Express & Star

COMMENT: What is it that makes us attack?

What is it that makes someone attack another human being in the street?

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Two entirely unrelated stories today show how someone can be working or driving one minute, subjected to an assault the next.

In the case of a paramedic in West Bromwich, the victim was actually trying to help the man who attacked him.

But that did not stop Aston Hamilton from kicking the ambulance worker in the shoulder.

Why he was spared time behind bars is another concern, and a sign of a leniency that is becoming all too common in the justice system.

It would have been surely a matter of great concern for magistrates had Hamilton kicked anyone the way he did.

Doing so to someone who is only trying to help, and who has no role whatsoever in tackling matters of right and wrong, makes it so much worse.

In saving lives, every second counts.

It is seconds during which lives can be changed for the worse.

Take, for example, the case of the Walsall man who was left unable to walk for perhaps the next six months because of a road rage attack.

Not one but two men assaulted the 54-year-old and left him with torn tendons, a broken knee cap and bruising.

This is not some sudden reaction or lashing out.

This is a sustained, brutal attack.

Did either of these two men at any point look at each other and wonder 'what are we doing'?

Did they leave and talk about the consequences of their actions?

Did they ponder that they may have irrevocably altered another person's life?

Do they think about their victim now and feel any remorse?

If they did, then surely they would turn themselves in and face the consequences.

As we have seen with lenient sentences, the chances are it will hardly amount to very much in terms of punishment but justice must still be done.

In both these stories we see how people can wake up in the morning and have no idea of what will befall them that day at the hands or feet of their fellow men.

It would be enough to frighten anyone off even going out or going to work, were it not another part of human nature to adapt and to get on with life.

Until the consequences of attacking other people are severe enough to be a real deterrent, this will happen again and again.

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