Nobody helped!!!

jimi_t

cson wrote:

If a normal person could freely get firearms in this country then so could the scumbags. Now, who do you think would be more laissez faire in using them?

Another school of thought would be that the scumbags *can* freely get firearms in this country, and that the law serves only to keep them out of the hands of the general public. It's not as black and white as all that, and I wouldn't agree with legalising it under any circumstances, but it's something to think about.

Sangre

Orange69 wrote:

That very much an edge case though and would be impossible to get a conviction in court.. imo..

Not really, no doubt the 'eggshell skull' rule would apply. You have to take your victim as you find them. If you punch a guy and it triggers an inherent brain defect and kills him then tough, doesn't matter if it wouldn't have killed anyone else.

seamus

Orange69 wrote:

With that logic they could just punch her in the face a couple of times and do the same..

With the problem that most robberies don't actually involve any violence, only the threat of same. Scumbags purposely pick on weaker or vulnerable victims. The threat of "Gimme your bag or I'll break your bleedin' face", will usually make the person release it. Try the same thing on a big guy and (lack of bag notwithstanding ) he's more likely to not relent, or to resist any attempt to physically attack him.

On the other hand, pull out a weapon (of any kind), and the victim will probably relent before you use it. The weapon provides the scumbag with more confidence, and also the ability to pretty much attack whomever they want.

In the U.S., people are more likely to be a victim of their own weapon when they attempt to use it.

If pepper spray and tazers were available, I wouldn't carry them. I'm a man, so it's impractical to carry. You could say the same for most men. Women may carry them in their bag. An attacker goes to grab the bag, the woman tries to fumble around for the spray, the attacker realises what she's doing, overpowers her, takes the spray and uses it. She hits the deck and gets a few kicks in the head for good measure.

Joe Soap doesn't know how to use a weapon, and when push comes to shove, would be unable to use it against someone.

The main problem with allowing the public to have guns is that it increases the number of weapons available for private use by the scumbags. No matter what restrictions you put on people getting them, massive amounts of weapons would be stolen for use in robberies and murders. While guns are by no means hard for criminals to get right now, a simple ram raid on a weapons shop would yield hundreds if not thousands of weapons which would quickly disappear.

cson

Legalising fire arms á la USA is just a nonsense. Someone mentioned that they wouldn't hesitate to use a firearm on a scummer, well you can be damn well sure a scummer wouldn't hesitate to use one on you either.

Wibbs

Fair play to the OP. I've seen this crap before. I saw an interesting thing a good while back on one of those cctv programmes on the BBC. They had found old footage of a busy street scene on London back in the 30's, taken by some documentary crew. In the middle of this footage a guy snatched a handbag from a woman. Damn near every single man on that street with a single purpose chased after the guy, wrestled him to the ground and beat the ever loving crap out of him for his trouble. Apparently he had a knife on him too, but they rushed him en masse. They showed a similar incident from the present day in london and not one man did a damn thing. I know a woman who was travelling in Africa and her handbag got snatched and again the men in the street(and women) chased this gouger down.

It's not just living in cities, people have gotten soft and passive for the most part, with notable laudable exceptions like the OP. We need more like him with fully formed balls or the scum will keep doing this kind of crap.

Orange69

cson wrote:

Legalising fire arms á la USA is just a nonsense. Someone mentioned that they wouldn't hesitate to use a firearm on a scummer, well you can be damn well sure a scummer wouldn't hesitate to use one on you either.

Yes but as someone mentioned the prohibition of firearms only applies to law abiding citizens, which scummers are typically not..

I lived in both the US (Boston/Seattle) and Dublin and i can tell you for all their guns the US felt much safer..

jimi_t

ambro25 wrote:

You've got to figure something else in the whole equation - 'tis alright for a strapping (or non-strapping) young lad in his late teens/early twenties to have at it with the perps. But you take your average middle-aged commuter with a wife/husband and kids for who he/she has to provide, and that increasing level of responsibilities with age and families puts a whole new spin on the whole issue. I'm not defending or advocating passivity, but I'm firmly siding with jimmy_t here - put things in perspective. I certainly commend the OP for helping out as and when the vic started being assaulted, which is altogether a different situation from 'just' a non-violent mugging.

I'm 19, 6'2, 15 1/2 stone and was playing competitive rugby as a prop/second row until my leaving cert. I'm no stranger to fighting, although I'm not an aggressive person. If I knew for a fact that no one was carrying a weapon in the OPs situation, I would have done the exact same without thinking. The simple fact is that I wouldn't have known, and that there was no way I was going to take that risk.

If someones angry enough (or hyped up on coke or similar) to carry and take out a knife, then they're definitely angry enough to use it indiscriminately.

It's one thing berating yourself for not stepping in and someone losing their money as a result, its a whole different thing berating yourself for stepping in and someone losing their life as a result of you escalating the circumstances.

Stabshauptmann

The thing is, you consider yourself a big lad and still got fairly beat. If it wasnt for the off duty garda bt the sound of things you were ****ed. What can people really do?
A girl gets her purse stolen, thats bad. But me getting my throat slit or my teeth knocked out wont help her.

knird evol

Just to correct the general misunderstanding of the law regarding this sort of thing -

Criminal Justice(Theft and Fraud Offences) Act 2001
allows ANYONE to "arrest" anyone they see stealing something. "arrest" would mean using sufficient force to hold that person until police arrived. sufficient force means if they fight back you can do whats neccessary to counter that. whats neccessary is always determined by what they do and proportionate to what they do. and thats all enshrined in law, so theres no such thing as suing anyone. theres no legal issue - self preservation and do you want to put yourself on the line to help a girl thats being mugged, then is the only issue. I would sooner die than be like most people who watch these things and say "you'd only be killed yourself if you did anything". Such a spineless society we live in - and then people whinge about crime, but they can always blame someone else - the govt etc.

Sangre

Orange69 wrote:

Yes but as someone mentioned the prohibition of firearms only applies to law abiding citizens, which scummers are typically not..

I lived in both the US (Boston/Seattle) and Dublin and i can tell you for all their guns the US felt much safer..

Well America may have felt safer to you but the reality is so far off as to be laughable.

patrickolee

Have to agree with jimi_t. OP, you are very brave and also probably very lucky to get away with your life and health intact. If someone tried to steal my own wallet, never mind somebody elses' purse, I would just let them have it.

Caliden

She got her purse back. Fair play dude, pity about the other **** though

Wacker

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitty_Genovese

Read the above for the ultimate case of no-one helping. Shocking case.

Regarding the OP; I am fairly certain that I'd have done nothing in the situation described. I'm a biggish lad, and I totally commend you for taking a stand, but I'm very bad with confrontation. What I would recommend you doing in those circumstances would be to shout for help - demand that bystanders assist rather than trust that their good nature will compel them. I wouldn't interfere in the case you described, but if you told me to, I probably would help. Twisted, I know.

Orange69

Sangre wrote:

Well America may have felt safer to you but the reality is so far off as to be laughable.

Is that based on your experience or media coverage/reading stuff on the net??

foxyboxer

op you got involved, because it was THE RIGHT THING TO DO!
just because it's a stranger doesn't mean you shouldn't care.
this all comes from the same school of thought as 'crossing that old lady across the street', 'helping a kid reach something high up'
there are too many sheeple in this country.
an example, if you had 6 people in a lift and one of them fainted, odds on that no one would know what to do. if an 'alpha/dominat' type person was present, you could be damn sure they would be immediately on their knees administering any first aid they may know.
it's the old 'let's wait and see if someone does anything' attitude bred into society. in terms of evolution we are still animals and helping others in need out is THE RIGHT THING TO DO.
i'm from cork city and see a lot of this kind of thing.
these scumbags are in reality cowards, and if they begin thinking they own the place then it's going to be a free reign and further degradation of society.
in the situation on the bus, legally there's nothing wrong with 'acting' like a crazed psycho, merely just to scare bejeesus out of the troublemakers, believe me they will back down when you pull out you're mel gibson in Lethal Weapon Loose cannon psyco act

GospelGroupie

Kaptain Redeye wrote:

The thing is, you consider yourself a big lad and still got fairly beat. If it wasnt for the off duty garda bt the sound of things you were ****ed. What can people really do?
A girl gets her purse stolen, thats bad. But me getting my throat slit or my teeth knocked out wont help her.

Absolutely, I certainly did need the assistance of the off-duty garda. But it wasn't about the girl having her purse stolen. As I had said in a later post, the girl was getting jumped on by the gang of scumbags. It was worth taking that risk to jump in if it meant protecting her, or anybody else.

That said, every circumstance is different, and perhaps it was only because I understood the context from by presence on the bus that I was able to judge that the girl needed to be helped. But I hope that if I see any gang of scumbags pushing, kicking and hitting anybody else, no matter who that victim was, again, I'll jump in.

jimi_t

foxyboxer wrote:

op you got involved, because it was THE RIGHT THING TO DO!
just because it's a stranger doesn't mean you shouldn't care.
this all comes from the same school of thought as 'crossing that old lady across the street', 'helping a kid reach something high up'
there are too many sheeple in this country.
an example, if you had 6 people in a lift and one of them fainted, odds on that no one would know what to do. if an 'alpha/dominat' type person was present, you could be damn sure they would be immediately on their knees administering any first aid they may know.
it's the old 'let's wait and see if someone does anything' attitude bred into society. in terms of evolution we are still animals and helping others in need out is THE RIGHT THING TO DO.
i'm from cork city and see a lot of this kind of thing.
these scumbags are in reality cowards, and if they begin thinking they own the place then it's going to be a free reign and further degradation of society.
in the situation on the bus, legally there's nothing wrong with 'acting' like a crazed psycho, merely just to scare bejeesus out of the troublemakers, believe me they will back down when you pull out you're mel gibson in Lethal Weapon Loose cannon psyco act

I know nothing about you, your circumstances or your past history - but judging from the tone and content of this you would get yourselves and others killed if you actually lived by such standards. That's presuming this isn't just internet bravado.

jimi_t

GospelGroupie wrote:

But I hope that if I see any gang of scumbags pushing, kicking and hitting anybody else, no matter who that victim was, again, I'll jump in.

Again, playing devils advocate here, but that's exactly what the German guys did in your case, but they got the wrong person based only on what they saw.

Sangre

Orange69 wrote:

Is that based on your experience or media coverage/reading stuff on the net??

Its based on statistics.

i71jskz5xu42pb

Orange69 wrote:

Is that based on your experience or media coverage/reading stuff on the net??

You don't have to look hard
http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=6166

The gun-related deaths per 100,000 people in 1994 by country were as follows:

U.S.A. 14.24
:
:
:
:
Ireland 0.97

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_pri_per_cap-crime-prisoners-per-capita

Orange69

PaschalNee wrote:

You don't have to look hard
http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=6166



http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_pri_per_cap-crime-prisoners-per-capita

You have selected your facts in a very unbalanced manner, first off obviously there will be more gun related deaths in a country in which guns are freely available.. Part of this statistic is accidental death due to mishandling..

Also the prisoner statics are rubbish, a huge amount of people in US jails are on drug charges particularly marijuana possession and we know that stoners are very dangerous!

Take a look at this stat, seems more appropriate..

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_ass_vic-crime-assault-victims

cson

Orange69 wrote:

Yes but as someone mentioned the prohibition of firearms only applies to law abiding citizens, which scummers are typically not..

I lived in both the US (Boston/Seattle) and Dublin and i can tell you for all their guns the US felt much safer..

Guns create a lot more problems than they solve. A lot less people are killed in Ireland due to the fact that it is very hard to legally obtain firearms. With regard to the USA, when mentally unstable people (Virginia Tech) can freely obtain firearms it is a dangerous volatile concoction indeed.

On topic, + respect to the OP. Very commendable. As for helping victims of attacks it comes down to fight or flight, very few people would be of the mindset to fight, they see the risk and deem it not worth it however if say 5 or so people went for the attacker (as a post above describes happening in Africa) then most people quantify the risk invovled and say "hey why not join in" as the risk of injury is greatly reduced.

patrickolee

And what happens if after you join in with the 4 other well meaning passer's by, who you don't know. One of them gets carried away, kicks the thief in the head a little too hard and causes serious harm? Annabels anyone?

Slow Motion

patrickolee wrote:

And what happens if after you join in with the 4 other well meaning passer's by, who you don't know. One of them gets carried away, kicks the thief in the head a little too hard and causes serious harm? Annabels anyone?

Not a great example those guys weren't just passing and trying to help someone out they were intentionally kicking the s1it out of that poor kid !

patrickolee

All of them (or maybe any of them) didn't intend to kill him... but he ended up dead and they all ended up in a whole lot of trouble... that's more what I meant from the example

jimi_t

patrickolee wrote:

All of them (or maybe any of them) didn't intend to kill him... but he ended up dead and they all ended up in a whole lot of trouble... that's more what I meant from the example

Tbh, thats more in line with with the scumbags kicking someone on the ground and no one doing anything. I don't think there's been a single death attributed to the "lynch mob" mentality in Ireland in decades.

cson

patrickolee wrote:

And what happens if after you join in with the 4 other well meaning passer's by, who you don't know. One of them gets carried away, kicks the thief in the head a little too hard and causes serious harm? Annabels anyone?

Im not suggesting anything verbatim. Of course thats a possibility, but you'll find your average scumbag (even if tooled up to a certain extent) will 'flight' and not 'fight' when faced with 5 people of decent size.

AlmightyCushion

jimi_t wrote:

Tbh, thats more in line with with the scumbags kicking someone on the ground and no one doing anything. I don't think there's been a single death attributed to the "lynch mob" mentality in Ireland in decades.

It happened in CSI once and CSI is as close to real life as your going to get

cold_filter

I think this is a case in most places. On those "most shocking videos" shows there was a guy in take away on the phone , there was maybe ten other guys there too. This girl comes in a pretty much starts screaming at him for no reason, basically he tells her to **** off and she goes outside and gets her boyfriend, this big black guy and he just starts beating the **** out of the guy on the phone will ten people just look on, shocking

jimi_t

cson wrote:

Im not suggesting anything verbatim. Of course thats a possibility, but you'll find your average scumbag (even if tooled up to a certain extent) will 'flight' and not 'fight' when faced with 5 people of decent size.

Again, not when drugs come into the equation, especially when a cornering instinct kicks in where someone will do just about anything if they've their back against the wall. And drug use is fairly prevalent amongst those who rob/mug etc... we'll be honest.

jimi_t

cold_filter wrote:

I think this is a case in most places. On those "most shocking videos" shows there was a guy in take away on the phone , there was maybe ten other guys there too. This girl comes in a pretty much starts screaming at him for no reason, basically he tells her to **** off and she goes outside and gets her boyfriend, this big black guy and he just starts beating the **** out of the guy on the phone will ten people just look on, shocking

I saw that. You neglect to mention that the guy in question was easily about 6'4 and built like a professional wrestler. The fight in question was over in about 15 seconds (the victim was knocked stone cold out in his first punch) and that, thanks to the witnesses, he got something like 15 years for GBH and assault.

joe_chicken

jimi_t wrote:

I saw that. You neglect to mention that the guy in question was easily about 6'4 and built like a professional wrestler. The fight in question was over in about 15 seconds (the victim was knocked stone cold out in his first punch) and that, thanks to the witnesses, he got something like 15 years for GBH and assault.

Just saw this yesterday or the day before, he got 4 years.. should have been longer.

One of them should have at least tried to diffuse the situation.

Dyr

jimi_t wrote:

Tbh, thats more in line with with the scumbags kicking someone on the ground and no one doing anything. I don't think there's been a single death attributed to the "lynch mob" mentality in Ireland in decades.

there was a few Concerned-Parents-against-drugs type beatings that left people dead AFAIK

Tinytony

Fair play to you. She must have been hot. Did you get her number?

Morlar

Didnt read the entire thread just the Op - fair play to you for standing up to them. If more people did that then the little scumbags wouldnt get out of hand in the first place.

GospelGroupie

Tinytony wrote:

Fair play to you. She must have been hot. Did you get her number?

Thanks. Yes. No. Respectively.

In fact, I'm not certain if anyone got her number afterwards. I hope the APO's (Airport Police Officers) took her details. She'd be handy to have as a witness. It's very difficult to get witnesses or often even injured parties to court, other than by means of summons, that is.

I'm spoken for and my motives were pure. Even so, I'm sure my girlfriend isn't going to be too impressed with my "bravado" when she returns from holiday.

:eek:

GospelGroupie

Morlar wrote:

Didnt read the entire thread just the Op - fair play to you for standing up to them.

Thanks for that, Morlar.

Morlar wrote:

If more people did that then the little scumbags wouldnt get out of hand in the first place.

That's pretty much my point in a nutshell. I don't advocate vigilanteism and I don't advocate the legalisation of weapons (for whatever reason). I just think that society has to stand up to these gougers at some stage, otherwise society will unravel.

GospelGroupie

ambro25 wrote:

I mean, if I see a guy being assaulted or a girl being raped or whatnot and I am in a position to do something (or noone else does anything), then of course I am going to do something.

That's the context in which I got involved, too. As I said previously, I wasn't too inclined to tackle them for the sake of a purse, but the fact that they were assaulting the girl, I had no choice really. It was a no-brainer.

I'm no kid or spring-chicken myself, at 6'2", 17st (more fat than muscle) and 31y.o., but without a wife or kids (yet). I didn't have any excuse to look away.

That gun-fight must have been some experience (although I think I'd rather give that a miss). You were a bit of a bad-boy in your past, Ambro!

gazzer

OP.. Fair play to you for what you did. I would like to think/hope that I would do the same in the same siutation.

The way people behave in a Dublin Bus setting is really interesting.. For instance if one person gets on the bus and doesnt bother to check if there are seats upstairs and just stands downstairs you can be guaranteed that nearly every subsequent person that gets on the bus will stand downstairs.. Its like they are embarrassed to check upstairs in case it is full and they will have to come back downstairs.

Equally people playing music loudly.. nobody seems to ask them to turn it down even though you can hear tutting from everybody and everybody looking stressed out at the culprit.. I do ask most of the time if they would mind turning the music down if it is really annoying me.

People smoking on buses.. Very few people ask the person to stop.. Even if that person is a 13 year old girl and on her own.

I have to say that most of the time I will ask the person to stop smoking/blaring music etc.. Now obvisously I weigh up the situation.. Im not going to approach 2 20 stone angry looking coked out of their head scumbags and ask if they would mind not smoking..

I understand that people nowadays are afraid that if they interfere they could get stabbed/killed.. however if you see things occurring on a bus that are not right and you know that if you interfere wont get you killed/injured then you should do what you can to help IMO. Otherwise these scumbags think they can do what they want and get away with it.

OP once again fair play to you and I wish there was more people like you around.

I think all of these things combined just make people desentised to stuff that occurs when travelling on the bus

gurramok

See story attached in todays paper, i assume thats the incident that GospelGroupie was involved in?

Your 5 minutes of heroic fame

theTinker

Dude...you ****ing rock. Simple as. People(including myself but im very small) are terrified of the world around them today. If i seen someone stand up for a girl like you, i hope i would of joined in but i would definitely hold great respect for you.

GospelGroupie wrote:

I'm spoken for and my motives were pure. Even so, I'm sure my girlfriend isn't going to be too impressed with my "bravado" when she returns from holiday.

:eek:

You damn well deserve a good hiding from your GF.....THEN when she realises you are a hero(who if you didnt know her, could of being the spanish girl) will make you a nice big breakfast and nurse your wounds . She will even tell her friends that you helped(though with far less wounds and far more thug bashing)

Huggles

Well done OP fair play to you. As a girl I am feeling a tiny tiny bit safer knowing blokes like you will jump in and help if your around

Such a shame that more people aren't willing to do it, maybe place wouldn't be in so much as a state that it is.

sunnyjim

Well done man.

Dooom

Well done +1 to the op!
Lucky on the bite though, never know what those feckers are carrying.

thelordofcheese

Tinytony wrote:

Fair play to you. She must have been hot. Did you get her number?

finally, someone asks the questions i wanted asked...........

Dave!

Look OP, I commend you on what you did. I don't know what I'd do in the situation, cos I haven't been in it, but I suspect that if there was a group of them I'd be more likely to tell the driver and call the Gardaí than try and take them on, as I am not 15 stone. The best thing would probably be to try and get a group of the onlookers to help you stop them.

Having said that, I understand why people would be reluctant to get involved in such a situation. There is always the possibility that you misread the situation, as is the case with the two lads which you said tried to break up the scuffle that ensued outside the bus. The last thing you want is to restrain the wrong person and then the other bloke runs off with the goods. Also if you see a woman and man in a passionate fight, you might be tempted to go over and grab the bloke, but then as happens time and again, the woman takes off her shoe and starts smacking you and tells you to leave her fella alone...... But the one that's been mentioned already is that the person might have a weapon. I'm sure you're familiar with what happened only recently with a Latvian man who tried to stop someone getting beaten by a group -- he got stabbed to death. Luckily for yourself you managed to get away with your sight intact after being bottled.
http://www.independent.ie/national-news/latvian-stabbed-to-death-.htmlnt-hardworking-family-man-692256.html

It's nice to think that people will stand up to scum and save society, but we're living in quite dangerous times... The kind of people that will rob you are the kind of people who won't give much thought to stabbing you. Sure, society should be able to deal with scum to an extent, but we have police and law for a reason -- so that we don't have to risk our lives like you did.

Kudos again

Nightwish

Fair play to you OP. As a 23 year old who spent 5 years living in Dublin, I can say its great that there are people like you around. I fortunately have never been personally victim to any crime like that while living there, but my cousin who's the same age as me, who moved to Dublin with me to go to college, was mugged and assaulted by a group of girls and guys, outside Easons on O Connell street and people just walked by, and that disgusted me.

Binomate

Here's a pretty accurate artists impression of the event I did in ms paint. I think it's pretty accurate.

Artist Impression.

Dooom

You forgot the hot damsel in distress though.

/lol all the same

Binomate

Dooom wrote:

You forgot the hot damsel in distress though.

/lol all the same

Eh, who cares about the spanish bird. The point was that the OP beat the shit out of some scumbags, right?