An interesting side note to this thread is that, at common law (and I'm pretty sure under present statute law in all states), there was/is no duty to help anyone. The classic example given in law school was: you are walking down a sidewalk and come across a 1-year-old infant, drowning in a wading pool that is only a foot deep. You keep on walking and the child drowns.
Could you be sued for failing to help the child? Nope.
How do you like THEM apples?
This was brought to my attention just recently. A couple of weeks ago, in NYC, a homeless man came to the aid of a woman being mugged. For his efforts, the mugger stabbed him. He was left on the street to bleed out while several people walked passed him with nary a glance. A couple of folks passed and looked, then strolled on.
The callousness of the human animal never ceases to surprise me.
Anyway, this point of law was brought up in a couple of discussions concerning the incident.
I would of checked on him. I use to work in a park with a lot of homeless people, I learned to check on them. Quite a bit of them were people with mental diseases that were probably allowed to slip through the system.