Who will cry for Hugo? Hugo Alfredo Tale- Yax lived on the streets of Jamaica, Queens. Broke, un employed, estranged from his family, he was too proud to ask for help. And he got none.
Hugo’s final act on this earth was to save a woman from a knife-wielding mugger, taking the brunt of a blade meant for a lady whose name he did not know. He died a hero. He died alone.
Who will cry for him? Silence reigns in a town that should be awash with tears.
As revealed by a security videotape obtained by The Post (right) — and seen around the world — Hugo’s death this month brings shame on the city.
The woman he saved ran into the wind, never looking back or calling police.
Then some 25 people strolled past Hugo as he bled to death. One took a camera-phone picture. Another shook him. Nearly two hours ticked by as his life ebbed. Dead at 31. And no one called for help until it was too late.
Yesterday, a wake was held for Hugo in Bushwick, Brooklyn. About a dozen friends and relatives. A stop was not on Mayor Bloomberg’s schedule.
By conventional standards, this man was nothing special. He did not wear a uniform or serve in battle. He was not even in this country legally. But his value as a human being was demonstrated by the selfless act he committed in a city that doesn’t care.
He came to the United States six years ago, moving in with two brothers, an uncle and a cousin to a cramped apartment in Jersey City, and worked construction. A year ago, he lost his job and decided to look for work in Queens, his relatives told me. That was the beginning of the end.
He moved into a Manhattan homeless shelter, eventually bedding down on the street in Jamaica. Then, two months ago, by sheer, dumb luck, his uncle, Santos, and brother Byron, 24, ran into Hugo buying a MetroCard at the Sutphin Avenue subway station. He looked clean and in good spirits, but they knew he was in bad shape.
“My father [Santos] was crying,” cousin Edwin Tacam-Yax, 24, told me. “Hugo hugged my father. He said, ‘Forgive me for everything I did.’ ”
They asked Hugo to return to Jersey. He said, “No, I’m not going home.” It was the last time they saw him alive.
“For us, it has been shocking to learn what happened to him. That he was trying to help somebody else. It’s shocking and surprising for him to be lying down more than an hour without anyone requesting medical assistance,” said Rosa Maria Merida de Mora, consul general of Guatemala.
“They come here to work, and they help this wonderful country and state and city to grow.”
Byron is in a dark place.
“I loved my brother. I wish he was with me,” he said. “Love your brother while he is alive.”
Tomorrow, the unsung hero is to be flown to his destitute parents in Totonicapan by the Guatemalan consulate general, aided by the New York State Crime Victims Board. Donations cobbled together from the city’s Guatemalan community paid for the wake.
I find it appalling that New Yorkers, who have always struck me as eager to get involved in a crisis, could be so callous about the fate of a homeless guy. Some have speculated that, as in the 1964 case of Kitty Genovese, no one acted because they thought someone else must already have called for help.
That is no excuse.
There is no reason to gawk at a human being in need. None.
A woman is alive today because Hugo is dead. Where was she when he needed her? Where is she now?
She must come forward. The man who killed him must be caught. This is not the city I love.
Unfairly branded
The bra-ha-ha that engulfed cable news station New York 1, as fired reporter Adele Sammarco sued for sexual harassment — and lost — has casualties. Chief among them is Gary Anthony Ramsay, the ex-reporter who Sammarco swears tried to take out her tonsils with an unwanted kiss in his car. Never happened, he says.
“For all of this time, my name has been attached to the criminal phrase, ‘sexual assault,’ ” Ramsey, 45, told me
“I have taken many a drunk woman home, Andrea. I’m just not cut from that tree. That’s just not who I am. ”
Ramsay says Sammarco, 43, was furious after he got assigned to a story she wanted, and retaliated with the phony kiss claim. Since the words “sexual predator” were tattooed on Ramsey’s forehead, his TV career — he was fired from NY1 for unrelated reasons — is as kaput as Adele’s.
Sammarco is sticking to her guns. She says she was humiliated when a pic of her face with cartoonishly large breasts was plastered over the newsroom, though she initially laughed.
“I’m only one person up against a huge corporation. [Time Warner owns NY1],” she said. “I knew what I was up against, Andrea. I took the chance anyway.”
Lordy. I wasn’t there. All I know is ex-colleagues testified against her. A jury didn’t believe her.
Time to move on.
Dangerous curves
Female secondary sex characteristics are scarier than ever. Bare cleavage is suspected to have caused an earthquake in Taiwan. And a blessedly endowed lass’ rack featured in a Lane Bryant ad threatened ABC execs so badly, the boobs were banned in favor of the gentler tableaux displayed by Victoria’s Secret anorexics.
Perhaps we should heed the cry of an Iranian cleric who warned that women’s power bosoms were responsible for rampant sexual and seismological activity — spreading “adultery in society, which increases earthquakes.”
I’d like to see a bra strong enough to harness that kind of energy.
Beware of a crush on this kid
Does the Internet maim your child? How about sugary soda? Trans-fats? Pornography? No. The leading cause of injury to the pre-teen demographic is Justin Bieber.
Five months after the mop-topped 16-year-old pop sensation caused a girly stampede at Long Island’s Roosevelt Field mall, he did it again. A jammed free concert in Sydney, Australia, this week was halted to stop the imminent trampling of shrieking girl teens.
Now, if only the kid could learn to sing, he’d really be lethal.
Tiki tacky but we look away
Fortunately for a certain faithless football player, we’ve reached Tiki Fatigue. Tiki Fatigue is the approximate moment when society — David Lettermaned and Jesse Jamesed and Larry Kinged to the point of revulsion — becomes oversaturated with celebrity adultery, and tunes out.
Ex-Giant Tiki Barber may be the lowest in the slime bucket, stepping out all over town with a blonde as his wife lies in the hospital, eight months pregnant with his twins. Still, he wins. We yawn.
Don’t thank me, Tiki. Thank Tiger.