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DETROIT (WJBK) - A woman who watched a man die at a Detroit bus stop believes he didn't have to die, if the people around him would have helped.. Tessa Plummer says everybody at the bus stop should have been helping but man, but instead seemed more interested in recording the man's final moments on their phones.
"I literally watched him take his last breath," she says.
She is still reeling from what she witnessed while heading to pick up lunch Thursday. She spotted a man, who had collapsed to the ground near the bus stop and Seven Mile and Lahser in Detroit.
She immediately pulled over, after she noticed several people gathered around but not helping the man in distress.
"I saw people with their cell phones out, they were recording, taking pictures," she says. "This one guy was on Facebook Live. It was like, what happened to the compassion of people?"
Plummer is the one who dialed 911. While she was working to direct the dispatcher to their location, she flagged down a police cruiser. The officers tried using chest compressions to bring the man back, but it was too late.
Plummer, who began recording after Detroit police arrived, believes if witnesses would have immediately called for help instead of recording the man's demise, he could have survived.
"I remember thinking, it could have been me. It could have been someone in my family and nobody was doing anything about it," she says.
One man who works nearby claims he has helped this man, who often sits on the bus stop bench. Sadly, this time he didn't call for help.
"I've seen him drop to the ground, several times and we never thought it was that serious," he says. "But I guess this time it was very serious."
The man's hat now lies where he took his last breath. Detroit police confirm an ambulance rushed the 43-year-old to Botsford Hospital, where he was pronounced dead. His cause of death is yet to be determined.
Regardless, Plummer says this man deserved to be treated like a human being - not a social media subject.
"If we see people dying, the last thing we need to do is pull out our cell phone and try to get footage of that," she says. "You may get your 15 minutes of fame but that person is dead."