You’ve probably been there—you’re out in public when you come across something or someone, and your gut tells you something isn’t right.
You might have that little voice in the back of your head telling you to intervene. Or maybe it makes you question whether or not John Quinones is about to pop out and use your reaction on an episode of What Would You Do?
Whatever the case may be, when something feels “off,” it’s our instincts that we trust.
When he was just 17 years old, Malyk Bonnet listened to his gut and it wound up saving a woman’s life.
The Canadian teen was waiting for a bus home after work when he noticed an altercation spark between a couple on the corner.
“The guy was screaming at her, the girl,” Bonnet said. “He wasn’t really gentle with her, and I started watching, because I thought he would hit her, so I approached them a little bit.”
As he got closer, the couple asked the teen if he could spare some cash for their bus tickets to Laval—a city 25 miles away from downtown Montreal.
He agreed to help them out, but this quick-thinking teen took things a step further.
After getting a split-second alone with the woman, who Bonnet described as “terrified,” he lied and said he was also traveling to Laval and would accompany them.
“My plan was to keep them in a public place, where there’s a lot of people,” Bonnet said. “I decided to make myself friendly with the man, so he would trust me. So I played my game.”
As the trio made their way by bus and metro to Laval, Bonnet kept his cool and waited patiently for an opportunity to call the police. But by the time they arrived in the city, he hadn’t had a chance to separate himself from the couple, and his phone had died.