Would you slit an attacker's throat?

by Otony, Sunday, March 09, 2014, 04:34 (3855 days ago) @ Rob Leahy

We'll, I'm not too proud of this story, as my situational awareness was not working at all that day, but I have defended myself with a knife. Didn't slash the guy's throat, but I did manage to put him in the hospital with some pretty serious injuries.

I was 18 or 19, and one of the neighborhood kids I had grown up with was a druggie loser. He got it into his head that I had done him wrong at some point, and called my house to announce that he was on his way over to settle the matter. He also informed me that he was bringing his best friend to help him out. Mind you, both of them were about 6 foot tall, and I was lucky to hit 5'7" wearing thick soled shoes!

Here is where my situational awareness was on vacation. Said miscreant, having announced his intentions, gave me all the opportunity in the world to just fort up and ignore him. Maybe call the cops when he showed up.

Instead, I went outside to talk sense into him and defuse the situation. My parents were home, we were getting ready for dinner, and I wanted to spare them the indignity of the event. My mom was home from the hospital, being in the throes of her final days with a bout of cancer, and I didn't want them upset with this low-life intruding into our lives.

So I'm outside, like an idiot, when up strolls this other idiot. Before I can say much, he lashes out with a remarkable jab, and manages to break my glasses, come near to breaking my nose, and completely takes me by surprise. At this point I am bleeding profusely from the nose and from facial lacerations where my glasses broke and slashed my nose, forehead, and cheeks. I am also startled beyond measure, as I just didn't expect this fool to do anything of the sort. He comes in with a couple more slugs to the head and body, and I decide Mrs. Aveni's boy is going to join the fray (finally)!

Since he has the advantage of both reach and height, my option is to backpedal and whip out a Gerber LST. I wave it around in my best "We are the Jets" approved fashion, and shout at him to stop or I was "gonna cut chew up". Sadly, his drugged fog of a brain didn't allow him much more common sense than I had exhibited, so he shouts out that he is going to take the knife and cut me. I quickly realized that was probably in the stars, as once he got his hands on me he could easily overwhelm me. Time to fish or, ahem, cut bait!

He advances, throwing a flurry of punches that are connecting, apparently thinking I wasn't doing much more than showboating, and I manage to dodge one of his final punches, reach in, and slash him right across the forehead. In the interest of full disclosure, some of this was accomplished while simultaneously trying to run away, close my eyes, and shout at the other guy to drag this fool away. In other words, lucky shot.

Unfortunately, the desired results, while momentarily satisfying, did nothing more than send this guy into overdrive. Now he was pretty much blinded from blood flowing in his eyes (scalp cuts bleed alarmingly well!) and shouting that he was going to kill me. So far, my attempts at defusing things were going, um, poorly.

After various high jinks that mostly involved circling my car, we ended up in a clinch, struggling over the knife. Hey! I already admitted to not being ready to defend myself. The real reality of the situation was that I wasn't really interested in doing so! In the back of my mind, I was still hoping that this would all go away, and yeah, pulling the knife was really more brandishing than self defense. Events conspired to make me step up to the plate...reluctantly.

So here we are, in best B-grade movie fashion, with all hands involved in twisting the knife one way or another, when our graceful dance of combat gets tripped over someone's foot, and we hit the ground in a heap, him on top. He proceeds to start punching the dog snot out of me, and I decide to finally get angry and do something with the tools available. I reach around, and proceed to stab him in the back a couple of times, which amazingly takes the starch right out of him. He sort of sags down on top of me, and thrashes around about as ineffectually as I had been a few minutes earlier. Much groaning prevailed, mostly him. About this time, the police show up, having been alerted by an alarmed neighbor.

They haul him up, and clap him into irons, throw him in a patrol car, and then amaze me by doing the same to me! All the way to the station I am talking like a Dutch Uncle, explaining what happened, that I was assaulted, caught unawares (duh), and just defending myself. I don't recall if I mentioned he had called ahead, but I sort of doubt that I would have pointed that out too strenuously. Taken by surprise was my main point, and not too terribly far off from the truth.

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