The two-year-old gril remains in deep coma after a hit-and-run accident. More than a dozen people passed by without stopping to help her.[Photo/CFP]

GUANGZHOU- Chinese media and Internet users on Monday decried a lack of morals in modern society after a two-year-old girl was left bleeding by the side of a road after a hit-and-run accident, with more than a dozen people passing by without stopping to help her.

The incident, captured by a surveillance camera and aired by Southern Television Guangdong (TVS), showed a girl being hit by a white van on a narrow market street in the city of Foshan in Guangdong province on the afternoon of October 13.

The driver fled the scene of the accident, leaving the girl to bleed on the sidewalk. Over a dozen people walked by the girl without offering help over the next six minutes. The girl was hit a second time by another van, after which an elderly refuse collector came to her aid, according to the video and eyewitness accounts.

Doctors said that the girl, who was put on life support after being hospitalized, remains in a deep coma. The girl's parents, who are migrants living in the city, are now with her.

Police said the drivers of both vehicles have been arrested. However, the apathy of the passers-by depicted in the video has shocked the public. Netizens have expressed great anger and concern for social morality.

"Who is going to clean and collect the scraps of the degenerative morality in our society?" a netizen with the username "pengyoufengjingwang" wrote on Sina Weibo, a popular Chinese microblogging site.

Others linked the incident to a previous case in which a man named Peng Yu was accused of harming an elderly woman, when he was actually trying to help her recover from a fall.

"I doubt those who backed away from saving the girl ignored her out of fear of being kicked in the teeth," said a netizen with the username "flax girl."

"When we denounce these bystanders, we must remind ourselves that they are among us, the bystanders," said a netizen with the username "summer-huangxiaokai."