Chinese toddler run over twice after being left on street

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Comment by webmadam noelene on October 18, 2011 at 2:39pm

A Chinese toddler was run over twice and ignored by nearly 20 passers-by in Guangdong Province in a case that has caused outrage around the world.

It is a story that has deeply unsettled millions in China, posing troubling questions about whether three decades of headlong economic development has left nothing but a moral vacuum in its wake.

It begins last Thursday when a two-year-old girl totters into a narrow lane in a wholesale market in the thriving industrial city of Foshan in Guangdong Province and is hit by a small, white van. The driver pauses, and then pulls away, crushing the child for a second time under his rear wheels.

It is not the accident itself, but what happens next — or rather doesn’t happen – that has left millions of ordinary Chinese wondering where their country is heading.

One by one, no fewer than 18 passers-by are seen on closed circuit television ignoring the girl as she lies, clearly visible in the road, haemorrhaging into the gutter. Not a single one of them stops to help.

The first is a young man in a white T-shirt and trainers. He walks on past the prone form of girl who is by now bleeding profusely, without a second glance.

Next comes a cyclist who wobbles slightly to avoid the dying child and then pedals on, turning his head back momentarily, as if to check he really did see a child dying in the street.

As the pool of blood spreads, a third pedestrian comes by, clearly sees the bleeding girl, but steps out into the small lane to give her a wide berth.

All three could have moved the girl, later named by her parents as 2-year-old Yueyue, but none did, allowing another, larger vehicle following down the lane a few minutes later to run her over for a second time.

The pictures of the incident which happened last Thursday afternoon then show a succession of other cyclists and rickshaw drivers weaving round the girl, including a woman walking with a child who on seeing Yueyue visibly quickens her step, dragging her charge after her.

It is only the nineteenth passer-by, a 58-year-old street cleaner called Chen Xianmei, who drops her bag of rubbish and rushes to the bleeding child, attempting to scoop up her up, but finding her floppy and lifeless.

Mrs Chen, who is only 4ft 7in tall, then calls for the girl’s mother who comes rushing into view, taking up her child in her arms, who is now in intensive care in the military hospital in the city of Guangzhou.

Yueyue remains in a critical condition, a nurse told The Daily Telegraph by phone. Earlier doctors said she had suffered major head injuries and was breathing only with the assistance of a ventilator. The story of Yueyue was the leading item across China’s online news portals as the copies of the CCTV highly distressing footage attracted more than