeks later, different members of the gang would come up to me and say 'If you call the police then you're gonna get stabbed'. I replied, 'Well we've already got the police involved'. I didn't care what they wanted to do to me, I just felt so guilty that I didn't do more to stop it from happening. I thought that when I was asked 'Do you want a smack as well?', I should have said yes. Then he wouldn't have hit Pete. Maybe if he had punched me, everyone else would have seen how out of order it was and ran away. Or maybe I would have gone straight to the ground and got my head kicked in. Either way, I felt like a coward for backing down as soon as I was threatened, but then again we did escape and we were ok; I suppose I couldn't have asked for anything more.

The police never did anything, but then they probably couldn't have done much because they were so young. The lad that kicked Pete in the face had a week suspension from school, and the one that threatened to punch me had two days suspension. This is only because I marched to the headmaster's office demanding that they would get punished, if I hadn't then nothing would have been done at all. The attitude of the headmaster was 'Boys will be boys, it was outside of the school grounds and I don't think it would be right to punish them'. It's easy to see how this sort of approach to anti-social behaviour is accountable for so much of the violent attacks that have happened where I live.

Me and my friends have been in fights, and I can honestly say that none of them were started by us. It was one of those situations at school where they'd pick on a small group of friends for something small like what they were wearing, just so that they could look 'hard' in front of everyone else. It was only when I stood up to them that I became the target of most of the fights. I didn't care, as long as my friends were ok. But there was once when I was targetted by another big group of drunken girls, I was upset and didn't even say anything to them, but they hit me and poured cans of beer over my head, and my (so-called) friend stood by and watched it happen. I understand the fear of what could happen, but I couldn't just stand there and watch any one of my friends get beaten up. A couple of middle-aged strangers shouted over and tried to give me the chance to get away, and yet again I was saved by a stranger.

If you were a victim of unprovoked assault, on your own, helpless, you would like to think that someone would come to help you. Sometimes there will be someone there who feels compelled to get involved and try to stop it, other times people around just keep their heads down and pretend it isn't happening. I suppose when you are alone and you see something like this happening it is far more difficult to intervene, especially if there is a big group of them, whereas if you were in a group yourself it might be easier to try and do something.

I understand the feeling that 'I have to do something' far better than the 'Don't get involved', and I think that if I saw someone being attacked and I did nothing I would be ashamed of myself. I like to think that I would be brave enough to do something. If it ever happened to me, I like to think that I would be saved by a stranger - come to think of it, I have been. Would you save a stranger?