A rapist has been jailed for life, which is good to hear but not normally the type of thing I blog about. What caught my eye is the way he was caught:The victim managed to struggle free and two schoolboys heard her screams. They tracked Walsh and alerted nearby allotment holders, who detained him until police arrived and arrested him.
.
Don't mess with middle-aged men bearing shovels.
Or (to be less flippant about what is really a serious matter) communities make us all safer. If two resourceful schoolboys asked me for help in detaining a rapist I'd probably be too scared to act alone. But if they asked me and a bunch of other people I knew and trusted, I'd be glad to help. That might be my neighbours, my colleagues, or my fellow allotmenteers.
3 comments:
I saw that and I was very heartened.
I'm practically sure that if I were to shout "Help" around here, lots of people would come running.
They all came running when I fell in the street and bumped my head badly a few weeks ago
You're spot on about community - it comes down to being willing to step in and help each other out. I reckon it begins with getting down to knowing and building trust with the people around you.
Thumbs up for the school boys and the allotment holders, and I hope the good community spirit went some way to offsetting the victim's trauma.
There was an incident some years back (well, maybe quite a few) when armed robbers raided either a post office or a bank in a small town.
A couple of police officers chanced upon the robbery and looked to be in serious trouble, until several old ladies laid into the robbers with walking sticks and shopping bags.
From memory, one robber fled and one was captured.
Definitely not an apocryphal story as it was on the Reuters wire.
It's great, if dangerous, when people come together like this to stand up for what's right.
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