I witnessed a brutal assault in my parking lot last Friday. I was pulling out of my underground parking when I noticed an illegally parked black car on the fringe of the parking lot. A young man and a young woman, presumably his girlfriend were standing in front of it and talking.
As I turned towards them, things got worse. The guy punched the girl in the head and then smashed a beer bottle on her head. The girl staggered and retrieved a sixpack of beer that was lying on the ground beside them and clouted the guy in the head with it. By now, I’d braked to a full halt and was pointing the scene out to my girlfriend.
Things got worse. The girl rushed her beau with the sixpack and he went down on the asphalt. She straddled him on the chest and started working his face over. He responded by striking her in the face and she climbed off. As you can imagine, I was on the phone with 911, answering the lugubrious operator’s queries: “Yes, police, dammit!” , “Yes, it’s an emergency.”. Finally, saying “There’s a brutal assault in progress here, two people are attacking each other in the open, fully in front of everyone else” had the desired effect and she said someone would be right over. I gave them a general description of the assailants, the car’s licence plate number and they hung up.
The girl, bleeding by now, got into the black car and drove off. She narrowly missed me and drove off like a maniac. The guy staggered into one of the warren-like entrances to my complex and disappeared. Since there was nothing else to do or see, I drove off. A short while later, as I was driving off, I counted four police cars heading in the general direction I was driving away from.
I was back in half an hour and noticed a slew of cars, the aforementioned ones parked around. I pulled up to one and asked if they were here for the assault. The constable asked if I’d been the one who had phoned it in and I replied in the affirmative. She thanked me and said that they had the licence plate and would handle it, it’s really all they needed. My civic duty done, I drove home.
What a night.
Whither had the days of chivarly gone?