ATTEMPTED MALICIOUS WOUNDING, 160211049, 1000 block of N. Quincy Street. At approximately 8:40 p.m. on February 11, an unknown male subject approached a male victim and attempted to stab him. The victim was able to use self-defense in fighting off the suspect and then fled. The suspect was accompanied by three additional male subjects. The first suspect that brandished a knife is described as a white male in his teens, approximately 5’10” tall with a slim build. The three accompanying suspects are described as males wearing grey-hoodie style jackets.

You can read the news story here

Breakdown of what was  reported about the incident:

• Victim took a secluded shortcut at night RED FLAG
• Knife was brandished at some point (unclear when in the timeline of the attack)  IMMEDIATE ACTION RED FLAG
• The attacker told the victim he was about to stab him as part of a gang initiation RED FLAG ON FIRE WITH SMOKE BILLOWING OUT OF IT
• The intended victim secured the attacker's wrist, then hit him in the face, potentially injuring him- look at the result first, it worked! However, there may have been opportunities to strike first or run away prior to the stabbing or brandishing of the weapon.  Intelligent self-defense includes implementing options and actions prior to discovering the attacker has weapons and friends.
• As the other potential attackers attempted to closed on him he ran to safety- GOOD, he got away.

Important takeaways from this incident:

• Avoid the secluded shortcut at night
• He may have been able to run prior to the verbal engagement with the attacker but that is unclear from the reported information- have an understanding of when you can run and when running is not feasible. Running was an excellent decision when he discovered 3 more guys coming towards him. 
• He was very lucky that the intended attacker forewarned him of the attack; it almost seems as though maybe the attacker wasn't committed to attack the kid.  Had he been seriously committed and not announced his attack (or shown his weapon, unclear if he did this) it would have been significantly more difficult for him to defend effectively- not impossible, but more difficult.
• Its tough to say how quickly the event unraveled and at what distance, but dealing with the unknown contact is critically important,even more so when things don't "add up."  Why is someone approaching me at night in a secluded area? What is his intent? In what way could this ever be advantageous for me to get drawn into this conversation with a stranger, in a secluded area, at night?
• The biggest indicator in this situation was when the intent of the attacker was determined. This is not a robbery, he didn't want your stuff. He wanted you stabbed, bleeding out, possibly dead, as part of a sick ritual. You will always have to think for yourself self defense situations, and sometimes you need to find that f**k it switch that turns you into the one doing violence, attacking the attacker, when violence cannot otherwise be avoided.

UPDATE: the kid who reported this story admitted that he made the story up and was charged with filing a false police report.  This makes sense since it seemed odd that the attacker announced the attack, he was able to defend the knife attack, injure the attacker, and escape the gang unscathed.

Updated important take-away:

• Be respectful of police officer's time. Don't file false police reports. The police have plenty of real work to keep them busy.

Train smart & stay safe,
Evan D
Owner/Lead Coach
NOVA Self Defense

 How can you find out who you really are and how you respond in a crisis?  This was a great concept a previous client, Mike, introduced me to in a discussion we had.  One consideration is to reflect on things that have happened in your past that were emergencies that required you to take immediate action; most relevant are the situations where you believed your life was in danger.

The first outlying incident that comes to mind for me was when I was maybe 17-18 and my dad had death threats coming to him from an employee he fired.  We had a sheriff guarding our house on several occasions, and then one day with no guard present, a truck pulled into our driveway. The driver and the vehicle both fit the description of the fired employee.  As he walked up to the front door I heard my dad’s girlfriend announce, “Ed, he’s here” and I got sinking feeling about how unprepared mentally and physically I was for something bad happening to me.  Everyone else bolted out the back door into the backyard but I was panicked in fear and paced back and forth between two rooms, unable to decide between whether to run or hide, which were the only options I had at that time; fight had never been a consideration.

The person that arrived ended up being in-house security from my dad’s company, not in uniform… poor decision to arrive unannounced as a substitute for a sheriff, since he looked like the other guy and drove the same type of vehicle.  We were fortunate this was a fluke.

Many years later I can understand why I reacted that way. My inaction and lack of options were in alignment with how people with no training think… “it will never happen to me.” The thought of something bad like that happening had never even crossed my mind.

The last few years have been happily uneventful with respect to extreme stress; however, I have had situations recently that were high stress and required full sprints under difficult conditions with no preparation of the event, where something else was at risk.

For example, chasing our foster dog that escaped out of my back door required a full sprint in my socks in several inches of snow for about 150 yards.  Chasing my girlfriend’s dog, through rain and mud at night, initially wearing flip flops, when he broke the leash, and doing it again a week later again, in socks (yeah, some repeated patterns here…and please don’t ask me to dog-sit for you). 

The main difference with these examples is that in the first story I believed my life was in danger, so the stress was extreme; in the dog scenarios, though I believed the dogs were in danger of getting away or getting hit by a car, the stress was less than when I perceived my life was in immediate danger. In retrospect, she would have killed me if I was the reason she lost her dog, so my life was at stake.

Also, by dog escape incident 3, I had built up experience on what had worked for me under stress and what had failed, and how to adapt and resolve this specific incident to get the dog back safely.

So what do you do with these assessments and reflections from your past?

Learn from them and consider what your options would be in a similar situation or how you can extrapolate useful information from how you handled certain stressful events.

You are the summation of your training, mindset, and useful experiences that you can draw upon in need.
If an event happened to you where you perceived your life was in danger, reflecting on it and learning from how you felt, how you responded, and how you handled yourself is a huge learning opportunity, and it is something that only you can do. If you are in a profession where emergencies are prevalent (law enforcement, first responders, military, etc), you likely have a lot more experiences to draw upon.

It's important to know what you are capable of in situations that you would never otherwise test because of the inherent risk.  I would never sprint as fast as I can in the snow wearing only socks without any warming up. There’s too much chance of injury: pulling a muscle or slipping and injuring myself, but I can do it, I have already done it, and if I had to do it again to sprint away from danger or towards it, I know I can.

Train smart, stay safe, & don't clip the leash to the small key-ring on the dog's name-tag!

Evan Dzierzynski
Owner/Lead Coach
NOVA Self Defense
​www.novaselfdefense.com