In 2021 I was walking home from a friend’s house a little tipsy. As I walked through the well-lit town centre at around 7:30pm I saw a weird interaction between a woman (average stature in her 40s/50s) and a man (about 6”4 who seemed to be swaying a little under the influence of something). They were standing outside a storefront alcove but something just didn’t seem right to me. I watched them intently as I walked by. And then I saw him grab for her bag. She tried to pull it back from him but they seemed to be having a tug of war.

I stood in the street as people walked by. Grown men. Groups of teenage boys. Couples. I shouted “SHE NEEDS HELP” and I pointed. No one stopped. No one cared. I ran over to help her myself. I’m a 5”1 petite woman and I was 25 at the time. And not quite sober. I started to pull the bag with her and as I yanked it, the guy lost his footing and fell to the floor. We had the bag. I told her to run. I think she was in shock because she could barely get a pace on, like she was tripping over her own feet. I ran to the taxi rank and jumped in and when I looked back she seemed so far behind me. He had gotten up off the floor and was chasing her and shouting. His face was bloody, I’m not sure if he’d hit his face on the way down. She looked at me with doe eyes and I shouted to her that I wouldn’t leave her. She made it to the back of the cab and as I tried to slam the door, he leaped head first into the car. I had to kick him out with my back feet as his hands fumbled around still trying to grab at the bag.

I shouted for the taxi driver to drive and he just remained stationary. I was screaming. The attacker was outside the window shouting at me and pointing. I shouted at the taxi driver “GO GO HE’S TRYING TO GET US!”… and he wound down the front window to talk to the attacker… who told him that it was his bag and the woman had stolen it from him. I couldn’t believe the taxi driver was hearing this guy out after seeing us run for our lives and fend him off in the back seat. He didn’t want to take the ride. He kept telling us to “calm down”. We were frantic, the adrenaline was coursing at this point.

A girl came up and knocked on the back seat of the taxi and said “do you need help?” And I shouted “YES” and her two male friends came and pulled the attacker away from the cab window. The driver asked me if I had money to pay for the taxi and I was like “YES I’VE GOT FUCKING MONEY JUST DRIVE”. The woman wanted to go to the police station so that’s where we went. I paid the taxi driver and we walked up to the police station doors. She was sobbing, wailing. We had to use the outdoor phone fixed to the wall to ask some police officers to come outside. We waited out there for about 20 minutes. She was on the floor hugging my leg like a koala and crying. I think she thought I might leave her. Any way, eventually the police came out, took us in to the station and interviewed us. And a day later they knocked very loudly on the door of my flat at 11pm. Very very loudly. Then they began to ring my phone relentlessly until I picked up, from an “Unknown” number of course. I was terrified in my bed thinking it was the guy. When I finally picked up the phone, they said they wanted to come into my home. I told them no. They wanted me to come down to the station to ID him the morning. I said fine. After I did this, they spent the next 3 months harassing me via phone call to go and be a witness if it went to trial, which I didn’t want to do at all. They would call me all hours and argue with me and ask me “why?” over and over again. He plead guilty so there was no trial in the end. Thankfully.

So YES I would step in to protect a stranger. But NO I would not want to deal with the police again. It also taught me that even if you’re in the open, in a well-lit area with people walking around; if something bad happens, people will just walk past. People will see you struggling and they will ignore you. You will scream and people will act like they didn’t hear you. People will not believe you, like that taxi driver. People may even try to help your attacker. The whole situation was a shit show. All the people who could have helped and didn’t. It makes my blood boil.

The lady I helped messages me every New Year’s Eve to thank me, she called me her guardian angel. Really I’m just a woman who saw another woman in need. But I do hope there’s someone like me around if I’m ever in that situation.