Honestly, I find it somewhat revolting to see how people here analyze the moves of everyone except the perpetrator, in hindsight (hindsight is 20/20).
Really people, this is not a football match. You can sit and analyze and come up with ideas, but you're not taking into consideration the shock and surprize element.
How many of you walk down the street expecting to see such a thing happen? How many of you have seen a fight with an armed man? A stabbing?
People are just not trained and not prepared for such a situation. Then there is an element of denial, and diffusion of responsibility.
Amid such confusion, it's hard to step out of the default "bystander" mode.
Don't underestimate your enemy, and don't overestimate yourself.
Moreover I don't think this is the main point in this situation. Many public or semi-public stabbings happened across the world.
They are well documented discussed, studied by academics. But no we Lebanese have to be special, because in the US (or Europe or whatever) people don't help each other but in Lebanon it's different, etc. Well no maybe not, maybe we're not that special!
I think the main point is how this man goes from one murder to another and always gets away with it. Now it's not sure he'll get away with this one.
He will probably be scarified for his employer's benefit - take the fall for them, and they will remain. The same people, on top. How is that a solution? Well it's not.
Yet, we don't even know if there will be justice, or if he'll get away again.
Well come to think of it, if you want to discuss and speculate what could have done, maybe it's a good thing after all, maybe if this will happen in front of you then you will be better prepared to tackle it.
eWizzard wroteHere's one of many things that could've been done without the need for bullets, running over with a car, stun guns, pepper sprays, hell not even shoes. Just one or two level-headed men are required for this.
I think that, probably, all it would take is one person to set the chain reaction in motion. Maybe in this case everybody was waiting for others to do the first move.
eWizzard wrote
Unless I'm mistaken, the thing I've circled is a road barrier, the water-fillable kind. Pretty sure it's not filled with water, so it should be pretty lightweight, between 4 and 12 kg max. You get two men, or just one fairly strong guy, have it picked up and used as a ram against Tarek. He gets backed against a wall and is forced to lose his knife in order to deal with the ramming. This buys enough time for Georges to be pulled away from immediate danger. Tarek, now unarmed, is subdued by the rest of the men at the scene, while others try their best to summon the lazy ass policemen at the nearby station. Failing that, Tarek is eventually beaten and chased away, escaping in Lina Haidar's car, only to be caught later on and prosecuted. No lives lost, no innocents go to jail. Mission accomplished.
There are a lot of assumptions here. One have to check first if the road barrier is filled with water or not (I'd say they are). Secondly, if they aren't, you think a block of empty plastic will neutralize a raging madman with a knife? Are you willing to bet your life on it? Then you have to find and persuade some other shocked stranger to risk their lives with you, within like 20 seconds.
TheStunMan wrote
Edit: And to the guy saying no one could've done anything, im sorry to bust you on this, but yes you could've done different things in this situation such us distraction, i assume there was two cars with no driver you could've used one car to either distract him or ran over him, or use the honk or at least use the car and crash over his car. Such situations you have to think quickly on how can i stop the beating using anything around me.
I agree with much of what you said, just want to point out that in this situation, distraction is what most people seem to be trying to do. I can imagine that everybody is shouting, and at some point there is a car that arrives, I don't know if it was an attempt to distract but it looked like one to me. Just speculating though. I don't think it worked or would have worked. In this case this is an experienced murderer, and he intends on killing his victim, he's not just yelling around in a show of force and intimidation - in other words he's not giving anyone a chance. The murderer had all the chances on his side, but he preferred killing someone instead of walking away.
PS: No offence or harm meant to anyone! I can see that this topic is making some noise, which is good: people care. But it's also a sad since there is not much we can do.