State Trooper Sits on the Side of the Road Having Lunch with a Homeless Woman

A Massachusetts state trooper named Luke Bonin was leaving court after a long day and did something on the way home that caused him to go viral. No, he didn’t do something that would make national news in a bad way, but rather, he did something that won a lot of hearts around the world. Trooper Bonin is assigned to the State Police Dartmouth Barracks, and was still wearing the suit he wore to court when he passed a female panhandler on the side of the road. He kept driving for a bit but he circled back, went through a drive-through for some food, and went back to where Lynn Murphy was panhandling on the side of the road.

As the officer got out of his vehicle and started walking towards Lynn, she assumed he was going to tell her to leave. Lynn Murphy is a homeless mother of four who is struggling to survive and feed her children. But Trooper Bonin wasn’t there to tell her to go. He quickly said, “I’m not here to kick you out” when she told him that she’d leave. What he did stunned Lynn. He pulled out two sack lunches and told her to pick the one she wanted. Then he proceeded to sit down and eat with her. “I thought he was just going to hand me the meal but when he said, ‘Come around the back, it’s such a beautiful day, we’ll have a picnic,’ I thought that was, it touched my heart,” Murphy said.

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The two just sat there enjoying their meal and a nice conversation, Lynn said. What they didn’t know was that a man named Jake Morse had driven by and taken a photo of the two of them eating on the side of the road. When he got to his destination, he uploaded the photo to a Facebook group for Fall River residents, with the caption of “And they say chivalry is dead… Much respect.” Morse pointed out the obvious, that it would have been easy for the trooper to just give Murphy a hard time and send her on his way, but he didn’t do that. He added that this kind of thing is something we all need to see more of.

The Massachusetts State Police were able to identify Trooper Bonin, who didn’t want any publicity for simply sitting and having lunch with a panhandler. They understood that, but it didn’t stop them from putting the photo out there for the world to see this good man doing a simple kind deed and treating someone with the respect that all human beings deserve. Their post on Facebook went viral and received more than 156,000 likes, 9,000 comments, and 53,000 shares. Their post read, “We commend you for your selfless act, and for “doing the right thing” for someone less fortunate than most people.”

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Lynn Murphy is humbled by the state trooper’s treatment of her. What does it say about our society that someone is humbled by someone offering them lunch? This trooper is a good man. We all need to do more things like this. Watch the video below for a news story about the incident.