Eyewitnesses to Fatal Stabbing

* Re “Woman Stabbed to Death at Mall as Shoppers Watch,” Jan. 30: I strongly resent the accusations about the shoppers who were just standing around and not doing anything to help the woman who was being stabbed to death at the South Bay Galleria. My friend and I, both 76-year-old retired physicians, were meeting for lunch when we heard the screaming in the street behind us. We immediately turned and looked toward the noise, and we saw the stabbing. The stabber was holding the woman and plunging the knife into her repeatedly. When she slumped to the pavement, he went down on top of her and continued stabbing many times.

What is one supposed to do at a time like that? A number of other people had also gathered. Some were yelling to call 911; some had cell phones and actually did call. The suggestion that someone should have thrown a cell phone at the stabber’s head is nonsense. One would have to have gotten close enough to do that, and who is going to get close to a crazed, knife-wielding attacker, unless he is trained and skilled in doing that? When the stabber left the scene, he dropped his knife to the pavement and walked, then ran away. When the two repairmen took him down, he was no longer crazed; he no longer had an obvious weapon, and these were two young, healthy men who could do the job.

I in no way want to demean what they did, but I do want to speak for the eyewitnesses, like the two of us and all the others, who were helpless to intercede without risking the result of more victims than just one. Incidentally, after the stabber left the victim, my friend and another physician, a woman I do not know, attended to the victim as much as they could, while other bystanders also helped.

JAY B. BELSKY MD

San Pedro