Killing the good Samaritans
by Sebastian Milbank, Artillery Row:
Last year a teenager, Tieran Carmody, murdered Max Richardson outside a children’s play park in Harlow. The former has now been convicted of murder. What had led to this senseless killing? Was it a mugging gone wrong? A gang fight? No — Max had made the mistake of asking him not to hang around a children’s play area smoking cannabis.
By any reasonable standard, Max did the right thing. He did what we would want people to do in that situation. He didn’t go looking for trouble — he was a local, this was the park in which his children played. Tieran had been loitering around it for days, smoking cannabis and scaring other families. When confronted, he immediately lashed out, throwing Max to the ground. Not content with this, he went to his backpack and took out a machete, and — coldly and calmly — stabbed his victim through the stomach, despite Max’s attempts to surrender.
At worst you might get shoved, punched, kicked — or stabbed
This was not a scene that played out in the third world — it happened in broad daylight, in front of parents and children, in Essex, in 2023. It is crimes like this that figure into the grim calculation that so many of us make when confronted with individuals misbehaving in public.
You see someone swearing loudly on the phone. A group of teenagers blaring music on the tube. A man smoking cannabis outside your window. Two men walking down the road, drunkenly singing, tearing branches off bushes in peoples gardens. Do you confront them? You want to — you’re annoyed, you’re angry, perhaps even a little self-righteous. But you pause, you do the maths, you look ahead a few steps. It’s awkward to confront people. At best, they’re likely to ignore you, sneer at you. Perhaps you’ll be screamed at, intimidated. Maybe they’ll just turn the music up. At worst you might get shoved, punched, kicked — or stabbed.
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