Kevin Barrett 
It should go without saying that when you see a person or person being assaulted in public, you should probably help—if you are incapable of doing so, a law enforcement agent should be located immediately. If one isn’t available at the moment, a person capable of helping should be found at once.
Sadly, however, it seems as if that was not the case when Andy Brigitte was knifed at the Paris Metro station called Châtelet-Les Halles. The 22-year-old man who worked as a mechanic actually died as a result of the knifing, which occurred after a fight with another passenger.
It has been claimed that, as Brigitte lay on the ground in agony and dying, witnesses decided to film and take pictures of the horrific ordeal; according to the media in France, images were posted online via social media.
As Brigitte’s mother Linda put it, no one even “lifted a finger” to help her dying son, who was from Martinique and had been living in Essonne, the French department located in the Ile-de-France region of the country.
Passengers were apparently more interested in having an interesting video to post to their social media accounts than helping the stabbing victim.
There was actually an arrest in the case. A 33-year-old hailing from a suburb southeast of Paris was taken into custody.
Sadly, Brigitte was eventually declared dead at around 7:30 PM local time, even though emergency workers were called at around 6 PM, the height of rush hour in Paris.
Understandably, people who saw the videos shared online are less-than-pleased by what transpired. It has been reported by the media that one user wrote that in 2018, people can apparently die on camera “without any help”.
That indeed seems to be what happened in the Paris metro.
As utterly morbid as this situation may be, it isn’t the first time that a person or people chose to seek attention on social media instead of try to save a life or lives.
For example, in July of 2015, a man in Ohio witnessed the scene of a car crash that turned out to be fatal for one of the passengers, who was 17 years of age at the time of his death.
Forty-one year-old Paul Pelton saw the car in question, a Honda Civic, crashing into a house after driving over railroad tracks. According to law enforcement, instead of helping or even comforting the victims, Pelton decided it was more important to video the result of the fatal crash using his cellular phone. Authorities at the time claimed he even opened the back door of the vehicle in order to get a better view.
Pelton ended up getting arrested and charged for doing what he did. The charge, a misdemeanor, was vehicle trespass. He initially plead not guilty to the charge.
According to law enforcement in Ohio, Pelton later showed up at the home of the young driver of the car, who survived his critical injuries. He was at the home for between 20 and 30 minutes. Police said that Pelton contacted the teenager via social media and then tried to bribe the driver, offering to claim that a first responder who tried to help at the scene of the accident caused his friend to suffer additional injuries.
The officer was really just trying to save the teenager from a burning car.
Pelton posted the video to Facebook, although it was later taken down.
In Ohio, filming a crash is not technically a crime; Pelton’s charges were due to his entering the car to get a better view of what happened. At one point, he claimed that his decision to film what he did was an attempt to raise awareness of the dangers of speeding.
Pelton ended up being sentenced to jail time for his crime, to which he eventually pleaded guilty. He was also forced to pay a fine of $250. He did apologize in court, acknowledging that he should have made better choices, and he did accept responsibility for his behavior.
Sitcom fans will remember that the gang from the hit 1990’s sitcom Seinfeld (spoiler alert) ended up in jail at the end of the series as a result of their decision to mock and film an overweight man being carjacked. The response to the finale was pretty divisive and polarizing at the time, and it still is to this day.
Seinfeld might have made a joke out of filming a person in peril, but actually doing so is absolutely not a laughing matter. If a person is in genuine trouble, we owe it to them to try and help—especially if doing so won’t put us in danger. Even if we are genuinely unable to help, exploiting another person’s suffering in order to make a quick buck or gain popularity on Facebook is a truly callous thing to do.
H/T – Source
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