Saturday afternoon, Casey and I were out running errands. I got on to the main road–a four lane divided by a wide grass median–and saw something odd at the next light. I was about 200 yards away, but it looked like some teenagers were playing Chinese Fire Drill.
When I got within about 50 yards, I discovered it was two guys wailing on each other. In the middle of the road, in broad daylight. Both had abandoned their vehicles, though one had three freinds with him.
I got on the shoulder and pulled up within about 20 feet of them. There were probably 10-12 cars stopped behind these guys. I unbuckeled my seatbelt, but then observed behavior from both participants that suggested mutual combat rather than a beatdown.
At that point I made the decision to not intervene. My inner libertarian told me, “not your fight, no victims here, let em settle it. ”
I did stick around to the end to make sure nobody was going to get killed, ie no one grabbed a weapon, the freinds didn’t get involved, and no one wound up on the pavement getting his skull bashed in. The whole thing lasted less than a minute, and at the end both guys took off in separate directions. No one was bloody or visibly injured.
I think I did the right thing, setting up the intervention but not going through with it. What do you think? What would you have done differently?
Note: I didn’t call the police because I could see other people already on the phone.
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