Dozens Keep Walking As Homeless Hero Bleeds to Death

by Josie Raymond · 2010-04-26 15:41:00 UTC
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In our quest to raise awareness about homelessness and to push for measures to end it, we don't often write about specific crimes against homeless individuals, because, quite tragically, it would make this blog an overwhelmingly negative sphere without advancing the cause. While we strongly believe that crimes against the homeless should be categorized as hate crimes, we don't want to promote the ignorance and hatred of those who attack people just because they're vulnerable. But today I do feel the need to comment on a story that unfolded in Queens, New York over the weekend. It has less to do with crime, though one was committed, and more to do with how average people treated the homeless victim.

A homeless man named Hugo Alfredo Tale-Yax interfered with an attempted robbery by defending a woman on the street. The would-be robber stabbed Tale-Yax and ran. A bleeding Tale-Yax stumbled and fell onto the sidewalk. The New York Post got the tape from a nearby surveillance camera; its time-lapse video is beyond disheartening. Over the course of more than an hour, almost 25 people walked right past Tale-Yax on the sidewalk without doing anything to make sure he was alright. When firefighters arrived an hour and 20 minutes after the stabbing, Tale-Yax, just 31-years-old, was dead.

Even if we give the passersby the benefit of the doubt and assume that they thought Tale-Yax was asleep, the way this small subsection behaved reflects poorly on the human race. Several people stopped and stared at the man bleeding to death on the sidewalk. One man even came out a nearby building, took a picture of Tale-Yax with his cellphone and left. It took two dozen people to walk by before someone called 911. Not even the woman Tale-Yax saved from the robbery called the police. Would you have stopped? Would you have called?

It's a hard story to hear, and not just because you can't help but feel for Tale-Yax and those who loved him. It's even more troubling than that because his unfortunate, and perhaps preventable, death is a microcosm of the way society is treating the swelling homeless population. There's something more dangerous at work here than "out of sight, out of mind" — it's "in sight, out of mind."

Photo credit: alancleaver_2000

Josie Raymond is a Change.org editor who has reported from the streets of the South Bronx, written for several magazines that folded (not her fault) and fixed thousands of typos.
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