Man refused to help assault victim

June 17, 2007

Adapted from the Philadelphia Daily News

 The kindness of a stranger in a park was tested last night when a young woman fleeing from an attacker and screaming for help approached a 50-something man.

“He told me ‘I don't want to get involved,’” she said. “It just made me sick.”

The 21-year-old woman said she was on her evening run about 6:30 p.m. when a man parked his car across the street and began yelling at her.

“I didn't pay attention," she said, "because guys holler at me all the time, so I ignore them.”

But minutes later, the woman felt a hand on her shoulder.

“I heard him screaming after me, ‘You little white bitch. Who do you think you are?’”

She jumped down a hill and reached a courtyard but he caught up to her, wrapping his arms around her waist.

“When I felt him wrap his arms around me, I thought I was dead,” she said. “I just started punching him and moving every part of my body.”

The suspect finally lost strength and dropped the young woman to the ground.

Again, she started running, this time toward a man standing in a nearby school parking lot.

Fearing her attacker was still watching her, she asked the man to walk her through a secluded area to a footbridge near her home.

She said the man, who appeared to be in his 50s, turned his back on her and said, “I don't want to get involved.”

“I was begging him and he wouldn't do it,” she said.

She was forced to continue fleeing alone to another street. There, she found a man sitting on his porch who happily obliged to help.

The woman called police as soon as she got home.

The detective said he was shocked by her story.

"This isn't something that usually happens here," he said.

Equally shocking, he said, was the citizen who turned his back on the woman's cries for help.

"To have that happen is pretty disheartening," he said. "I don't know who I'd like to get my hands on first."

The woman described her attacker as a black male in his mid-20s with a crew-cut that was "bushy" in the front.

She said he was driving an older model, silver-colored car that could have been a Dodge Neon.

Until her attacker is found, the woman said she's too scared to go anywhere by herself, especially on her daily run.

"I just want this guy's picture in the paper," she said. "I want him found. If he did it to me, God only knows if he did it before or he could do it to another girl."