A closer look at the full video of Iryna Zarutska’s stabbing from two angles provides reason to be forgiving.
W ith more footage of the horrific stabbing of Iryna Zarutska having been released, there has been a torrent of criticism directed at bystanders who did not intervene sooner. But after having taken time to review the full video of the incident, from two different angles, I am reluctant to cast judgment on the victim’s fellow passengers. The reality is that somebody did come to her aid within 90 seconds of the attack and, in the narrow span before that, the other passengers were likely paralyzed by shock, confusion, and fear.
I am not going to embed the grisly video, which you can find from two angles here and here. I watched the footage for the purpose of writing this article, but would advise against doing so unless you have a very strong stomach.
A lot of critics are highlighting a portion of the video taken from this angle, immediately after the stabbing, in which there are five people right by her. Nobody does anything to help, and one man walks away.
When I first watched it, I had the same reaction as many. That is, it’s one thing to conceive of a world in which there are violent and mentally ill individuals roaming the streets, but it’s in some ways harder to grapple with a world in which people can sit back and watch an innocent young woman be stabbed and bleed to death without doing anything.
However, when I watched a more extended version of the video, from another angle, it gave me a bit more perspective. The first thing I discovered was that the above angle doesn’t show that Decarlos Brown Jr. was lurking just in front of Zarutska immediately after stabbing her, staring toward the section in the back of the train while holding a bloody knife. Given these circumstances, it’s certainly more understandable why people were probably scared and reluctant to intervene.
Furthermore, there is the timeline. At the fateful moment, Brown gets up and grabs Zarutska’s head, then stabs her and walks away. She looks back and up at him in terror and then buries her face in her hands. It takes about 20 seconds after the stabbing for her to collapse onto the floor in between the row of seats and the divider. It’s at this point that the fellow passengers evidently start to realize what happened, as not all of them were looking in her direction at the time of the attack. One guy who saw what happened gets up — possibly to get away, or possibly to get help — but we can’t tell from the video alone. About 30 seconds later, Zarutska begins to lose blood rapidly and visibly. About 43 seconds after that, a bystander does come to her aid. So all told, about 90 seconds passed between the stabbing and somebody coming to help her.
Watching the video free of any danger, it’s easy to argue what people could have done. But not everybody has the wherewithal to instantly snap into action or to even know what to do if they do want to act. It’s also not at all clear to me that she could have been saved by earlier intervention. I am no doctor, but given how rapidly she was losing blood within a minute of being stabbed in the neck, I’m skeptical that this was the sort of thing that could have been dealt with by applying some pressure or a tourniquet to the wound. An article by the Mayo Clinic cites a study that found that improvised tourniquets (such as belts or clothing) fail six out of seven times, and WebMD says not to use a tourniquet but to apply pressure on a neck wound. I came across this information as part of a Google search for this article, but that obviously wasn’t possible for anybody looking to jump into action in the moment.
Additionally, while we know that Zarutska was the only person stabbed on the train, nobody knew at the time that was the end of it. As far as they knew, the menacing man with a bloody knife was about to go on a killing spree, and anybody who drew attention to themselves could be his next target. What comes off as callous and indifferent in the video could be part of the natural instinct somebody has in an urban environment to try and ignore and avoid upsetting somebody violent and mentally unwell.
Critics have also drawn attention to passengers on their phones, or walking away, but we have no idea based on the video whether they are trying to get help — from a law enforcement officer, a medical professional, or so on.
It’s quite possible that further testimony will support the negative portrayal of the bystanders. But I am not willing to give up on humanity based on the video evidence.