It’s usually not a good idea to involve oneself by trying to intervene during a fight between two people on the street especially if it involves a domestic dispute and you don’t know either party.
You could easily end up being the one hurt by the ironic situation of the woman taking her man’s side.
But it’s a different story if a man is physically assaulting a woman. As a human being, it would be difficult just to look and do nothing although the unfortunate phenomenon called the “bystander effect” often comes into play.
Fortunately, in this incident, a woman in distress was saved from further assault thanks to a man who apparently didn’t know the meaning of the bystander effect and took decisive action against the attacker who happened to be her ex-husband.
The whole incident was captured on CCTV. In it, the man and woman are seen walking along a sidewalk somewhere in Istanbul. The two soon stop to argue and then the man hits the woman with a thick sheaf of rolled papers.
The woman falls down on the ground, and a witness recounts that she was crying and screaming for help.
Just as the man stops his attack, he doesn’t notice a bystander at his back running towards him and as a result, takes him down with a flying headbutt. Seeing the other man go down, other onlookers suddenly rush to the woman’s aid.
Although the story between the two is not clear, local media reports state that the couple was apparently divorced and they had just finished a hearing at the Istanbul Court of Justice. Whatever that hearing was about; it likely came to an acrimonious end because it resulted in the man beating his ex-wife in public.
Thankfully, the man, only known as Mehmet T., was later arrested and hopefully, his ex-wife won’t have to deal with him for some time to come.
This is an inspiring story of a stranger managing to overcome the bystander effect to help someone in need. Although it would be too optimistic to hope that this is the type of result we can expect every time, we can take comfort in the fact that for this woman, help arrived just when she needed it most.