A South Philadelphia woman stepped in with empathy rather than anger when she spotted someone trying to steal a neighbor’s package.<\/p>\n
Bernadette Williams quickly turned a tense moment into an unexpected act of kindness on Friday.<\/p>\n
Williams said she reacted instinctively when she saw the woman reaching for the package. In doorbell camera video, Williams can be heard calling out, “Put that down, put that down.”<\/p>\n
She then acts with compassion, offering the only money she had in her pocket.<\/p>\n
“I’ll give you some money. Here’s $7, here’s $7,” she said in the recording.<\/p>\n
Williams said she wanted to help rather than escalate the situation.<\/p>\n
“I said, ‘She’s in trouble. How can I make a bad situation better?’ You have to be a part of the solution,” she said.<\/p>\n
Williams offered the woman encouragement as well.<\/p>\n
“You’re better than that. Get some help. You’re better than that. I love you. God loves you,” she told her. The woman responded with a quiet, “Thank you.”<\/p>\n
Williams said she could see remorse in the woman’s expression.<\/p>\n
“Her eyes of ‘I’m sorry.’ And that was in her heart and that’s what I read. And I hope that she will be fine. And I have faith that she will be fine,” she said.<\/p>\n
A resident of the neighborhood for decades, Williams said she acted out of a sense of responsibility to her community.<\/p>\n
“Let’s hope that all Philadelphians would say we are a part of our community and we can make our community better,” she said.<\/p>\n
In the video, the would-be thief can be faintly heard apologizing. Williams hopes the interaction left a lasting impact.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A South Philadelphia woman stepped in with empathy rather than anger when she spotted someone trying to steal…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":135252,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[62380,69,71,70,13602],"class_list":{"0":"post-135251","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-philadelphia","8":"tag-bernadette-williams","9":"tag-philadelphia","10":"tag-philadelphia-headlines","11":"tag-philadelphia-news","12":"tag-williams"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135251","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=135251"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135251\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/135252"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=135251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=135251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=135251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}