LONDON —

Jeering onlookers goaded a teenager in Britain to jump to his death, undermining police efforts to talk him down, and then took pictures of the body, the MailOnline reported Wednesday. According to the paper, as 17-year-old Shaun Dykes prepared to jump from the top of a multi-story carpark in Derby, northern England, spectators allegedly shouted to him: “How far can you bounce?”

As Dykes hesitated for three hours on the ledge while police unsuccessfully tried to reason him out of taking his life, teenagers who had gathered below shouted “Jump” and “Get on with it,” according to police and witnesses.

Then after Dykes lay in a crumpled heap on the pavement, the same hecklers rushed out from behind the police cordon to take photos of the body.

“When he (Dykes) fell, lots of people were screaming and crying but there were several groups of youths who ran from behind the cordon and looked like they were taking pictures with their mobile phones,” a local shopkeeper was quoted as telling the MailOnline.

Dykes was believed to have been suffering from depression and struggling to overcome a relationship breakdown.

Superintendent Andy Hough, of Derbyshire police, told the MailOnline he was disappointed and disturbed by the people heard encouraging Dykes to jump.

“I find it a disturbing and shocking reflection on society when people feel inclined to do that,” Hough said. “Negotiators were working with the man threatening to jump and it was their job to talk to him in the hope of changing his mind. We really need the public to work with us, not against us. It was a very disappointing situation.”

Wire reports

Latest 15 of 62 Total Comments Show All

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  Sarge at 04:36 PM JST - 2nd October

  Cleo, there are many fine, upstanding young people in the old country. No need to cut your links with the old country. In fact, you should strengthen them in order to make it a better place so such an ugly incident as this will not happen.

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  Thenewfront at 05:22 PM JST - 2nd October

  I was in the Metropolitan Polive for 18 years, and these type of "people" became more of a problem as my career progressed.

  I feek really sorry for thisd kid, and for the officers trying to assist him. It is very traumatic dealing with cases like this, many suffer from PTSD and othe mental problems.

  The kids would have been arrested in London for obstruction. I don't think the law has change sinc ei left. The y would only receive a fine or possible community service.

  This is a terrible indictment of British society. How can thsese sick indviduals live with themselves?

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  USARonin at 05:37 PM JST - 2nd October

  We get a lot of video like this about England on such channels as A&E, Bravo, CourtTV, etc.

  Football hooliganism seems to be a cultural thing that's spread beyond England's borders to include my southern hemisphere. I'd love to see these guys take on the Taliban in the mountains of Afghanistan-Pakistan. Film it and put it on cable.

• 

  YangYong at 08:14 PM JST - 2nd October

  There must be a way of prosecuting these 'people'?

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  Madverts at 09:05 PM JST - 2nd October

  Cow76,

  "Dyke" can refer to a lesbian in English - and I'm pretty sure in American too? Normaly though, it means a ditch in the UK. Presumae that as the reference to Zappa, not that I particularly like his stuff, but it's true Bobby Brown is kinda funny....

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  ichinensei at 09:41 PM JST - 2nd October

  unfortunately, there are these kinds of idiots everywhere in the world. How they become like that is unclear. The police should have arrested the hecklers for "disturbing the peace". Not sure if they have that in the UK

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  flammenwerfer at 09:44 PM JST - 2nd October

  As Tmarie said, this people, is not a new phenomenon people indicative of a deteriorating society. Many many years ago when my grandfather was a young man he was part of a crowd that watched a man leap to his death from the observation look out of a tall Church spire. He recalled that people in the crowd too were egging on this chap urging/chanting for him to jump and how he was shocked by it all etc. That story has stuck with me for long time, I think at the time my grandfather was trying to teach a 'moral of the story' type deal i.e people sometimes do crazy things and you should try to help them not cheer them to do it - have compassion. But nonetheless its been happening for eons. In Roman times the crowd cheered on gladiators as they slaughtered each other. Pride, K1 UFC etc are extremely popular as tough blokes smash the beejesus of each other as the crowd soak it up. Cheering crowds in certain countries watch people guilty of almost nothing get stoned to death or hung in public.

  If it were just one person, I doubt it would have happened, but the the crowd emboldening each other with the thought of some bloody action, sadly turned into the Romans at the Colosseum. As disgusting as their behaviour was, it doesn't surprise me.

  As society as become more civilized you would hope incidents like this would never happen, but....

• 

  TokyoXtreme at 09:52 PM JST - 2nd October

  We probably should be grateful that the mob of hooligans wasn't cheering on a state-sponsored public execution. Even in tragedy we can count our blessings.

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  USARonin at 10:02 PM JST - 2nd October

  Tokyo, this was mob-sponsored execution of the most public kind.

  What blessings are you counting?

  In most public executions in soccer stadius in Muslim governments and Communist China, the individual isn't usually humiliated to death for public entertainment.

  Egypt and Communist China march the poor bastard/bastardess out, kill the individual quickly and move on.

  I'm sorry again. What "blessings", Tokyo?

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  Betzee at 10:40 PM JST - 2nd October

  In most public executions in soccer stadius in Muslim governments and Communist China, the individual isn't usually humiliated to death for public entertainment.

  No, but the person is certainly humiliated, not to provide the public with an entertaining spectacle but as a warning of what happens, and what shame you bring on yourself and family, if you engage in the type of behavior the person about to be executed was convicted for.

  We don't know the extent to which such incidents as this taunting occur elsewhere because state-controlled medias wouldn't be allowed to report it. Now some may say the saturation level of coverage in the UK encourages publicity seeking copy-cat behavior. That may be so, but it's not the reason such incidents are hushed up by dictatorships. Rather it's the government which fears being judging harshly by outsiders for failing to socialize its citizenry in humanitarian norms.

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  USARonin at 10:48 PM JST - 2nd October

  Betzee, the two governments I mentioned don't hide it.

  They want it out to the public.

  But we're off track. I think you should spend your time hammerin' human trash who tortured a young man into jumpin' rather than me.

  Your values?

• 

  Betzee at 11:02 PM JST - 2nd October

  Betzee, the two governments I mentioned don't hide it. They want it out to the public.

  In the past that was true. I saw photos posted of a stadium full of onlookers prior to an execution in some Chinese backwater in the mid-1980s. I also encountered a truck load of condemned prisoners on their way to the execution ground. But the Chinese government doesn't do that anymore because they don't want international human rights organizations on their back.

  Some of the people who attended may be of the same mindset of those who turned up at the court house when the verdict was due in the Scott Peterson case and cheered loudly as it was read. Though I can't imagine going there myself, I recognize there is a difference between that and taunting a distraught person to jump.

  I pasted in a link above to a similar incident in Seattle. As the paper observed, "It could have happened in New York. It could have happened in Tokyo," said Geoffrey Loftus, a UW psychology professor who co-wrote "Places Rated Almanac," which compared cities on different levels.

  Basically, it could have happened in any city large enough to have a group of vocal, "extreme" people, he said.

  The difference between here and New York City, for example, is the amount of attention given to the crowd's meanness.

  "New York is so vast that an incident like that is a little more lost in the noise of everyday events...,"

  Looking at it from this angle, it's a positive reflection on the UK that it did receive so much publicity.

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  usaexpat at 11:49 PM JST - 2nd October

  Man's inhumanity to man, and my wife wonders why I'm such a jaded cold fish. I really expect these sorts of things to happen so very little surprises me and nearly nothing upsets me. I wonder if the coppers will try to nail any of these hooligans with a crime. Perhaps assisted suicide or party to murder. Or maybe they'll just go on their merry way and never even consider that they have blood on their hands.

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  Good_Jorb at 06:03 AM JST - 3rd October

  I seem to remember that either in Vancouver or Seattle, some guy was going to jump of a bridge during the middle of rush hour and the police had to close the bridge. People started yelling from their cars to jump, so that they could go home.

• 

  kavikahi at 02:36 PM JST - 6th October

  Look back, this is nothing new.

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