toddler deathAs someone who believes in standing up for the underdog and helping those who need help, it's particularly upsetting to hear about this brutal toddler death after an adult in the home did the right thing. While police won't identify the Good Samaritan, who broke up an assault by a man on a woman -- allowing the woman to escape from the attacker -- they do say his house became the target after he helped his neighbor. His house that is filled with family members and lots of children.

Showing no good deed goes unpunished, the man who was stopped from attacking the woman came back an hour later and fired on the home. His gunshots killed a 3-year-old little girl named Nylah and injured a pregnant woman and another toddler. How horrible is it that if this man had just let that woman continue to be violated, his family members would still be alive? How could he have known that setting a good example for his family would end so tragically? 

While luckily my story did not have a similar ending, I was also in a situation where I felt I needed to step forward, but with my daughter in tow. As I strolled my toddler girl down the sidewalk, I witnessed a man screaming at a 2-year-old little girl, and eventually grabbing her toy stroller and flinging it across the street as he berated this crying toddler. I was angry enough to call him names, and he turned on me. Even as I was reminding him that she was just a little girl and that he, in fact, was an asshole, I realized I had just put myself and my toddler in danger as well. He was incredibly angry, and he yelled back at me to mind my own business and to get away from him, pronto. I did, but felt like I should have done more.

Being in a situation where you can protect someone else from harm is not something to walk away from, usually. But when you have children to protect, maybe you should. Violent and crazy people don't really care about your child, as shown in this tragic story. It would have been better, for little Nylah, if this man had plugged his ears and ignored what was going on in the neighborhood.

It's not a good choice. And not a good message to your kids if you see someone being abused and you turn the other way. I can't help think but if he'd called the police, and the attacker knew he did it, the same thing would have happened. A psycho is a psycho, no matter what.

Clearly, I don't know what you should do in this situation. I know I was lucky I was just yelled at by an abusive man, and my daughter escaped unscathed. This family in California was not so lucky.

What would you do in this situation?

 

Image via thisisrod/Flickr