By Niraj Chokshi July 21, 2017
New York Times
The video was shocking in Florida, where shocking videos seem like a genre. A group of teenagers laughed and watched as a man struggled in the water of a pond. The man drowned, and his body was not found for days.
The five teenagers did nothing to help him, not even call 911, but after examining the video, the authorities said this week that they did not break the law.
“In the state of Florida, there is no law in place that requires a person to render aid or call to render aid to a victim in distress,” Yvonne Martinez, a spokeswoman for the Cocoa Police Department, said on Friday.
But the local police were not giving up. Later in the day, they said that they believed a different Florida law requires any person who is aware of a death to report it. Ms. Martinez said the authorities would recommend charges under that law.
The man, Jamel Dunn, 31, drowned July 9, and his body was found five days later when the police received a report that it was floating near the edge of the pond in a park in Cocoa, a town with 18,000 people near Orlando.
As detectives investigated the death over the weekend, a family member of Mr. Dunn’s alerted them to the video, which the teenagers had begun sharing with friends.
The police asked the office of Phil Archer, the state attorney for Brevard and Seminole Counties, to review the footage. But the prosecutor’s office said it did not contain the evidence needed for a criminal prosecution.
In the statement, the prosecutor’s office said it was nonetheless “deeply saddened and shocked” by how Mr. Dunn died and the failure of the teenagers to help him in any way.
The low-quality, 2.5-minute cellphone video was provided to The New York Times by Mr. Archer’s office and earlier obtained by Florida Today. It shows a man flailing in the middle of a body of water as the teenagers describe his struggle and laugh at him from the shore. The teenagers are not visible.
One of the them, using an expletive, calls Mr. Dunn a junkie. Someone tells him not to expect any assistance: “Ain’t nobody going to help you, you dumb bitch. You shouldn’t have got in there,” he says.
About a minute into the video, the man appears to let out a whimper before submerging, fully, underwater. “He just died!” a voice can be heard saying, as the others begin to laugh.
Later, one of the teenagers appears to suggest that they call the police, only to be rejected by another.
The police identified and met with all five, who ranged in age from 14 to 18, Ms. Martinez said. None appeared to show much emotion. “What I saw was not remorseful,” she said.
A Facebook user named Simone Scott, who identified herself online as Mr. Dunn’s sister, expressed frustration with the investigation and said that “something should be done” in a video live-streamed on the social network on Thursday. A funeral service will be held a week from Saturday, Ms. Scott said on Facebook. She did not respond to a request for an interview.
“If they can sit there and watch somebody die in front of their eyes, imagine what they’re going to do when they get older?” she said about the teenagers.
She expressed frustration with the investigation and said she wondered how Mr. Dunn, who she said was disabled and walked with a cane, ended up in the middle of the pond.
Surveillance footage obtained Thursday from a neighbor showed that Mr. Dunn entered the pond on his own and did not appear to be coerced or forced to go in, Ms. Martinez said.
Although the teenagers cannot be charged for failing to help Mr. Dunn, town officials said later Friday that they would ask the prosecutor to consider charges under the law requiring that a death be reported.
“While this in no way will bring justice for what occurred, it is a start,” Henry Parrish III, the mayor of Cocoa, said in a statement. “I know that everyone working on this investigation has been tireless in their efforts to find answers.”
Naika’s death was a spectator sport
Naika Venant’s smile belied her pain and depression.
By LEONARD PITTS JR.
January 27, 2017
lpitts@miamiherald.com
A few thoughts on the lonely death of Naika Venant.
As you may have heard, Naika, a
Her self-destruction drew attention, all right, but surely not the kind she wanted. To read the report by The Miami Herald’s Carol Marbin Miller and Alex Harris is to cringe with disgust:
“A thousand people watched for nearly an hour as Naika Venant prepared to kill herself. They kept watching for another hour as the 14-year-old dangled on her scarf from the shower door in the bathroom of her
“People mocked the young girl, called her names and reacted to the video with Facebook’s laughing emoji, said Antonio Gethers, one of her 4,500 Facebook friends. Others posted cruel parody videos pretending to hang themselves, too.”
The bleak despair and dead-end hope that cause people to take their lives is, unfortunately, all too familiar. And those feelings can be magnified dangerously in adolescence., an age where all emotions are outsized, all passions urgent and raw. Factor in that she was a survivor of physical abuse and sexual assault, and it becomes depressingly easy to imagine the forces that drove Naika to destroy herself.
It is less easy to understand why that act was received the way it was.
The harsh laughter and cold ridicule of “people” — the word is used advisedly — who watched Naika’s suicide suggest that we flatter ourselves when we call ourselves a higher species. Apparently, only one individual tried to help; a friend saw the live feed and called police, but inadvertently sent them to the wrong address. By the time it got sorted out, Naika was beyond saving.
Miami-Dade schools chief Alberto Carvalho blames Facebook for what happened, which is as understandable as it is misguided. Might as well blame the sidewalk where Kitty Genovese was killed in 1964 as she screamed for help that didn’t come,. Or the
Facebook is an easy target, but it is not the web service whose behavior is appalling here. It is, rather, the ordinary people, the everyday Janes and Joes who could have acted to save this child, but did not. One is mindful of what’s called “the bystander effect,” which, according to Psychology Today, “occurs when the presence of others hinders an individual from intervening in an emergency situation.”
But that doesn’t explain the laughter. It does not make sense of the mocking derision of a troubled child.
No, that behavior speaks to moral stupidity, to the objectification of other people and their pain, to a selfish inability to extend compassion beyond the barricades of one’s own life. All of which have come to feel far too commonplace. It cries out for families, worship houses and schools to rededicate themselves to teaching what it means to be a truly human being. That would be a good way to give meaning to this tragedy.
It’s haunting to think Naika might have killed herself on Facebook hoping to be seen.
Yes, an audience watched her die. Then they clicked their browsers to see what else was on.
Editor’s note
This column quotes an Jan. 26 article by Carol Marbin Miller and Alex Harris that stated that a thousand people watched on Facebook Live for nearly an hour as Naika Venant, a 14-year-old foster child, live-streamed preparations to hang herself in the bathroom of a
It has since been learned that the actual number is not clear. The original figure was based on the “views” logged on the site as reported by multiple people who watched the video before it was taken down by Facebook. One thousand views may mean 1,000 individuals or it may mean significantly fewer people, with some returning several times. Moreover, it is not clear that each “view” represented someone staying with the video to the point at which she took her own life.
Six people who said they viewed the video told the Herald that cruel comments were posted, with some posts suggesting the hanging was a hoax. The comments, like the video, are no longer viewable on Facebook Live.
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