02. 830NEWSIT’S not the sort of thing you expect to see at 1pm on a Tuesday, not even on Charles Street: a man seemingly unconscious on the dirty paving of a bus-stop, a bottle of liquor at his feet, traffic zooming past.

Voice photographer Matthew Dwyer stumbled across the scene while out taking photos: he tried speaking to the man to see if he was alright but couldn’t get much response.

He didn’t figure it was a police emergency so, since it was a City of Vincent-marked bus stop—advertising bourbon, no less—he called the rangers. A passing bus driver was also asked to radio home base about it.

Our snapper moved on to his next job and was surprised to get a call 10 minutes later from the rangers saying they weren’t equipped to deal with it after all, weren’t going to attend and he should call the cops or an ambulance.

Concerned no-one had seen to the guy Dwyer scooted back, to find the man had cracked his face open on something.

The man got aggro when Dwyer tried helping him up. He then managed to stumble his way onto a bus and that was it.

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2 responses to “Charles on Tuesday”

  1. 123 Avatar
    123

    Why on earth would your photographer contact the Council Rangers and not the Police or Paramedics after finding a barely concious person lying on the ground? The fact that this is then worthy of being front page news indicates a very slow news week.

  2. Matthew Avatar
    Matthew

    Clearly thousands of cars had passed the scene that morning, each driver deciding in a blink not to get involved. With the high cost of ambulances for non-life threatening emergencies, and often reported slow police response times, I am not surprised. Perhaps more dependable support from authorities in ambiguous cases like this would give every driver and passer-by the confidence to stop and offer their help.

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