The family of 23-year-old Tugce Albayrak turned off her life support on Friday, one day before a similar attack in Melbourne, where two men were beaten unconscious after stopping men harassing their girlfriends at a late night venue.
Ms Albayrak intervened when she heard cried for help from the restroom of a McDonalds outlet in the German town of Offenbach on November 15, the BBC has reported.
One of the men involved in the harassment returned later and attacked Ms Albayrak in the car park, hitting her in the head with a stone or bat.
She never regained consciousness and her parents turned off her life support on Friday, her 23rd birthday.
The incident has gained wide coverage in Australia, where two men were hospitalised after a similar attack over the weekend.
Victoria Police said the men’s partners were dancing in a Brunswick club on Saturday night when a man began harassing them, trying to “force their heads together to make them kiss”.
Their boyfriends - aged 21 and 23 - intervened and asked security to eject the man, who then confronted the group when they tried to leave the venue around 1.20am.
Accompanied by a group of men, the ejected man assaulted the victims, knocking them to the ground and kicking them in the heads.
They were knocked unconscious and later taken to hospital with non-life threatening injuries.
‘She is a heroine’
Tugce Albayrak’s passing has been marked by a number of vigils, while a petition calling for her to be honoured with a national order of merit has attracted more than 134,000 signatures.
The Change.org petition said Ms Albayrak showed “backbone and commitment to others” by intervening when others would have looked the other way.
“In my eyes she is a heroine and should rightly be awarded the Federal Cross of Merit,” one signatory wrote.
“Even though they unfortunately cannot take it personally, so this award will remind her family every day about what had a big heart Tugce [had].”
