Screamed out of my warm bed

[MajGenl.Meade]

Too bad they wouldn't give you a ride Meade.

I grated on their nerves instead

[Econoline]

When my wife's sister and her husband lived in Michigan, they kept pea-fowl (peacocks and peahens). They (the birds, not the in-laws) would wake up in the wee morning hours and scream something that sounded *EXACTLY* like "HELP!!! HELP!!!"

[TPFKA@W]

If our neighbors had peafowl I would have moved by now. I am an old farm girl and know animal from human. It was not someone yelling help, it was a human female screaming.

[rubato]

And yet, other than checking on the immediate neighbor, you didn't respond as if it was a human in distress. You didn't walk around the neighborhood or call the police.

And you say you are certain it was a woman screaming.


Curious.


yrs,
rubato

[TPFKA@W]

Nope, I didn't do any more than that. Don't like how I dealt with it? Feel free to kiss me you know where.

[Bicycle Bill]

Nope, I didn't do any more than that. Don't like how I dealt with it? Feel free to kiss me you know where.

Kitty Genovese screamed too, and people reacted like you did.
I guess times may change, but people don't.

-"BB"-

[TPFKA@W]

Go fuck yourself Bill. I did get up and go check on my neighbor. I had no other lead to check. Just fuck you.

[MG McAnick]

I can remember my mother being very upset when the teen aged girl's at one of my sister's slumber(less) parties decided to have a screaming contest. She gave them her best school-teacher "boy who cried wolf" lecture at about 2:00 AM. Perhaps it was something like that, although I still like the primal scream therapy scenario better.

Was it "Mary Hartman- Mary Hartman" that used primal scream therapy as a long term running gag?

And yes, you did all you could under the circumstances.

[Lord Jim]

Kitty Genovese screamed too, and people reacted like you did.
I guess times may change, but people don't.

That strikes me as a pretty inapt analogy to @W's situation BB...

In the Kitty Genovese case, the witnesses saw exactly what was happening and where it was happening and did nothing. @W had nothing to go on but a scream, and she went to check where she thought it might come from...

Hardly the same thing...

[TPFKA@W]

That strikes me as a pretty inapt analogy to @W's situation BB...

Egregious, and just downright nastily inaccurate. Fuck him and the bike he rode in on.

[Gob]

That would be an interesting watch...

[TPFKA@W]

That would be an interesting watch...

I knew it was just kinky enough that you would want in on it.

[Bicycle Bill]

LJ and @W, did you even click the link and read the article?

This is what the police say happened beginning at 3:20 A.M. in the staid, middle‐cIass, tree‐lined Austin Street area:

Twenty‐eight‐year‐old Cath­erine Genovese, who was called Kitty by almost everyone in the neighborhood, was returning

She turned off the lights of her car, locked the door and started to walk the 100 feet to the entrance of her apartment at 82‐70 Austin Street, which is in a Tudor building, with stores on the first floor and apartments on the second.

The entrance to the apart­ment is in the rear of the building because the front is rented to retail stores.  At night the quiet neighborhood is shrouded in the slumbering darkness that marks most residential areas.

Miss Genovese noticed a man at the far end of the lot, near a seven‐story apartment house at 82‐40 Austin Street.  She halted.  Then, nervously, she headed up Austin Street to­ward Lefferts Boulevard, where there is a call box to the 102d police Precinct in nearby Rich­mond Hill.

She got as far as a street light in front of a bookstore before the man grabbed her.  She screamed.  Lights went on in the 10‐story apartment house at 82‐67 Austin Street, which faces the bookstore.  Windows slid open and voices punctured the early‐morning stillness.

Miss Genovese screamed:  "Oh, my God, he stabbed me!  Please help me!  Please help me !”

From one of the upper win­dows in the apartment house, a man called down: “Let that girl alone !”
(.......but nothing more)

The assailant looked up at him, shrugged and walked down Austin Street toward a white sedan parked a short distance away.  Miss Genovese struggled to her feet.

Lights went out.  The killer returned to Miss Genovese, now trying to make her way around the side of the building by the parking lot to get to her apart­ment.  The assailant stabbed her again.

“I'm dying!” she shrieked. “I'm dying!”

Windows were opened again, and lights went on in many apartments.  The assailant got into his car and drove away.  Miss Genovese staggered to her feet.  A city bus, Q‐10, the Lef­ferts Boulevard line to Ken­nedy International Airport, passed.  It was 3:35 A.M. (in other words, fifteen minutes from when she first left her car to go to her apartment)

The assailant returned.  By then, Miss Genovese had crawled to the back of the building, where the freshly painted brown doors to the apartment house held out hope of safety.  The killer tried the first door; she wasn't there.  At the second door, 82‐62 Austin Street, he saw her slumped on the floor at the foot of the stairs.  He stabbed her a third time — fatally.

It was 3:50 by the time the police received their first call (THIRTY MINUTES FROM THE TIME THIS INCIDENT STARTED, AND AT LEAST FIFTEEN MINUTES — as evidenced by the timing of the bus — AFTER SHE HAD STARTED SCREAMING ABOUT BEING STABBED) from a man who was a neighbor of Miss Genovese.  In two min­utes they were at the scene.  The neighbor, a 70‐year‐old woman, and another woman were the only persons on the street.  NOBODY ELSE CAME FORWARD.

The man explained that he had called the police after much deliberation.  He had phoned a friend in Nassau County for advice (???) and then he had crossed the roof of the building to the apartment of the elderly wo­man to get her to make the call. (!!!!!)

“I didn't want to get in­volved,” he sheepishly told the police.

And there you have it. Please note that all parenthetic comments, emboldening, and other text enhancements are mine. The words, however, are from the by-lined article that originally appeared following the incident in the New York Times on March 27 1964.

It may not be a perfect analogy to the incident originally cited in this thread — no one was screaming intelligible words, apparently — and you did what little you could.  However, @W, given some of your follow-up comments:

I strongly suspect someone in the near neighborhood got the shit beat out of her. I hope she is alive.

Ran into the neighbor on the other side of young girl while at the grocery. He heard the screaming but thought it came from the house across the road from the young girl and catty-corner to his home and mine. The plot thickens.

and

I am an old farm girl and know animal from human. It was not someone yelling help, it was a human female screaming.

I feel that the phrase "what little you could" — with emphasis on the 'little' — is appropriate.

As for your witty, intelligent, and relevant remark to "Fuck him and the bike he rode in on", I suppose I could ask if you are volunteering for the task .... but even I am not that rude, crude, crass, or boorish.

-"BB"-

[Lord Jim]

As for your witty, intelligent, and relevant remark to "Fuck him and the bike he rode in on", I suppose I could ask if you are volunteering for the task ....

I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that the answer to that question is "no".....

(Unless perhaps with a splintery pole.... )

[TPFKA@W]

Yeah, uh, ew. I am familiar with the KG case and what I did had nothing in common with it. So stuff it.

[Lord Jim]

Bill, I read the article originally to refresh my memory of the details of the case, and what you've posted and highlighted seems to me to do nothing but re-enforce my point that the people in the Genovese case had way more to act on then @W did....

[Jarlaxle]

OK, Bill...please explain, in detail, EXACTLY what she should have done. Be specific.

[Bicycle Bill]

OK, Bill...please explain, in detail, EXACTLY what she should have done. Be specific.

Oh, I don't know *EXACTLY* — but here's an off-the-wall idea.

CALL THE POLICE, maybe?

Sure, she did check on the next-door neighbor.  Well and good.  But she's also the person who said (and I quote) that "I am an old farm girl and know animal from human.  It was not someone yelling help, it was a human female screaming." and also opined that "I strongly suspect someone in the near neighborhood got the shit beat out of her."  She also stated that another person who heard the screaming thought it was coming from an entirely different location than where @W went at first.

No, I don't expect her to go all 'Nancy Drew' or the 'Scooby Doo' team and try to solve this mystery on her own.  But I repeat —

CALL THE EFFIN' COPS; tell them your concerns and the information you have, and let them deal with it.  But there's no indication that she did that; in fact, there's no indication that she did anything after the initial check on the neighbor.

And I'll let you in on the reason I'm getting all worked up about this.  My mother passed away back in August, before I came to this board.  She was an elderly (late 80s), stubborn old gal who wanted nothing more than to stay and live in her big old house that she and her husband had owned since the late 1950s.  She had raised her family in it, her husband (my father) had died in that house some 22 years ago, and up until the last few years (with a little assistance from my sister and I) she was still doing quite well for herself.  And (to paraphrase) it was hers, dammit; her husband provided it for her; it was the only house she had ever lived in (up until she got married she and her own parents had been living in one apartment after another); and she was going to stay there until they carried her out feet-first, thank you very much.

But age takes the best out of all of us.  Various infirmities such as macular degeneration, age-related dementia, and a general decline in her own mobility teamed up to make it so that her house was no longer totally safe for her, with the result that she had fallen and injured herself several times.

Now, my sister and I had made sure that she was equipped with one of these 'Life-line' type of devices that she wore, so if she did fall or injure herself she could signal for help through the telephone.  But if she were somewhere out of range, or the phone was not working, or she might not have had her push-button with her and all she was able to do was scream for help — well, I would certainly hope that the neighbors would do more than just look out their windows or check one house and call it good.

-"BB"-

[TPFKA@W]

And tell the cops what exactly, that I heard a scream that appeared to come from my neighbors but she is fine? Who then left for work, btw.



.

[MajGenl.Meade]

Bill, the reason for your sensitivity on this issue is understandable but (I believe) a bit misdirected. It would have been an improvement had you posted something more to the effect of "I think I'd have called the police because..." Instead, you presented what looked like (but surely was not intended to be) an attack upon another person for responding inadequately, as you see it.

Now you're in the position of saying "Well she responded - good" followed by "But she didn't respond enough" in order to defend what I see as your mistake. You're in a bit of a hole so stop digging.

Similar things have happened to me. I've not called the police... usually because the noise had long since stopped and I've no idea where it came from. What are the police going to do? Knock on every door at 3 a.m. and wake everyone up? (Clue: no they would not)

As to ma - not an analogy at all. If ma's screaming for help, presumably someone who heard it would continue to hear it and be able to locate the source. If ma had stopped after a few calls - see above. Besides which, I sure hope you had spoken to all the neighbors and asked them to listen out - just in case. Sorry for your recent loss... my ma passed away in 2013.