No good deed went unpunished this weekend. Gothamist points out that one person was pummeled and another was killed while trying to save other people. Tragically, a 28-year-old was left dead Saturday after trying to save his brother from an angry mob. The fatal incident started when Bronx resident Alex Cruz looked out the window of his family’s apartment and saw a group of twenty teenagers beating his older brother, Javier, in the street. Javier pleaded for his brother to stay upstairs, but Alex came to his rescue anyway. When he got downstairs, the teens attacked him and he died on his apartment-building steps from knife wounds to the neck and torso. Javier escaped unharmed.
In less deadly news, a 23-year-old financial associate was beaten unconscious early Sunday after coming to the aid of a woman being harassed by two “thugs” (in the words of the New York Post). Andrew Mindnich was on his way home at 12:30 a.m. when he came upon a pair of men accosting a woman on a sidewalk in the West Village. “I heard her saying, ‘Leave me alone.’ I said, ‘What’s going on?’ It was a spur-of-the-moment thing,” Mindnich told the Post. The assailants then attacked Mindnich, “punching, kicking and stomping him in the head and chest.” Officers arrested the two men, and the woman who had been rescued fled the scene. This is where Cindy Adams would say, “Only in New York, kid. Only in New York.” But sometimes we just don’t have the heart. —Noelle Hancock
Samaritan Pummeled in Village [NYP]
Police: Mob Kills Man Trying to Protect Brother [WNBC]
Helping Others Results in a Beating and a Death [Gothamist]
