A hitchhiking robot that had won the hearts of people all over the world came to a grisly demise on the streets of the United States on August 1.

Hitchbot was created by Canadian researchers as a social experiment to test the kindness of strangers. The child-sized robot was immobile on its own. Its creators would drop it off on one end of a nation, with his thumb pointing upward and a sign around its neck indicating where it wanted to go. From there it was up to anyone who found it to help Hitchbot along.

A gps inside the robot tracked its location, and a built-in camera took photos of its environs, which were regularly posted on its Twitter feed. Hitchbot’s limited conversational ability allowed it to speak with those who picked it up.

The experiment ran smoothly in Canada, Germany and the Netherlands, with strangers helping it get safely from border to border of each nation. But then Hitchbot attempted to cross the mean streets of the u.s.a. from Salem, Massachusetts to San Francisco, California. Once it reached Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, vandals dismembered the robot, damaging it “beyond repair,” according to its creators.

Some Philadelphians worry that the incident reflects poorly on their city of “brotherly love.” But it is actually condemning to the state of American cities in general.

Ultimately, Hitchbot is pretty insignificant—even by robot standards. It couldn’t build cars, teach autistic kids, assist in search-and-rescue operations, or serve people drinks. And it certainly couldn’t travel to Mars and teach people on Earth all about the Red Planet. Hitchbot was just a low-stakes experiment its creators were conducting on strangers. They wanted to know how people would treat this robot and learn how far human curiosity and kindness would take it.

But why was it able to cross half the planet without incident, only to get vandalized beyond repair just two weeks into its American tour? A big part of it is because crime is a larger problem in the U.S. than in the other nations the robot traversed.

For example, the rate of intentional homicide in Germany is 0.7 per 100,000 people. In the Netherlands it’s 0.7, and in Canada 1.4. The United States’ rate is 3.8—over five times that of Germany.

Of course, murder and vandalism are two vastly different crimes. But they are part of the same continuum of contempt for law, and research proves that where small crime flourishes so too thrive rates of violent crime. Experts also say that anyone who would vandalize a robot would also be prone to violence toward people.

Americans once stood out among populations for their curiosity, kindness and willingness to help. Now the overwhelming response from onlookers in other nations is: It was in an American city; of course it was vandalized! What did you expect would happen?

Here is what it looked like after being decapitated and vandalized: