Is anybody human anymore? What’s wrong with humanity?” ~Raechelle Groce, area resident asked for comment, 1010 Wins

Guatemalan immigrant Hugo Alfredo Tale-Yax was a homeless good Samaritan who was stabbed to death while coming to the aid of a young woman being attacked on the streets of New York City. He was stabbed several times in the chest then bled to death while dozens of persons walked past him for over an hour.

Someone took a cell phone picture of the dying man while another shook him vigorously at another point. Footage of all this captured on surveillance video which you can watch below. He was 31 years old.

Hugo Alfredo Tale-Yax will be honored at a wake Wednesday at a Brooklyn funeral home with his family present. The woman who was attacked and the assailant have not come forward yet.

This case is reminiscent to many of the 1964 rape and murder of case Kitty Genovese also in Queens, NY. Dozens walked by, heard her scream and did nothing about it.

What makes people do this? Some call it the “bystander effect” or the “Genovese syndrome”. The more people around during an incident where a person needs help the more likely no one will help because it’s assumed someone else will help. It’s not that no one noticed and probably not that no one cared, but everyone thought someone else would do something about it.

As a New Yorker I would also think we are desensitized to the homeless lying on the ground. As a relatively savvy New Yorker I can say I have noticed differences in how homeless people lie and this guy didn’t seem to be lying in a typical homeless guy fashion. The homeless in NYC are wildcards and you never know what you might get. In the 1980s many were released from mental institutions out onto the streets and high levels of schizophrenia run in the homeless. Many just avoid them.

This guy seemed to need help though, as you could see in the footage and no one helped. Someone eventually called the police but gave the wrong address. This case still says something about our humanity, not just as New Yorkers or people with stress filled lives. While this, in my opinion, can’t be the clear cut example of a lack of humanity some may want it to be,(because I think the reasons why people don’t want to get involved are very real) we can take this opportunity to look at ourselves.

Maybe we tried this after the Kitty Genovese case and look what happened but it’s never a bad thing to get back in touch with our humanity as humans. It makes us more readily prepared to help like when an earthquake strikes in Haiti or a stranger is in need, maybe even when a polar bear is in need.

You were wondering when I was going to get to the polar bears weren’t you? Well after hearing about Hugo Alfredo Tale-Yax I wondered if we couldn’t even relate to people to help them how the hell are we supposed to care about polar bears?

Polar bears are the symbols of climate change but I argue they shouldn’t be. The effects of our warming planet are being felt by people in places like the Carteret Islands and coastal communities.

This is not to pit animals and humans against each other. It is to say I think we should take the time to get in touch with our own humanity and not assume someone else somewhere else will do something and everything will be ok in the end. That would make this world a better place for strangers, the homeless, humans, animals and everything on this planet.

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