A Melbourne man has revealed why a ‘really bad’ gut feeling prevented him from helping a woman ‘screaming in pain’ on the ground next to her car.
Aaron was driving late at night with his girlfriend when he came across the disturbing scene on Filbert Street in Caulfield South, south east of the city.
“When I turned into the street I saw a vehicle ahead with no lights, so I blasted them twice,” he explained in a video posted to social media.
The car, parked “strategically” in the curve of the quiet suburban road, according to Aaron, remained suspiciously dark as it drove past it.
“I approached the vehicle and then I noticed that the driver’s side door was wide open,” he continued.
“My girlfriend and I both noticed a woman’s body lying on the floor outside the vehicle, and we were both very scared.
“She held her leg and screamed like she was dying. She told me to come out, screaming, please help me, come out, please, I’m dying.”
Aaron was driving to pick up food with his girlfriend when he came across the bizarre scene on a suburban street in Caulfield South, south-east Melbourne.
Aaron told his girlfriend to stay in the car and unbuckled his seatbelt as he prepared to get out and attend to the woman, when a “really bad” gut feeling brought him to a halt.
“I was so close to opening the door. I grabbed the handle,’ he said.
‘I don’t know why I didn’t open the door, I just drove off. I had this gut feeling. I couldn’t tell you what it was.
“My girlfriend was in the car and couldn’t understand why I drove off and didn’t help.”
Aaron told his girlfriend “it’s not real” and asked her to call triple zero, and Victoria Police arrived on the scene within minutes.
Officers asked the couple to stay in their car while they searched nearby streets, but the woman and car were nowhere to be found.
They told Aaron he had done the right thing by calling the police.
“They told me there was a situation like this three weeks ago where a woman pretended to be hurt and an innocent person went out and tried to help and got carjacked if he wasn’t hurt,” he said.
Officers said a man was ambushed less than a month earlier in the same scenario and hit in the back of the head with a rock and “cold knocked out.”
After turning onto Filbert Street, Aaron and his girlfriend saw a woman next to a dark car “screaming she was dying” and holding her leg.
Aaron said he was “really lucky” to have decided not to help the woman and urged other drivers to stay aware of similar setups.
“It’s f***ing scary and it happens,” he said. “Never get out of your car, always stay in your car and call triple zero.”
However, the police later said that they found the woman and that she was really injured and needed help.
“The community member dialed 000 and left the scene,” a police statement read.
Officers attended and located the woman at her nearby address.
“She sought help after her car started rolling when she got out of her vehicle, injuring her leg.”
Despite Aaron being skeptical of her cries for help, many felt he was doing the right thing by trusting his gut feeling, and several shared their own horror stories.
“Something like this happened to a dear friend in 2002,” one person wrote.
“It was a woman with a crying baby, he doesn’t remember anything after he jumped out of the car and was found in the middle of the street by the garbage truck, unconscious with a head bleeding. He lost his car and has a fractured skull.’
Another said similar setups had been happening in Sydney for “years”.
“Never go outside and don’t open doors for anyone,” advised the user.