what would you do?

My friend was looking for parking at the mall yesterday and saw a young asian couple arguing and yelling at each other, with the guy actually shoving the girl a few times. They were screaming at each other in Cantonese, which my friend can kind of understand. She made out a few sentences - one about how the woman wanted to be alone and was going inside the mall and another about how he was making a scene. The woman finally headed into the mall, her husband following not far behind her with her purse. Everyone was now inside the mall, along with my friend, and the couple was still yelling at each other. People have begun to stare and he was still shoving her. My friend, at this point, remembered this episode of Oprah she had seen (yes, you can call her an "O" fan) about "What would you do in this situation?" One of the scenarios was exactly like this one where the guy was screaming at his wife and shoving her. So my friend, who didn't want to be one of those people who did nothing about the situation, decided to do something about it. She went up to the girl while the guy was still yelling at her, and asked her if she was okay and if she needed her to call security. The woman said she was fine. Another older couple then approached and asked the woman the same thing and decided to call security. At this point, my friend was literally standing inbetween the man, who was still screaming at the woman, and the woman. The lady from the older couple then told the man who was screaming, that he should give the purse back to the woman. He then said, "She's my wife, what does it matter?" He ended up giving her purse back while security arrived and it turned out that security couldn't do anything because nothing was really going on. They all came to the agreement that the husband would go home and leave his wife there, whom my friend volunteered to take home. My friend actually did take her home and found out that the reason they were arguing was because the woman didn't get along with her husband's parents, who despise her because after they got married, their son moved out to live with her, his wife (what decade are we in again?)!

Anyways, the whole point behind this is what would you have done? Would you have just walked away and let it happen or would you have done something about it? Truthfully, I probably would have just walked away because 1.) I wouldn't want to get involved and 2.) the husband seemed like a violent person. But then after thinking that, #2 should make me want to do something even more to help and I'm in a public place so I would most likely be safe. But really, I still don't think I would step in, but I guess I have to be in that situation to really know. I never thought that my friend was the type of person who would step in and invite a stranger into her car (I guess Oprah works in mysterious ways, haha). She's usually very non-confrontational and can be shy at times, so it surprised me that she did that, but i totally give her props!