One tough old man!

China -- An 81-year-old man fought back in self-defense was reportedly able to send eight young would-be robbers fleeing in Hong Kong, according to monstersandcritics.com.

The man, identified as Mak, had finished his morning exercise when he was pushed to the ground in an underpass.

This has got to be one tough old guy... After all, three of the teenage attackers - between the ages of 15 and 19 - is said to have been given treatment at a hospital for cuts and bruises after the Sunday incident.

I sincerely hope these young punks have learned a lesson. In any case, I salute you, Mr "Mak Attack".

A chair affair

Hawaii -- In Honolulu, Honoluluadvertiser.com reported about a man using a chair to defend himself when another man assaulted him with a skateboard and attempted to rob him at knife point.

The 54-year-old intended victim was reportedly able to fend off the younger attacker by using his chair until witnesses intervened and police arrived.

A chair can be used in primarily three ways as a defence tool. First it is possible to use the chair as a whole to hit an aggressor.

Then, you may (sometimes) be able to break of parts of the chair -- one of the legs usually works best -- to use as a club.

Finally, you can use it to push, or "catch" the aggressor -- think of the legs as four "fangs". If you hold the chair with the four legs pointing away from you, it is possible to avoid being kicked, punched or stabbed. Also, the attacker can be pushed and held against a wall.

This last scenario has occurred at psychiatric hospital and other places as well.

No good Samaritans

This is bad.

Story:
From Stockton, Teeside, UK news.bbc.co.uk reports about a serious sexual assault on a 20-year-old woman. She was reportedly walking home in the early hours of Sunday when a man grabbed her.

And here's the sad part: According to police, cars passed almost within inches of the assault. A number of cars, particularly taxis, drove past as the woman was being attacked, a police spokesperson said.

"It took place in the middle of the road, but not a single person stopped. There were at least five cars that passed her as she was lying on the road while the attack was taking place," the spokesperson said.

The woman had just finished a mobile phone call when the man attacked her. Despite being punched repeatedly to the face, she fought back and was eventuallyable to flee. She was later treated at a local hospital for facial injuries.

Lame excuses #6

And so - in our quest to find all the daft excuses out there - time has once again come to blame drugs; after all it can't possibly be the perpetrator's fault, now can it?

Or - As winnipegsun.com puts it: "It's never their fault".

The Canadian paper is reporting about a disturbing case where a repeat, violent Portage la Prairie offender assaulted his girlfriend so badly, she spent five days in hospital.

And what did the judge do? Well, blaming the man's drug and alcohol use for starters. "He suffers from depression and was on medication at the time." Then she handed down a conditional sentence - house arrest (!) - for the brutal attack.

And this is from a female judge? Holly cow!

It should be noted that the 37-year-old man was on probation for an earlier assault against his girlfriend at the time of the assault, and had a court order to stay away from her.

The reporter (Tom Brodbeck) says, and I totally agree: "In my view, Justice Simonsen, you're completely out of touch with society."

Another bite out of crime

During the night before the "Lucia" celebration in Sweden (which is December 13), a 29-year-old woman was sexually assaulted in Lund, according to svd.se

The attacker pushed her to the ground and put his thumb into the woman's mouth. This enabled the woman to free herself by clamping down as hard as she possibly could. The bite was so hard that the woman broke two teeth.

Late Tuesday evening a 24-year-old man came to a hospital emergency ward in nearby Malmoe with injuries that matched descriptions given by the woman.

Hospital staff alerted police, and the man was arrested shortly after at the hospital.

Tables turned

I wouldn't be at all surprised if the young man here - at least in some states and countries - could end up being charged with assault with a deadly weapon.
Bass ackwords? You bet. You have to be kind to the criminals! You know ... a hug never harmed anyone.

Story from presstelegram.com:
An 18-year-old employee was slicing chicken in the back of a restaurant in Long Beach, California when he heard a commotion at the register.

There, he witnessed his 41-year-old boss struggling with a robber. A 33-year-old suspect had allegedly entered the eatery at about 5 p.m. and demanded money from the cashier behind the counter, a police spokeswoman said.

The robber was wearing a big jacket with a hood and holding his hand up as if he were carrying a gun. When the owner had trouble opening the register, the suspect jumped over the counter and was struggling with the owner, police said.

When the 18-year-old employee came out, he acted instantly to help his boss, stabbing the suspect in the lower abdomen with a kitchen knife, police said.

The robber was transported to a local hospital and is expected to live. Officers found that he was not carrying any weapons.

Nursing homes

Ontario, Canada -- Attacks by residents against staff at Ontario nursing homes have more than doubled in the past four years - turning the residences into high-risk places of work, a CBC News investigation has found.

Government documents obtained by the CBC show nursing home residents routinely assault the staff, as well as beat each other up. But warnings and complaints go unheeded.

Data obtained from Ontario's Ministry of Health and Long-term Care show the number of such serious incidents reported rose to 358 in 2006, compared with 155 in 2002.Those numbers only include what the ministry calls "unusual occurrences" or serious events that put residents' lives in danger.

Read more at cbc.ca

Safe at work?

Safe at work? You mean, apart from statistics showing that more than 13,000 women are raped on the job each year in the United States?
...And then you have intimidation, harassment, neglect, bullying, assaults, threats, robberies, theft, murder...

Story:
Myfoxcleveland.com reports about a worker at University Hospitals who has been jailed.

University Circle Police say the male employee trapped another female employee inside an elevator at the hospital. According to a police report, the man forced the woman inside the elevator, picked her up from behind and started shaking her.

Police say each time the elevator stopped on a floor, the man would stop, but no one else could get on the elevator because a cart was blocking the entrance. Each time the elevator door closed, the man would resume assaulting the woman.

Eventually the woman was able to get out of the elevator. She reported the incident to police a few days later."Obviously it's a concern, but University Circle is one of the safest places in the region, it's one of the safest places in Cleveland," says a spokesperson with University Circle Incorporated.

Parents, role models ...

And still we wonder how some kids grow up to be violent ...

Story:
An irate Italian family beat up a principal because they were unhappy with the grades a young relative had received and with a ban on cellphones at school. Three male relatives, including the father and grandfather of the student, punched and pushed the principal at a middle school in Bari on Saturday, police said.

They were angered by grades on the latest report card and by a recent ban by the principal on cellphones at the school he has run for the past 22 years. The principal was taken to hospital and treated for mild bruising. Police escorted him back to the school.

Source

A typical robbery

An arch typical robbery really ...
On your way home after a night out; a secluded area (a short-cut); two perpetrators; a weapon; being asked a question by the goons; trying to escape/fight back.
And: Do you think you would be able to see the knife? The answer would most probably be no, I'm afraid.

Story:
A 22-year-old man was walking home from a pub in Lea just after midnight on Tuesday when he was approached by two men.

As he cut through a ginnel (walkway) between two streets, the men asked him for "a light" and then for his mobile phone. When the man told them he did not have either, one of the men started feeling his pockets.

The victim pushed him away but was then punched in the stomach by one of the men. The two men ran away and the victim decided to chase them - but then realised his stomach was wet.

When he looked down there was a cut to his stomach which hospital staff said could have been made by a craft knife, police said.

The man was taken to the a hospital but his wounds were not considered serious and he was released at 3 a.m.

Source

Murder charge

Seems to me this is a reasonable law paragraph.
I'd also like to pay my respect to this woman for fighting back.

Story:
Police say a 30-year-old Cleveland man has been charged with murder in the death of his friend, 25, who was killed while the pair participated in a break-in.

The two men reportedly broke into a woman's house early Wednesday and assaulted her. The 20-year-old woman told police that the intruder punched her repeatedly and that she fought back by stabbing him with a kitchen knife. She said that the older man stood in the doorway of the kitchen and prevented another female resident from helping her fight off the intruder.

The 30-year-old then drove the stabbed man to a hospital, where he later died. The doctors were told that the man had injured himself while breaking through a door, the report said. Doctors believed the wounds were from a stabbing and contacted police.

Even if the defendant didn't directly cause the death, Ohio law allows prosecutors to file a murder charge against an accomplice to a crime in which someone dies.

Source

'Car-go'

... Or car-do ("the way of the car") :-)
Anyhow - a car is a great and versatile self-defense tool!

Story:
UK -- A shopper has told the Old Bailey how she used her car to scare off a man who attacked a 39-year-old housewife. The man is accused of committing the attack four days before allegedly knifing a teenager in Orpington.

On September 26, the woman noticed a man following the victim in a car park. The woman told the jury she had first seen the man loitering by a car park ticket machine near a shopping center.

When she reached her car on the floor below, she noticed the man was following the other shopper. She then heard screams. The court heard the victim had been knocked to the ground and the attacker was on top of her.

The woman then started sounding the horn of her car and shouting at the man. She told the jury the attacker then stood up and looked at her before slowly walking away. She said: "He stopped doing what he was doing and began to walk away. Initially it was quite slow, which I found quite strange considering what he had just done. He seemed quite cool and calm."

Jurors have already been told the suspect is a loner obsessed with Internet porn, including sites which celebrate rape and other forms of sexual violence. The prosecutor told the court the hospital worker spent hours downloading sick stories and pictures from the Internet.

Source

Hazards at work, 39

Australia -- A 48-year-old woman punched a 26-year-old male nurse in the face and repeatedly struck him with her walking stick on December 8, 2003 because she was irate about having to wait for hospital treatment, a court has heard.

The hostile woman wanted to be seen "immediately" when she arrived at the Royal Brisbane Hospital's psychiatric ward about 2:40pm.

However, the woman was left to wait and as the nurse emerged from one of the wards she yelled out "you Scottish bastard". "The complainant had an Irish accent," the prosecutor told the court.

The accused then struck the nurse's face with a clenched fist before repeatedly hitting him with her black walking cane as if it were a baseball bat. She was yelling obscenities ... he was walking backwards trying to stop the blows, calling for security.

He was fearful because she wouldn't stop. She was eventually brought to the ground before others helped restrain her.

Source

'Peas-keeper'

Here's your new self-defense weapon "the peas-keeper" :-)
Brilliant teamwork, I'd say!

Story:
UK -- Two plucky pensioners foiled a chip shop robber with a bowl of mushy peas and a pan of boiling hot water, a court heard today.

The 21-year-old robber stormed in with a hammer and jumped over the counter of shop in Bolton, Greater Manchester.

The masked raider struck the 65-year-old male owner on the head and shoulder before his 61-year-old partner came into the room with a bowl of peas. She threw the peas at the robber causing him to slip over.

The robber got back to his feet and tried to open the cash till but was stopped in his tracks as the couple picked up a pan of water and launched it at him.

The raider ran out of the shop empty-handed and was later found to have suffered burns to his right arm, chest and neck, which needed hospital treatment.

Source

(Un)happy slapping

UK -- A gang of teenagers attacked a man in a suspected happy-slapping incident in a busy shopping area.

But the incident turned against the youths as the man fought back and knocked one of them unconscious.

Two of the gang of eight 16 and 17- year-olds had to be taken to hospital and were later arrested.

31-year-old Curtis Mulcare from Brighton said he had been determined not to let the "gang of chavs" get away with attacking him.

The former amateur boxer, said: "I can't believe they attacked me. I'm a big bloke and I wouldn't have thought I was an obvious victim but they've just got no respect for anyone. They thought it was going to be happyslapping but it didn't end up too happy for them."

Source

Roll with it

A Colombian taxi driver got the better of an armed robber by rolling his cab over an embankment in Bucamaramanga -- with the assailant still inside.

The 66-year-old driver suffered a stab wound from the would-be thief, 16, who landed in hospital with multiple fractures, police said.

The driver's wife said her husband's wound was slight, but he feared the thief would kill him and so rolled his hack toward the embankment and jumped to safety.

Source

Hazards at work, 10

From media reports it may seem that attacks on people delivering pizza is happening all the time.
I do wonder if these companies have put any protective strategies to work. Or do they figure that robberies and assaults are simply "occupational hazards"?

Story:
A Colorado Springs pizza delivery man was attacked from behind and robbed of all of his pizza. It happened in an apartment complex Friday.

Witnesses say that there were 6 or 7 people in their late teens or early twenties that had ordered pizza to an apartment address. Once the delivery man came, he was hit on the head from behind with a rock and the pizza was taken. The man was sent to the hospital and required 13 staples in his head. Police have made no arrests.

Source

Hazards at work, 9

Sweden -- A conductor was assaulted by an unruly passenger Monday morning as the train was traveling from Stockholm towards Uppsala.

As the train approaches Märsta station, the man is told to pay for the fare by the conductor. The assailant refuses to pay and attacks the conductor. The man then jumps off the train at Märsta.

The victim receives a cut to the forehead and is later tended to at a hospital in Uppsala.

Source

Hazards at work, 8

UK -- A nurse who quit her job after being kicked by a patient last night welcomed the sentence imposed on her attacker - saying assaults on hospital staff should not be tolerated.

The 28-year-old, who worked as a bank nurse at Colchester General Hospital for 12 years, told of the trauma and injuries suffered in the incident - which temporarily left her unable to pick up her young child.

Mrs Rice said: “The attack left me winded and bruised. The woman hit me on the shoulder, knocking me to the ground, and then kicked me in the knee.

The wife of a paramedic, Mrs Rice revealed the attack was “the straw that broke the camel's back”.

Source

Hazards at work, 7

Miramar, Florida -- A Wingate Inn hotel clerk was hospitalized early Tuesday morning and remains in stable condition after she was brutally beaten during an attempted sexual assault.

Police say a hotel guest attacked the clerk around midnight and tried to sexually assault her. According to police, the man first propositioned the 19-year old clerk for oral sex in exchange for money.

The woman refused and the suspect walked away. But he returned less than an hour later and made another lewd offer. When the woman declined his advances, he asked her for access to the business center. Once inside, he tried to rape her, a Miramar police spokesman said.

When she laid down and he went to pull her skirt up, she started to fight back. During the fight however, the attacker broke her jaw and knocked out several teeth.Ultimately, she was able to escape and find help.

The suspect, who is from the town of Seminole, fled on foot. Police later found him covered in blood at a nearby Chevron station.

Source