The Guangzhou Military District General Hospital said that the 2-year-old girl, Wang Yue, died of brain and organ failure. “Her injuries were too severe and the treatment had no effect,” intensive care unit director Su Lei told reporters.
The plight of the child, nicknamed Yueyue, came to symbolize what many Chinese see as a decay in public morals after heady decades of economic growth and rising prosperity.
Closed-circuit camera video of last Thursday’s accident, aired on television and posted on the Internet, showed Yueyue toddling along the hardware market street in the southern city of Foshan. A van strikes her, slows and then resumes driving.
Over the next seven minutes, as she lay with blood pooling, 18 people walk or cycle by and another van strikes her before a scrap picker scoops her up as the girl’s mother rushes into the street looking for her.
Yueyue’s death touched off a round of hand-wringing about society and personal responsibility. Many comments on social media sites said “we are all passers-by.”
The people who could be seen on the video passing by the injured Yueyue have recounted being harassed for ignoring her.
The respected Southern Metropolis Daily newspaper quoted a man it identified only as a hardware merchant Mr. Chen as saying that he had been receiving prank calls ever since someone picked him out as the 16th passer-by.
He said he hadn’t noticed the child.