Man with aspergers killed!

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This is why you never confront a stranger, you never know what could happen. That is the job for the security. This is something that all aspies should be taught.

Except... sometimes, you do. Sometimes you're the only one who can intervene, or the only one who's willing to. Sometimes the risk is worth it. For example, what if the man had been hitting a small child, rather than riding a bicycle on the sidewalk? Intervening in that situation might save the child's life despite the risk that the man will start hitting you instead. Choosing between that and simply calling the police is a tricky question. Just how risky is it to step in? Would you do any good? Would calling the police be too slow?

And then there's the in-betweens. Do you call the police about someone riding a bicycle on the sidewalk? Probably not. What if he's drunk and weaving in between pedestrians, risking a collision? What if he's in a car and weaving in and out of his lane? At what point do you get involved yourself? When is it smart to call the police and when is it better to step in yourself? For example, there are some situations where stepping in yourself is the best choice: Someone is hurt and you have first-aid training. A child is lost and confused. A dog is running past you and straight for the street, and you can reach out to grab its leash before it runs into traffic. (I have done that last one. It resulted in a surprised dog and a grateful owner.)

It's just not so simple as "never interfere". Sometimes you do. Sometimes you don't. And you have to decide so quickly.

It's probably comforting to think, "If this crime victim had just done X, he'd never have been victimized," because that implies that we can all keep ourselves safe if we just find the right behavioral formula. Unfortunately, that's not the case; people have been killed for random reasons, reasons they couldn't help. I have no doubt that this man used his best judgment and expected no more than an annoyed cyclist flipping him the bird--which is what would usually happen. Or maybe even a naive tourist replying, "Oh. I didn't know. Sorry," and moving to the street. It's just that with AS involved, that best judgment was harder to make in such short order.

When I was a kid I used to try to enforce the rules on my violently abusive stepfather. He claimed he had quit smoking, that he was going to school, that he was working; I knew he wasn't and I always called his bluff. I would call him out for swearing, for putting me and my sister down. I knew that there were risks. I just felt better taking them than not. I had to take a stand because if I hadn't, I'd have lost myself. And my stepfather was--make no mistake--a potential killer. It's just a matter of luck that he never killed me. The risks weren't so real to me as they would have been to many other, neurotypical, children; and yet, fairness was more important to me than safety.

This may surprise you but people don't intervene when there is a child in trouble or a parent not treating their child well. People just ignore it and mind their own business. There may still be someone who will butt in but i think that takes bravery. I have seen on the news about these people hiring these people to act and they have a guy and a girl stage a kidnapping and they did it for three hours before three guys went after the man and he stopped and told them they were on camera and the men were interviewed. They did it to see how people really act and it showed how a kidnapping can still happen in public despite being people around and no one helps the child. They also did another one and it was in What Would You Do and they had a mother and these two kids staging a scene and the mother pulls over and leaves them on the sidewalk on a bench and drives off and doesn't come back. People don't intervene. Then they re do it and this time they give them a different car and it's a POS one and the kids are dressed different and so are the mother to make them look poor or in poverty level and people do intervene. It was all surprising but I can also understand why anyone wouldn't butt in. I once saw a mother pull her kid by his ear when I was 11 and no one intervened but I said something about it to my mother and she told me I had to be quiet about it because I could make her mad for saying anything about it and she could do the same to me she did to her child. Honestly if she had done that to me, I would have attacked her for self defense. I was a size of an adult then because I was over five feet and she was about my height or a little taller or shorter I don't remember.

Yeah, I know. People don't react because they are afraid, or because they think it isn't really an emergency, or because they think someone else must have already done something.

That doesn't mean that these aren't appropriate times to interfere. You might be their only chance. Maybe autistics have an advantage in that respect because we are less likely to see the social barriers between us and them, and more likely to speak out, because we just don't see it as "socially inappropriate" to "stick our noses into someone else's business".

By the way, I've never had a bad reaction for doing things like catching that runaway dog, or helping get a stranger's car out of a snowbank, or whatever, instead of just walking by. I once called someone out for leaving their dog in a hot car. They were a bit annoyed, but it was mostly being indignant about "I was really honestly coming back in five minutes", upset that I thought they were being mean to the dog, not actually hostile towards me. (The dog was clean, healthy, and friendly, so I think they really didn't know how dangerous it is to leave a dog in a hot car, and probably were quite responsible otherwise.)

Maybe I'm just used to having people react badly to my simple existence... a little more of the same doesn't sound so threatening, really.

There is no justification or excuse for punching this guy hard enough to kill him. It doesn't matter if he made a racist comment or not. It doesn't matter if he verbally provoked anyone or not. It doesn't matter if he has Aspergers or not. All of that is irrelevant. What matters is that he was completely taken by surprise. He was looking away. He was not posing any physical threat to the guy who hit him. He was not even prepared to defend himself. There was no physical provocation for this. The guy just knocked him out cold and casually walked away. And it's obvious that he intended to knock him out.

I used to ride bicycles 3,000 to 5,000 miles every year.

The closest I ever came to being fatally injured on a bicycle was when I popped up on a sidewalk for a block. I broke my helmet in half. If I hadn't have had the helmet, I would quite possibly have ended up dead or in a coma. And I wasn't hardly moving.

Not only is the guy a psychopat, but also a criminal.

Gill was also sentenced to two three-month prison terms to run consecutively after committing the crime while on a suspended sentence for robbery and for handling stolen goods.

http://metro.co.uk/2014/02/25/cctv-foot ... h-4320000/

You know, third time you do something like that, murder, robbery, it should be life in prison, 3 strikes and your out.

The guy is definitely an unstable psycho.

40 years or something would be about right, take age of person who died, then the average life span, that is like 35-40 years up to 80.

If people like this keeps getting such pathethic low prison sentences, its just a matter of time, before someone like the Punisher actually comes to life. I mean then someone can punch this out in the face so he falls and dies, and do 2 years no problem. If the law fails to secure justice, then there is only revenge left.