An East Port-of-Spain res­i­dent who as­sist­ed in res­cu­ing a man from a dead­ly fire on Fri­day night is ap­peal­ing to the pub­lic to show more em­pa­thy.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia at his Prince Street busi­ness, the man, who did not want to be iden­ti­fied, said that while he was help­ing the in­jured man—who suf­fered a bro­ken leg—on­look­ers were di­rect­ing him and oth­ers on what to do, but re­fused to as­sist, choos­ing in­stead to record the in­ci­dent on their phones.

“What I don’t like about the whole thing is that when we came down­stairs with the guy, the whole street was full of peo­ple. Every­body just had a cell phone, just video­tap­ing. I mean, there’s noth­ing much you could do, but we could at least help out with the sit­u­a­tion, you un­der­stand what I’m say­ing? Every­body just on the phone and they’re telling me to move him out of the way, in­stead of some­body com­ing to as­sist us. I didn’t like that part.”