The Hundred We Don't Count
Anthony Hegarty MSc · DSRM Risk & Crisis Management
(Pre-read note: this piece looks at what witnessing violence does to the people who see it, and what follows for the organisations that employ them. The families of those involved have been intentionally omitted.)
Every dataset on violence counts the same thing; victims.
On a Monday at the end of August, a 32-year-old Bank of America vice president was stabbed to death near New York's Times Square after finishing work. A second person had been wounded seconds earlier. The attacker walked on up Seventh Avenue and was shot dead by police after a four-minute standoff, in one of the busiest places in the world.
At about 8.30am on Tuesday 28 July, a man boarded a Circle line train at London's King's Cross St Pancras station and pushed a woman who was already on board. Other passengers stopped her falling. A second altercation then broke out between the man and passengers. British Transport Police are still asking anyone
who intervened, or who saw what happened, to come forward.
From a fatal stabbing to a shove on a train, the number of people who saw it is always larger than the number of victims; and none of them appear in the figures.
What witnesses actually do
Reports from the network suggest witnesses respond in more than one way, and almost none of it is recorded.
They step in. On the Circle line on 28 July, passengers stopped a woman falling.
They check in. At Warren Street at around 4.50pm on 3 April 2025, a woman told the BBC she was shoved and hit as she tried to board a Victoria line train. She said no one intervened, but a man quietly asked if she was all right and another woman gave up her seat. British Transport Police now want to speak to both.
They report. At Herne Hill in June 2022, another woman, who also spoke to the BBC, was struck on the platform. Passengers on the train asked if she was OK, and an off-duty BTP officer reported it.
None of those witnesses were victims. All of them were there, and all of them went on with their day.
The aftermath for victims can be long and quiet. The woman struck at Herne Hill told the BBC she now never takes calls while travelling and keeps her head down to avoid eye contact. These are the behaviour changes described below, and an employer would see none of them.
What witnessing does
This isn't speculation. The diagnostic criteria for post-traumatic stress disorder list witnessing, in person, the event as it occurred to others as a qualifying exposure, alongside direct experience.
That does not mean every witness becomes a patient. Most won't. A reaction in the days that follow is normal, and for most it settles; a minority carry it much longer. The recognised symptoms fall into four groups:
Intrusion; unwanted images and memories
Avoidance; of places, people and routes
Negative mood and thinking
Heightened arousal; on edge, poor sleep, poor concentration
Set against an ordinary working day, each has a workplace form: an image that surfaces mid-meeting, a train quietly not taken, a manager who is suddenly short-tempered, an analyst who can't hold a thought.
Two ways it lands
Witnesses tend to describe two quite different reactions, and both can change how a person gets to work.
"It could have been me." The sense of your own exposure. It shows up as a constant scanning of the carriage, and as avoidance of the route or the time of day.
"I should have helped." The replaying of what you did or didn't do. The diagnostic criteria for PTSD include persistent self-blame and feelings of guilt or shame. It can lead to avoidance as well, for a different reason: guilt is about what you did or didn't do, but shame is about how you think others now see you, and so the person avoids being seen again by the other people who were there.
On a regular commute those people share the same train, at the same time, most days. The witness who feels they failed may be avoiding exactly the people they are most likely to meet.
There may also be a gender dimension, and I offer it as an observation, not a finding. Some men, particularly of an older generation, carry an old-fashioned expectation that they are the ones who should step in. The only man in a carriage may feel that most.
From the outside, the two reactions look the same: a changed route, a different train, a later start. An employer can't tell which it is without asking. And the second is the quieter one; nobody asks the person who looked away whether they are all right.
It has a cultural source. The case most people think of is Kitty Genovese, killed in Queens in 1964. The famous version, with 38 neighbours who watched and did nothing, is wrong: the New York Times has since acknowledged its original account was flawed, and later research found no evidence for it. But the story spread widely enough that many people still carry it as the standard they hold themselves to.
For an employer, that matters. A check-in should never suggest that someone failed. People need to hear that there is no obligation to intervene, and that calling or texting for help is a legitimate response.
Avoidance is the one organisations see
After the 7th July 2005 London bombings, a survey of a representative sample of Londoners found that 31% reported substantial stress and 32% intended to travel less on the Tube, trains and buses, or into central London. Later work on survivors found that some went on to develop clinically significant avoidance of public transport.
A bombing is a far larger event, and the comparison shouldn't be stretched. But the pathway is the same: exposure, distress, and then a change in how, when and whether someone gets to work.
The day doesn't end at the scene
The witness still has a day to get through. There may be a statement to give, which means going back over the detail. There may be a delay, a missed meeting, a manager who doesn't know why they're late. Then comes the journey home, past the same place or one like it, and the question that decides what an employer actually experiences:
Will they come in tomorrow?
The employee the organisation doesn't know about
On that Circle line train, a carriage of people watched a stranger being pushed. Some stopped her falling. Some were drawn into the confrontation that followed. Then the train reached the next stop, and for many of them the next stop was work.
Their employers may not know what they saw or what they did. The same is true of the two people at Warren Street whom police are still trying to speak to, of everyone near Times Square that day, and of every commuter who sees something and says nothing.
That is the gap. An organisation can only respond to what it knows. Violence on the commute leaves a trail of affected employees, and nobody has told their managers.
The cost to the organisation
None of this appears in an incident report, which is why it is rarely measured. It shows up instead as:
unexplained absence in the days after
quiet changes to start times, routes and working patterns
reduced concentration and output
colleagues of a victim carrying their own loss into the same office
resignations that cite "the commute" and nothing else
What organisations can do
The responses are modest, and cost little:
a check-in protocol for any employee known to have been near an incident, that asks and never assumes
flexibility on start and finish times in the days that follow
support that doesn't depend on the employee asking
a managers' briefing on normal reactions, and when to point someone to professional help
an alternative route or transport option for the period after
If you are a leader with concerns about your teams facing such commute challenges, feel free to contact DSRM. Violence on the commute is relatively rare, and the data says so. But when it happens, the question for an employer isn't only whether any of its people were harmed. It's how many were there.
Anyone who intervened or saw the Circle line incident can text BTP on 61016 or call 0800 40 50 40, quoting reference 189 of 28 July.
Anthony Hegarty MSc (Criminal Psychology & Criminology)
Comments