I (24f) was on my way down my apartment stairs to meet my friend (22m) in the parking lot to go to the store when we both heard and saw two people that regularly hang out and sleep in the alley behind my apartment almost purposely get hit by two cars that fled after just barely missing them. There’s a window in my stairwell that allowed me to catch all of this and the two people that almost got hit both looked up and saw me and then fled as well. My friend left the parking lot and went around the block to pick me up so we could get away from the commotion and by the time we came back from the store there were a group of 6 people in the alley, two of whom looked like they were on the phone with police, another two we didn’t recognize, and the last two being the people we watched almost get hit. It’s probably important to mention at this point that the car involved in this altercation and my own car look very similar so we were scared that we would be falsely accused of being involved as we had to drive down the same alley to get to my parking lot. I told my friend I wanted to just park the car and go up to my apartment and wait and see if police show up but he insisted he walk up to the people who almost got hit and try to talk to them to make sure they know we weren’t the car they were presumably looking for. He said he didn’t want anyone to try and hurt us on our way to my front door if they thought we were the car responsible. I told him it felt too risky because we don’t know the context of what happened and I didn’t want to involve ourselves in something that didn’t directly involve us, especially if it seemed like people were already contacting police. He stated that I don’t know how “city living” works (I’ve been living in the city for a month) and that it’s unfair of me to assume they wouldn’t want to talk and that I need to have more empathy for the homeless. I work in a city hospital and have been for almost two years, 50% of our patients come in from the street and my empathy for the homeless has NEVER been in question and I took a lot of offense to this statement, I’ve always been someone who feels very strongly that the homeless deserve to be treated with much more respect and humanity than they typically do and that’s always an opinion we’ve shared. Basically he felt it was safer to walk up to strangers and let them know we weren’t involved in a potential hit and run, I felt it was safer to leave it be and possibly call the non emergency line and let them know what we saw if I felt it was necessary. We ended up parting ways and not talking to anybody because we simply could not agree. Am I the asshole?
Want to also reassure everyone involved is safe and police showed up and got statements from everyone involved and even found the cars as well very shortly after he left.
NTA. It’s not about whether you empathize with the homeless, as you say you don’t know what you’re walking to. I can’t see what would be gained from speaking to them directly in this situation.
I also feel like there’s a gendered element to this. Maybe your friend is more willing to wade in as a man and isn’t appreciating the difference that makes? Idk, I know some of my male friends would probably react the same way as you but as a woman I’d definitely be more cautious generally.
I do think that played a part in his comfortability with wanting to approach them but I will say that one of the people that almost got hit was a woman so it definitely did make a difference in the way I responded because if they were both men I don’t think I would’ve even entertained the thought of possibly talking to them and I would’ve felt less asshole-ish lol
Tentative YTA. You witnessed something that is almost certainly a crime (reckless driving), which would be useful to them if they report it. And at the basic level of human empathy, you could have just gone up to them, explained you saw what happened, and asked if they’re okay.
You say you have empathy with the homeless, but ask yourself if you’d have reacted in the same way if they looked wealthy and this was an affluent area of the city.
Understandable response, thank you for the perspective! I will say though the fear of approaching them wasn’t coming from them being homeless but from not knowing if they thought we were responsible for almost hitting them. I can confidently say that even if they weren’t homeless I still would be very hesitant to approach the situation because you never know how people will react to being walked up on by strangers who they might believe just tried to hurt them. I also left this out of the original post but they were pacing and looking very distraught and very obviously stressed and anxious (naturally) and I didn’t want to scare them further. But that’s mostly where our disagreement came in, because we couldn’t weigh which option would be beneficial to all parties involved and ultimately I did choose the selfish route. I also would’ve called the police right away if I hadn’t already heard what sounded like two other people on the phone with them and I did end up calling the non emergency line about 10 minutes after the fact to make sure everyone was ok and they told me they had witness statements already and had also talked to the person(s) in the car that looked similar to mine