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Imagine if there’d been a security camera covering the spot where a lone traveller, later rescued by the Good Samaritan, was robbed and left for dead. The attack itself – on a stretch of lonely road between Jerusalem and Jericho, a place notorious to this day – was pretty much par for the course. It’s what happened afterwards that became immortalised in the Gospel of St Luke.
As the victim lay stunned and bleeding, a priest came by. But instead of helping, he deliberately crossed the road and scurried off. Soon after, a Levite arrived. He did exactly the same… not his problem.
Flash-forward two millennia to last week and the little town of Bainsford near Falkirk. A doorbell camera captured our timeless drama. It featured Patricia Stewart, 72, widow and grandmother, who unwittingly played the part of traveller on the road to Jericho. A Royal Mail postman was self-cast as heartless passer-by.
Patricia, who has osteoporosis, had just fallen heavily in the deep snow outside her front door. She’d cracked her head on a stone step and was unable to get up.
Fortunately – so she thought – the postie arrived moments later.
Rescue! Freezing Patricia could barely speak, just about managing to groan: “Aarghhh!”
A motion-activated doorbell cam on the house next door recorded what happened next.
The postie – standing directly above Patricia and staring down dispassionately at her – says: “Nah… can’t help you, pal. I’m knackered.”
Patricia: “Uhh?”
Postie: “Absolutely knackered… I’ve been out since (inaudible) this morning, in this weather…”
Patricia (faintly): “Oh… OK…”
Telling her to put her slippers on, the postie saunters away, leaving Patricia prostrate in the snow behind him. It’s unbelievable.
He actually stops and glances back at her in complete disinterest – he could be looking at a stray cat or even a discarded bag of rubbish – before continuing his round. He didn’t even raise the alarm with neighbours.
The well of human insensitivity can run deep. In this horrible man’s case, it’s seemingly bottomless.
The video is widely available online. If you view it, prepare to be viscerally disturbed. Patricia – who was rescued 20 minutes later by her Good Samaritan, Hermes delivery driver Karolina Domska, 22 – says she’s still in shock: not from the fall, but the postman’s cold-blooded indifference. “I just couldn’t believe he walked away and left me.”
Royal Mail have apologised personally to Patricia and have named the postman as 51-year-old Thomas McCafferty. He’s been suspended pending investigation.
Can he be sacked? He should but probably won’t be. It was more a moral crime than a legal one. Of course, that priest and the Levite were never held to account. But then, there was no social media in their day. McCafferty has already been hung, drawn and quartered online.
Deservedly, too.
