Hypothetical scenario. You're at the gas station filling your car. A woman pulls her car to a nearby pump and starts to fill her car. A man driving a van pulls into the parking lot, stops next to the woman's vehicle, exits, and the man and woman start arguing. It appears that the man and woman know each other. The argument escalates to a shoving match and the man grabs the woman and throws her on the ground. She stands up and the man and woman start arguing again.
What do you do? Why and how are you going to do it?
I'm playing with a new drawing program so here's a picture. This played out several years ago at a gas station. There's an old man at the X marked 1, putting gas in his car. A woman pulls up to the pump at the bottom right and the van pulls in a minute later. The man and woman start arguing at the X marked 2. The argument turns into a shoving and slapping match and the man throws the woman on the ground. She gets up and they start arguing again. The old man walks over and physically places himself between the man and woman, with his back to the woman. About where the X marked 2 is at. The man and woman reengage in the shoving and slapping, with the old man in the middle. After about 15 seconds, the woman jumps on the old man's back and bear hugs his head. The man pulls a folding box cutter from one of his pocket and starts slashing and stabbing the old man and the woman's arms. The old man manages to escape from the fight and runs, at old man speed, to the X marked 3 where he falls or collapses. The man and woman both get in the van (the man's driving), and run over the old man's legs as they flee the parking lot. The real damage was from the legs being run over. The old man was on cumadin or warfarin (or some other high strength blood thinner) and over the next few days the doctors could not stop the bleeding in his legs and ended up amputating his legs just below the hip. The man and woman were quickly ID's and arrested at a hospital in Oklahoma a few hours later, when she showed up to get her arms stitched up. They were a common law couple and frequent flyers, officers were at their house at least once a week for a domestic violence call. The woman was given the opportunity to be a witness and not face any charges, if she agreed testify against the man. She refused because she would not testify against "the man I love" and ended up taking a 25 year sentence. The man ended having a heart attack and dying in jail while awaiting sentencing.
I know this is one of the more extreme cases of when things go wrong. Getting involved in a domestic is a risky proposition. Despite being well intentioned, it's easy to have both parties turn on you. I'm not saying that if you see a woman getting the poopy stomped out of her to call 911 and be a good witness, but if it's not to the point that someone's life is real danger, it may be time to just be a good witness.
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Originally Posted by hufnagel
