Raising your voice to help someone who’s lost or hurt in public is something many people freeze on. Be the one who doesn’t.

Freezing is the normal response, not a character flaw. In the first second you are scanning two things: whether this is your business and whether somebody better equipped is about to step in. Everybody in the vicinity is running the same scan at the same time, which is exactly why nobody moves. Knowing the mechanism makes it much easier to interrupt.

Decide in advance that you will be the one. Ask one direct question, then give one person a specific instruction rather than a general appeal, because a named task breaks everybody else out of the same freeze.