Warning – Graphic Violence – Toddler Hit by Trucks and Left to Die  (The video is the smaller box on the lower left of the page.  It takes a few seconds to load.)

This story first appeared on October 17, 2011.

GUANGZHOU – A 2-year-old girl who was ignored by passers-by as she lay injured after being run over twice, has been declared “brain dead” by doctors, who say she could die at any time.

Footage from a surveillance camera presented on local TV shows Yue Yue was walking in a hardware market in Foshan, Guangdong province about 100 meters away from her home, when she was run over by a van at 5:26 pm. Three passers-by who noticed the injured girl chose to ignore her.

The girl was then run over by a light-duty truck. The riders of four electric bicycles, a tricycle and three passers-by all chose to ignore her and no one at a shop close to the scene came to her aid.

Seven minutes after she was first hit by the van, a 57-year-old rag collector noticed the girl and moved her to the curb. The woman then tried talking to the shopkeeper but received no response. She then walked into the street and a few seconds later, the girl’s mother appears and rushes away with the girl.

The girl received emergency surgery in Foshan before being transferred to the General Hospital of the Guangzhou Military Command of the People’s Liberation Army in Guangzhou on the same day.

The girl was critically injured, with no spontaneous respiration and close to brain death when she arrived at the hospital, said Wen Qiang, deputy director of the intensive care unit of the hospital.

The little girl was declared “brain dead” by the hospital on Sunday afternoon and could die at any time, according to a doctor surnamed Peng.

The most optimistic estimate is that the girl will remain in a vegetative state on life support.

Police caught the truck driver soon after the incident and the van driver turned himself in on Sunday afternoon.

Before the accident, the girl, just back with her mother from the kindergarten, was left alone at the hardware shop of the family when her mother went to collect dried clothes. When she returned, the mother could not find her daughter at the shop or anywhere nearby until she heard the rag-collecter shout, according to Guangzhou Daily.

According to reports the van driver had just split up from his girlfriend and was talking on his mobile phone when he hit the girl.

“If she is dead, I may pay only about 20,000 yuan ($3,125). But if she is injured, it may cost me hundreds of thousands yuan,” said the driver over the phone to the media, before he gave himself up to the police.

When she ran from shop to shop for the identity of the girl, the rag collector was told by a number of shopkeepers to mind her own business.

There have been other examples of the public failing  to assist injured parties. 

The public has been instructed by the Chinese Ministry of Health on how to behave in these kinds of situations.  In guidelines issued in September, 2011 on how to help elderly people who have fallen down, the public are advised: “Don’t rush to lend a hand to the elderly after seeing them fall over. It should be handled by different measures in different situations.”

The Ministry said the guidelines have nothing to do with morality and ethics but explain how to deliver assistance in a scientifically proper way.

Hmmmmm….yeah, sure.  Wouldn’t want to live there [China], thank you very much.

As one travels the globe, or just reads about news collected from different parts of the world, sometimes one is reminded just how lucky it is to be living right here in the good ole USA.