Refugee drowns in Venice bystanders filming but not intervene
World
January 26, 2017 18:24
venice - A 22-year-old immigrant from Gambia on Sunday drowned in the Grand Canal, the main canal of Venice, while onlookers saw this happen. Passers-by did not intervene, but filming it.
Immigrant Pateh Sabally would like plowing suicide. On a film you can see how people lifebuoys throw at him but he will not accept.
Grand Canal is a famous landmark in Venice. Many tourists saw it happen.
Ultimately Sabally is removed from the water by the police. His residence permit was found on his body. Sabally had his backpack left on a train.
There was some fuss about the drowning immigrant arose because bystanders Sabally would have scolded said several Italian media initially. It is not clear whether this actually happened. The Italian public prosecutor has launched an investigation.
1 Comment
I collected some words from the witnesses and here is what they told (because I read too many stupid things about this story, I'd like to set the record straight) : The immigrant jumped into the canal, he knew how to swim (in fact he reached the centre of the canal). People at first didn't realize he wanted to kill himself, since it's full of idiots who jump into water (filthy and dangerous for your health, it's not the sea, it's a canal but many turists don't realize it) and many of the people there were turists from all over the world, they didn't realize at first what was happening. However, it's january and water is freezing so they started shouting at him to come back and don't be foolish. Then, as soon as people realized a tragedy was going to happen, people on the boats started throwing him 3 floats and a rope, so that he could reach it and save himself.
Since he wanted to commit suicide (I'm gonna get back on this point at the end) he didn't take them. At this point people asked for help and called the italian authorities, but when they arrived it was too late. Someone complained about nobody jumped into the water to rescue him: 1) the water was freezing) 2) you risk your life if you try to rescue someone who wants to die, 'cause he'll probably push you down (and not many people are that brave). In fact, a rescuer gave an interview saying if some random turist would have jumped into the water without being prepared, we'll probably have 2 deaths by now. The italian authorities are investigating , but it's likely the guy committed suicide 'cause he was very cross because his permission to stay in the country was not valid anymore and not being a refugee, he'll be probably taken back home. That's why I talked about suicide.
That's a little summary, sorry for my english. DISCLAIMER: 1) since someone said he guy in the video was yelling "PUTA" (bitch) I just wanna say it's not true. The guy yells "BUTTA" which in italian means "throw" (referring to the floats) 2)the video is a short clip, it doesn't cover the whole scene. the boat you see in the video gets closer to him at a certain point and people there tried to lean towards him. They took his hands but the guy refused to be helped and moved uder the boat. Then, nobody was able to see him anymore.