West Coast Connection Forum
Lifestyle => Train of Thought => Topic started by: Elano on May 09, 2008, 12:40:59 PM
-
No one called police for over an hour as the victim cried for help near Poinsettia Park. Residents say the area has been growing more dangerous, and they are organizing to fight crime.
She'd tell him, time and again: Don't walk at night. The place has changed. It's not safe. They'd been married, though, for 44 years. After a certain point, it wasn't really a conversation; it was like a song they'd played a thousand times, enjoyed more for routine than anything else.
"Ne perezhivaitye," he'd tell her. "Don't worry."
He left their little apartment in West Hollywood at 9 p.m. March 9, a Sunday, walking out past a bookshelf full of all the dictionaries required of a Kazakhstani in L.A.: one in English, one in Russian, a Russian-to-English, a Spanish-to-English.
Katan Khaimov was a 70-year-old diabetic, but he was in great shape. He often walked for an hour or more, so his family didn't worry at first. But when 11 p.m. passed, his wife, Tamara, went looking for him.
On the west side of Poinsettia Park, below Santa Monica Boulevard, she pulled her car next to an intersection that had been cordoned off with yellow crime-scene tape.
"What happened here?" she asked a police officer.
"Who are you?" he said.
"I'm looking for my husband."
The fact that Khaimov was slain has been hard enough for his neighborhood to accept. But the awful coda of his life has added to the soul-searching. Neighbors, it turns out, heard him dying -- crying for help after being stabbed in the stomach -- for more than an hour before anyone called the police.
Officials say several residents in Khaimov's neighborhood, which straddles the cities of West Hollywood and Los Angeles, believed his moans were the sounds of a vagrant. Cars also passed by while he was lying next to the street, still alive, his head and one arm flopped over the curb.
"Nobody cared," said his 26-year-old daughter, Olga, the youngest of his four children. "To think that people didn't answer a man's cries for help. . . . Even if it is a bum. So what? Call the cops. It's a person, a human being."
There have been no arrests. Khaimov was not robbed, and police have declined to speculate about what might have motivated his attacker. It's unclear how many people saw or heard Khaimov that night, and it's unclear whether he could have been saved had he been taken to a hospital earlier.
Regardless, there is a sense here that Khaimov was failed, somehow.
"It is a shocking thing that nobody went out to help," said 47-year-old Paul Lerner, a public safety advocate and a healthcare marketing consultant who has lived in the area for five years.
The neighborhood has long fancied itself something of an urban tribe, where Russian-speaking Jews like Khaimov shared the narrow, leafy streets and the boxy apartment buildings with fixed-income seniors, club-hopping hipsters and young gays.
It was never going to be mistaken for Mayberry, but it was -- or was supposed to be -- a place where people took care of one another. A place where, on your nightly constitutional, you might encounter misfits and oddballs, but not murderers.
Katan Khaimov and his family lived in a house he built with his father in a factory village in Kazakhstan, north of the Uzbekistan capital of Tashkent. He was the head of an engineering company and helped oversee the construction of gymnasiums and hospitals, but it was not enough.
"The way it worked was that you did not get paid well unless you stole. And he was an honest man," Olga Khaimova said. When the United States offered his family immigration visas in 1995, he jumped at the chance.
"He moved here for us," Olga Khaimova said.
He pushed the value of hard work and education on his four children. It worked -- two grown daughters, who now live in Israel, are a music teacher and a doctor; Olga's brother is a pharmacist; and Olga is studying to become a nurse practitioner.
Khaimov, meanwhile, found that his educational degrees did not translate in the United States. His days of being a construction engineer were behind him, so he became a renaissance man instead.
He sang baritone in a community choir. He kayaked the Colorado River. He grew tomatoes and cucumbers in a community garden. He was nice to everyone, even Olga's 4-pound iguana, T-Rex, whom he allowed to crawl under his sweater on cold days.
It was a simple life. It was what he wanted. He was not rich. He had no cellphone. He had no driver's license, which is one reason he walked, sometimes three times a day -- to the market, to the local parks, to Runyon Canyon, a popular hiking area.
"He was just a wonderful man," his wife said the other day, her eyes facing the floor, her voice nearly a whisper. "He liked to live."
Within the last year or so, his neighborhood began to change. Indeed, some argue that no one should be blamed for failing to come to Khaimov's aid because the neighborhood has been inundated with a gritty cast of lost souls -- mentally ill and homeless people, junkies and prostitutes.
-
This world we live in is such a sick place.
-
fuck people. >:(
-
"To think that people didn't answer a man's cries for help. . . . Even if it is a bum. So what? Call the cops. It's a person, a human being."
On the fuckin' real!!
What the fuck is wrong wit people??
-
"To think that people didn't answer a man's cries for help. . . . Even if it is a bum. So what? Call the cops. It's a person, a human being."
On the fuckin' real!!
What the fuck is wrong wit people??
this "story" makes me feel real sick
-
It's group behaviour, this is a well known phenomenon. Most of y'all prolly wouldn't have called for any help either.
-
thats why i said "fuck people".
-
It's group behaviour, this is a well known phenomenon. Most of y'all prolly wouldn't have called for any help either.
Yep. Each person thinks that someone else must've already called the police and in the end the police aren't notified until well after the crime has happened.
-
Sad but....
I hear bums screaming outside of my apartment all night every night. Usually because of alcohol or heroin withdrawal. It is a damn shame what happened, and it makes me sick of humans, but like dude above said, we'd all be guilty if it were any of us in that neighborhood.
-
fuck people. >:(
-
It's group behaviour, this is a well known phenomenon. Most of y'all prolly wouldn't have called for any help either.
yeah its been done in a psychology study
-
LMAO @ people saying people suck for not doing anything are probably the same ones that say fucking bums why dont we just kill them already. And for the record I probably just would of walked away as well.
-
1964
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitty_Genovese
-
Lol@finding this remotely excuseable. A bum shouting around because of lack of beer is not exactly comparable to a man being stabbed and dying. I've been calling for help when I saw people needing it... and I have seen other people calling for help too... very normal behaviour, nothing noble at all.
-
A bum shouting around because of lack of beer is not exactly comparable to a man being stabbed and dying.
-
And for the record I probably just would of walked away as well.
wow ::)
-
i would love to say that all of us posting here would help but the fact of the matter is, we fear the worst. We hear someone cry for help in a dangerous area, we fear the worst. everyone thinks "why is this man screaming for help. someone must of harmed this man" S o it is the human nature to fear what we don't know. Im sure the if the man was lying in the middle of the street then we would help but if he is hidden and then screams, very few people will search and seek out those in need. as we fear it will put ourselves in danger. So the question comes down to them or me?
Just my thoughts
-
typical California lol We dont really pay much attention to anyone around us...
-
1964
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitty_Genovese
First thing that came to my mind :-X
this phenomenon is known as the bystander effect
-
typical California lol We dont really pay much attention to anyone around us...
and thats why i hate the fucking people here, i'm probably gonna eventually move away from here
-
typical California lol We dont really pay much attention to anyone around us...
and thats why i hate the fucking people here, i'm probably gonna eventually move away from here
I'd just say that's the city mentality. Not California. There are good people out there, who usually move out areas like Los Angeles/major metropolitan areas, you can find them in smaller towns all over the state.
-
typical California lol We dont really pay much attention to anyone around us...
and thats why i hate the fucking people here, i'm probably gonna eventually move away from here
I'd just say that's the city mentality. Not California. There are good people out there, who usually move out areas like Los Angeles/major metropolitan areas, you can find them in smaller towns all over the state.
yeah but that wouldn't be my only reason, California is also very overpriced....EVERYTHING.
-
typical California lol We dont really pay much attention to anyone around us...
and thats why i hate the fucking people here, i'm probably gonna eventually move away from here
I'd just say that's the city mentality. Not California. There are good people out there, who usually move out areas like Los Angeles/major metropolitan areas, you can find them in smaller towns all over the state.
yeah but that wouldn't be my only reason, California is also very overpriced....EVERYTHING.
lol YES. My dad moved from Salinas CA, to Spokane WA. He went from a 500k two bedroom 2.5 bath to a 300k 5 bedroom 4.5 bath 3 story w/ 3 car garage crib. Shit is disgusting.
-
typical California lol We dont really pay much attention to anyone around us...
and thats why i hate the fucking people here, i'm probably gonna eventually move away from here
I'd just say that's the city mentality. Not California. There are good people out there, who usually move out areas like Los Angeles/major metropolitan areas, you can find them in smaller towns all over the state.
yeah but that wouldn't be my only reason, California is also very overpriced....EVERYTHING.
lol YES. My dad moved from Salinas CA, to Spokane WA. He went from a 500k two bedroom 2.5 bath to a 300k 5 bedroom 4.5 bath 3 story w/ 3 car garage crib. Shit is disgusting.
Exactly, fuck all that, I don't care if I live in Minnesota as long as I'm living nice. Specially if I plan on having a family etc etc. I really wouldn't wanna be anywhere near a place like Los Angeles then. I really didn't understand this a few years ago when my older cousin who has kids told me but now it all makes perfect sense.
-
Move anywhere BETWEEN LA county and downtown SD, close to the beach or maybe Santa Barbara area. doesn't get any better then that in the US besides maybe parts of south Florida
-
Move anywhere BETWEEN LA county and downtown SD, close to the beach or maybe Santa Barbara area. doesn't get any better then that in the US besides maybe parts of south Florida
thats quite an opinion.
-
This would have never happend in the 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, or 80s... people used to care about each other more... what a sad world we live in... :'( :'(