A recent incident is making headlines on various websites: Liang Ya, a female worker, fainted in a subway station in Shenzhen, Guangdong province, and was confirmed dead when ambulances arrived about 50 minutes later. Some who commented blamed passersby for being cold-blooded but that’s groundless, says an editorial in Beijing News. Excerpts:

While reporting the incident, several websites employed titles such as, “Five passed by without any lending a helping hand,” or, “Nobody helped her when she fainted”. These titles have not only successfully attracted viewers, but also prompted irrational readers to blame the passersby, as if they were responsible for Liang’s death.

An analysis of the details reveals how groundless this blames is. The monitor video of the subway station shows that Liang fainted and fell at 10:29 am and three minutes later a passerby found her and informed the subway staff. They stood by her and called the first aid center another 11 minutes later, but when the ambulance arrived at 11:18 am, Liang was pronounced dead.

Obviously, what the passersby did was right — without any professional training, one is not advised to intervene in such incidents that might be life-threatening. Calling the nearest staff or professional help is the proper thing to do and the passersby did so.

The incident has revealed possible deficiencies in subway staff training, as the staff members stood by Liang for 43 minutes without doing anything. It is advisable for the subway to provide first aid training to staff members to prevent similar tragedies from happening again.