When he saw a couple overdosed on heroin he took out his phone, but not to call 911

If you find someone on the street who is nonresponsive, possibly dying or already dead, most people’s first instinct is to call 911.

It wasn’t for Courtland Garner.

Garner saw a couple — a man and a woman — passed out in the middle of a sidewalk in Memphis at odd angles. The woman was on her knees with her chest on the ground, her face pressed into the concrete and her flip-flops splayed out from her feet. The man was hanging from a bench without a back, his pelvis in the air but his head, back and feet on the ground.

Garner and a few other people who gathered on the sidewalk took out their phones. But instead of calling for help, Garner started filming.

“It’s like a museum,” Garner said, laughing throughout the video, which is about nine minutes long. He also refers to the two of them as “entertainment.”

Warning: Video contains profanity.

The couple had snorted heroin in a Walgreens bathroom earlier on Monday, Police told WREG. Someone driving by did call police around 3:30 p.m. and the two were both revived by Memphis Fire and taken to the hospital in non-critical condition. There was a warrant out for the woman’s arrest, so she was taken into custody.

The video was taken Monday and had more than a million views as of Wednesday afternoon.

The woman tries to get up in the video but seems unable to move much. Garner repeatedly says he thinks the man is dead.

“We want to know what y’all smoked, cause we don’t want that,” Garner said.

He was criticized on Facebook for his treatment of the couple and for not calling an ambulance, and he addressed his decision not to call 911 in a follow-up Facebook Live video.

“For what? Why? Not my job,” Garner said. “Grown people do drugs all the time, let them.”

“I know the kids be on social media, I know the kids will see the video, and they’ll be like, ‘You know, I don’t need to do drugs, look at these guys,’” he added.

This story was originally published October 5, 2016 at 2:57 PM with the headline "When he saw a couple overdosed on heroin he took out his phone, but not to call 911."