Horrifying footage of a 2-year-old girl in China being run over by two separate vehicles and left to die by passersby has stirred outrage throughout the country, with CNN reporting that security footage of the incident has led the nation of 1.3 billion people to do some collective soul-searching.
According to Shanghaiist, the two-year-old, who has been identified as Yueyue, was run over on Thursday outside of a hardware market in Foshan in southern China's Guangdong province.
Security camera footage shows a driver in a white van hit the young girl, apparently crushing her under the weight of the front wheel. The driver pauses briefly, but then continues to drive forward, running over her with the back wheel.
The following video shows more than a dozen passersby walk, ride motorbikes or drive past the young, bleeding girl without stopping to help. They clearly notice the badly injured child, as some motorists swerve to avoid her body. After three people walk past, a different truck runs over the young girl again.
WARNING: GRAPHIC VIDEO BELOW
Shanghaiist reports that seven grueling minutes passed before a trash collector picked up Yeuyue's body and alerted her mother so that she could take the child to the hospital.
According to The Telegraph, Yeuyue suffered injuries to her head and has to use a ventilator to breathe. She is reportedly in critical condition in intensive care at a hospital in Guangzhou. According to AFP, the toddler is in a coma and doctors do not expect her to survive.
Yeuyue's tragic story was Monday's most popular story on Sina Weibo, a Chinese microblogging service, Shanghaiist reports. CNN's Enuice Yoon explains in the video below why the footage has gripped the nation's attention:
"Many people are discussing what they perceive as a loss of morality in Chinese society," she said to Erroll Barnett. "...some observers have been pointing out that China education system really has failed here, that it's failed to emphasize and reinforce the need to respect human life at a time when 1.3 billion people all clamoring and rushing to climb up the economic and social ladder."
The Telegraph's Peter Foster offers another explanation of what could have led so many people to walk past the young girl without stopping to help:
Others blamed China’s compensation culture for the apparent show of callousness, recalling a famous 2006 judgment when a Good Samaritan who helped a woman get to hospital was wrongly ordered to pay her compensation.
“They didn’t ignore the girl, they just didn’t dare help her,” said one comment among many that said that Chinese law had helped create a fear of intervening.
The Washington Post references an editorial in China Daily from January that calls for a law to protect Good Samaritans from liability.
Earlier this year, a 22-year-old woman riding her bicycle in China's Zhejiang Province was killed after being hit by a three-wheeled vehicle. Four subsequent vehicles ran over her, and while several of the vehicles' drivers stopped, none waited for help to arrive, ChinaSmack reports.
WARNING: The following footage contains graphic content:
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story incorrectly described the accident, noting that the driver of the van backed up over the young girl twice. The driver did not back up over the toddler, but ran over her with his front wheel, paused, and then continued to drive, running her over with his rear wheel.