Bystanders Ignore Hit-and-Run Victim

Carolyn Hileman - The Voice* | June 5, 2008  |

Filed Under The Voice

HARTFORD, Conn. (June 5) - A 78-year-old man is tossed like a rag doll by a hit-and-run driver and lies motionless on a busy city street as car after car goes by. Pedestrians gawk but do nothing. One driver stops briefly but then pulls back into traffic. A man on a scooter slowly circles the victim before zipping away.
The chilling scene - captured on video by a streetlight surveillance camera - has touched off a round of soul-searching in Hartford, with the capital city’s biggest newspaper blaring “SO INHUMANE” on the front page and the police chief lamenting: “We no longer have a moral compass.”

“We have no regard for each other,” said Chief Daryl Roberts, who released the video this week in hopes of making an arrest in the daylight accident last Friday that left Angel Arce Torres in critical condition.

The hit-and-run took place about 5:45 p.m. in a working-class neighborhood close to downtown in this city of 125,000.

In the video, Torres walks in the two-way street just blocks from the state Capitol after buying milk at a grocery. A tan Toyota and a dark Honda that is apparently chasing it cross the center line, and Torres is struck by the Honda. Both cars then dart down a side street.
Several cars pass Torres as a few people stare from the sidewalk. Some approach Torres, but most stay put until a police cruiser responding to an unrelated call arrives on the scene after about a minute and a half.

The police chief told The Hartford Courant that he was unsure whether anyone called 911.

“Like a dog they left him there,” said a disgusted Jose Cordero, 37, who was with friends Thursday not far from where Torres was struck. Robert Luna, who works at a store nearby, said: “Nobody did nothing.”

One witness, Bryant Hayre, told the Courant he didn’t feel comfortable helping Torres, who he said was bleeding and conscious.

The accident - and bystanders’ callousness - dominated morning radio talk shows.

“It was one of the most despicable things I’ve seen by one human being to another,” the Rev. Henry Brown, a community activist, said in an interview. “I don’t understand the mind-set anymore. It’s kind of mind-boggling. We’re supposed to help each other. You see somebody fall, you want to offer a helping hand.”
The victim’s son, Angel Arce, begged the public for help in finding the driver. “My father is fighting for his life,” he said.


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