On my way to volunteering this morning, I was walking down the main strip towards town. There’s a shop on the route and every morning I see a lad I served time with. He’s street homeless and sleeps in a doorway outside this shop. I seen about 6 lads from one of the shops laughing and pointing towards the floor. When I got closer to the shop they were laughing at the homeless guy. I saw him shaking in his sleeping bag and he was going blue/purple.

Passersby really were oblivious to what was going on and generally didn’t care. My first thought was pneumonia, so I took my big fleece jacket off and put it on him and ran into the shop and asked for towels or blankets and slowly warming him up. Through knowing him from jail I knew he was alcohol dependant so went back in the shop and got him a miniature vodka.

Some people would say ‘why do that?’ The fact that he’s alcohol dependant means his body physically needs that first drink or it goes into shutdown.

Within minutes of giving him the miniature vodka he slowly stopped shaking.

Then the paramedic got there and said I couldn’t have done anything better and that I probably saved his life.

The lad himself said, “all my sins have been forgiven for that series of actions”.

There really is something wrong with society when people are standing there laughing at people dying.