STOP HIM! STOP HIM!

I worked on 45^th street between 9^th and 10^th.  Leaving work with an attaché briefcase at that time, as I used to do, I walked towards Times Square. Between 9^th and 8^th .  I see a crowd running towards me yelling “STOP HIM! STOP HIM!”  At first I don’t know what they said, and then I figure it out.  Emerging out of the field, down the block in front of me, I see a guy running towards me with a lady’s white inexpensive plastic pocket book.  I don’t want to get involved, but I figure I must.  Just as he runs near me and is about to go by, I get in his way and give him a body block, briefcase between our chests, and take him backwards, down to the ground.  The crowd gets to us, and pounces on him.  It seems he snatched the pocketbook out of the lap of a wheel-chair bound lady.  The crowd proceeded to kick him, and it appeared, to kill him.  Again I didn’t want to be involved, but again felt I was supposed to.  I was put in the position of having to defend him, deflecting murderous blows, from their feet and from weapons the crowd had picked up off the street. The police quickly arrived, as they do in Manhattan, and took him into custody.  I wasn’t sure if what I had done either time, was the right thing to do.

What I was sure about, I wanted to have nothing further to do with this street theater (as you might call it), and walked away.