A seriously ill society

A two-year-old girl who was struck by a vehicle in a hit-and-run accident in China was ignored by more than a dozen passers-by as she lay critically injured on the road.

Surveillance footage of the horrifying incident on Thursday has sparked outrage and disbelief on China's hugely popular social media sites, where an anguished public debate has broken out about the state of Chinese society.

The footage shows the young girl, named Yueyue, toddling into the path of a van outside her family's shop in a busy wholesale market in the southern Chinese city of Fosham.

The van hits the girl and momentarily stops, before the driver continues, crushing the child again beneath his rear wheels.



What unfolds next is arguably even more shocking.

Up to 18 passers-by are seen in the footage ignoring Yueyue as she lies critically injured and bleeding on the road, with several even changing their walking path to veer around her body.

A man on a scooter steers around the toddler and looks at her body before continuing down the street, as a second van approaches and drives over the girl's legs.

Another motorcyclist applies his brakes and clearly looks at the girl, lying in a pool of blood, before driving off. The scene is repeated as rickshaws and pedestrians give her a wide berth.

It is not until seven minutes later that a street cleaner, later identified as 58-year-old Chen Xianmei, comes to the girl's aid and lifts her from the road, calling for help.

She was ignored by several shopkeepers before finally tracking down Yueyue's mother who took her to hospital.

The Shanghai Daily reported that Yueyue was in a coma in the intensive care unit of a military hospital in the city of Guangzhou but had shown some improvement.

Her mother, Qu, has reportedly set up a blog to post updates on her daughter's condition.

"We have received numerous phone calls expressing strong will to help us," she wrote. "We are speechless and grateful."

Doctors said the girl had suffered major head injuries and was breathing only with the assistance of a ventilator.

"She would not be able to survive any operations. She's very close to brain death," a spokesman for the hospital told news agency AFP.

The highly distressing surveillance footage was uploaded on the popular Youku video sharing site, and attracted more than a million views in a number of hours.

In response, one person lamented: "This society is seriously ill. Even cats and dogs shouldn't be treated so heartlessly."

Another user wrote: "Really, what is up with our society? I saw this and my heart went cold. Everyone needs to do some soul searching about ending this kind of indifference.''

But others linked the incident to an earlier case in which a man who tried to help an elderly woman after she fell over was prosecuted, apparently because his intervention broke government rules on dealing with accident victims.

Police have detained the drivers of both vehicles involved in the incident, Xinhua news agency said.

The man who allegedly drove the second van, surnamed Jiang, was arrested about 9pm on the evening of the accident. The first van driver, named Hu, surrendered to police on Sunday afternoon.

Yueyue is believed to live with her parents and seven-year-old brother in a house near the wholesale market.

Her mother was hanging out washing upstairs when Yueyue went out with her brother to play with their friends.


- with agencies

This story was found at: http://www.smh.com.au/world/a-seriou...018-1ltv1.html

Foshan toddler Yueyue still under intensive care

Earlier media reports that Yueyue, the toddler who was knocked down by two vehicles outside a market in Foshan, has passed away have turned out to be false.

Yueyue's mother has appeared on Sina Weibo herself to clarify the situation. She said that while Yueyue was still unable to breathe on her own, her situation has stabilised, and she has regained some sensation in her limbs. Doctors say that her chances of recovery are now better than earlier estimated.

In an interview with the Daily Telegraph, Yueyue's father lamented, “What’s up with people these days? They make so many excuses to turn a blind eye. The society is so indifferent, so heartless.”

His only hope now though is for his child's survival. “Yueyue is so lovely, often amuses us. Sometime if I quarrelled with her mother and if her mother cried, she would tell us not to cry, she always tried to amuse us. I don’t have any thoughts now, I just hope my child will wake up and call me Dad again,” he said.

Meanwhile, the first driver who knocked down Yueyue has also been apprehended by the police. Chinese media reports say he had just broken up with his girlfriend and was on his cell phone when he hit the girl.

He had called Yueyue's father to say he would never surrender, and that he could give him some money if that was what he wished. When a journalist called (tune in to the call below), he revealed that he was planning to escape to Xinjiang.

"You saw that girl on the CCTV footage, she didn't see where she was going, you know. I was on the phone when it happened, I didn't mean it," he said. "When I realised I had knocked her down, I thought I'd go down to see how she was. Then when I saw that she was already bleeding, I decided to just step on the gas pedal and escape seeing that nobody was around me."

"If she is dead, I may pay only about 20,000 yuan ($3,125). But if she is injured, it may cost me hundreds of thousands yuan," he added.