One Cop No Legs

I am looking for translators to write this post up in Polish. Email me if you are interested.

Korean translation here (한국). Spanish translation (en Español). French translation here (en Français). German version (in deutscher Sprache).

Warning! This video has caused adverse reactions, including vomiting, in some viewers. Please exercise caution in viewing this video.

This is one seriously messed up video. A traffic cop in Vietnam gets hit by a truck and cut in half. For about five minutes, bystanders surround him but don't know what to do. Idiotically, no other cops, ambulances, doctors, anyone, show up. The poor guy just lies there. However, the video does end at a little over 5 minutes when the ambulance finally shows up.

He realizes what is going on, and it's like he keeps trying to stuff his guts back in. What's even more weird is he keeps up a running conversation with the crowd around him the whole time and does not even appear to be in tremendous pain. It's almost like he's asking, "Hey, could you stuff my guts back in and put my legs back on please? This is really a drag lying here chopped in half you know. For one thing, I can't get up."

People are complaining about the bystanders and saying that they are not doing anything. This is translated into cultural critique of Vietnam being a backwards Third World mess where life is not valued. However, if you translate the soundtrack from Vietnamese to English, a different picture emerges.

The people are crowding around, telling him to be calm and that they have called the police, but that the ambulance is being slowed down by traffic. Others are trying to stop traffic so the ambulance can get through quicker. Others suggest getting a local doctor who lives nearby. A Christian woman tells him to pray to Jesus to save himself. The man says, "I'm going to die..." At one point, angrily, he says, "Stop taking pictures of me!"

A screenshot from the horrible video.

Here is a good second by second wrap-up of the footage for those who do not wish to watch it:

00:00: The video opens on a man lying on his back in the street. Both legs have been ripped from his body and are lying far askew to his right. He turns his head and lifts his arm to his hat. There is a small pool of fresh blood on the ground, and the severed area is well-coated with blood and viscera. There is a good-sized crowd around; none of them come to his aid. To the camera right there is a large dump truck, presumably the one who ran over this victim. Heavy traffic passes by on the street.

00:00:34: A man from the crowd moves in to talk to the victim. The victim reaches down to his waist, appearing to try to unbuckle his belt.

00:00:46: The same bystander approaches again, and the victim reaches briefly to his right, touching his severed legs. He continues to work on his belt area, sometimes pulling hard enough to cause the viscera from his open wound to move. The camera moves in a little closer, and you can make out the small intestine.

00:00:58: The victim lifts his head to look down at his wound. He sees, lays his head back down. He looks to his right at his legs again. He is no longer fiddling with his belt, but instead appears to be picking the edge of skin away from the wound.

00:01:26: The victim lifts his head briefly and reaches his right arm towards the camera. The bystander moves around and lays something on the wounded man's chest. The victim appears to be trying to pull the skin from his stomach down to cover his wound.
He lifts his head up a couple of times to look at his wound.

00:03:47: A woman is standing over him, speaking. He talks to her.

00:04:07: The victim lifts his head again, then his shirt. He uses his hand to wave over someone from the street. Traffic, mostly motorcycles, continues to pass. From the video, it is uncertain whether this man died. He remains conscious and alert throughout, and clearly has control over what muscles are still connected to his brain and spine.

This video is making the rounds on the Internet these days and it's getting pretty popular, although it has not gone totally viral yet. It showed up on the Net around August 20, 2009. It was on Youtube for a bit, but it quickly got removed.

We don't know what happened to the guy, but it appears that he apparently died. There is some confusion between this man and Peng Shulin, a Chinese man who suffered a similar accident. That incident occurred in China in 1995, and this incident occurred in Vietnam just recently.