An unidentified man has sparked outrage after a photo of him taking a selfie while emergency responders treated a woman who was struck by a train in Italy went viral. The woman inadvertently exited through the wrong door and was struck by an oncoming train at the Piacenza station near Milan. While paramedics treated the woman and removed her from the tracks, a man dressed in all white decided to snap a selfie with the injured woman in the background.
Italian photojournalist Giorgio Lambri happened to be at the station and snapped a photo of his own and shared it to Facebook with the caption: "The barbarism you don’t expect: The ‘selfie’ in front of a tragedy.”
According to the BBC, police spoke with the man and asked him to delete the photo. He complied and police did not arrest him because his actions were not a crime.
After the photo went viral, multiple news outlets across Italy criticized the man. One outlet called him a "cancer that corrodes the internet" while another outlet said he had become an "automaton of the internet".
Lambri spoke with Global News and said he has "seen many crimes and terrifying scenes, but I’m not ready to [see] this."
“The most terrible thing is that guy [doesn’t] understand absolutely the badness of his behavior,” Lambri said.
The 83-year-old Canadian woman was taken to the hospital and treated for serious injuries. She had to have her leg amputated.
Photo: Twitter