Martial Artists Convicted of Stabbing Innocent Bystander in 'Self-Defense'

[arnisador]

Seen on MT:

NYC subway conductor convicted in bystander death (http://www.fox44.net/Global/story.asp?S=10433704&nav=menu660_1)


A martial arts-trained New York City subway conductor who fought back while being mugged has been convicted of murder for fatally stabbing a bystander who apparently was trying to help him.
[...]
Prosecutor David O'Keefe said Parks mistakenly thought Byas was part of the group that attacked and stabbed him. He said Parks chased Byas, caught him and stabbed him 15 times.

More good reason to believe that if you have to chase them, it may no longer be a self-defense situation.

[Robert Klampfer]

More good reason to believe that if you have to chase them, it may no longer be a self-defense situation.

Beyond that - he stabbed the guy 15 times! I'd love to have heard the defense argument for that one.

Robert

[Carol]

Training to be effective in a fight is important, but what is also important is having the ability to turn yourself off as soon as the direct threat is gone.

[babuzabu]

Hmmm
maybe you guys are right.

But,
maybe youre not.

I personaly think its hard to judge such a situation from the couch (not saying anything about your skills and experience). Who knows what were the parameters and what were the considerations that led the guy to chase. Maybe its the certain way the light fell on his face, maybe it was a certain smell, maybe it actually made sense from his point of view - maybe something like "I have to chase this one guy and show intent with him or they will all re-group and attack me again" who knows.

And about the 15 stabs - how fast can you count from 1 to 15 ? it takes me about 4 to 5 seconds without much effort.
thats it - 5 seconds. You dont need to be blood thisty for that - just very frightened and intent on getting the job done. especially if you have never been in a situation like thtis before. Do you just hope that 2, 3, 4 stabs are enough to stop the guy? what if the moment you stop the other guy turns around and stabs you?
I dont know.
I can see myself stabing 20 to 30 times if think someone might kill me if I dont get it right.

Than again maybe he realy is a blood thirsty psychopath who just capitallizes on a violent situation.

[Shaun]

Training to be effective in a fight is important, but what is also important is having the ability to turn yourself off as soon as the direct threat is gone.

Yes,it sounds like this guy has no off switch at all.

[5thprofession47]

Hmmm
maybe you guys are right.

But,
maybe youre not.

I personaly think its hard to judge such a situation from the couch (not saying anything about your skills and experience). Who knows what were the parameters and what were the considerations that led the guy to chase. Maybe its the certain way the light fell on his face, maybe it was a certain smell, maybe it actually made sense from his point of view - maybe something like "I have to chase this one guy and show intent with him or they will all re-group and attack me again" who knows.

And about the 15 stabs - how fast can you count from 1 to 15 ? it takes me about 4 to 5 seconds without much effort.
thats it - 5 seconds. You dont need to be blood thisty for that - just very frightened and intent on getting the job done. especially if you have never been in a situation like thtis before. Do you just hope that 2, 3, 4 stabs are enough to stop the guy? what if the moment you stop the other guy turns around and stabs you?
I dont know.
I can see myself stabing 20 to 30 times if think someone might kill me if I dont get it right.

Than again maybe he realy is a blood thirsty psychopath who just capitallizes on a violent situation.

What you describe here is known as a Bio-feedback loop. The person doing the action is getting results and therefore continues with what is "working". I am not defending this man, but simply trying to explain the reason behind the multiple stabs. You gave a solid description above. The physiological effects of imminent danger can trigger the fight or flight response and this hightened state can account for the gross motor response described. Understanding how your body will react under stress and training to fight through it---including the ability to disengage when needed, is vital. Unfortunately it appears the defender here was unable to distinguish friend from foe under such chaotic conditions.

[babuzabu]

What you describe here is known as a Bio-feedback loop. The person doing the action is getting results and therefore continues with what is "working". I am not defending this man, but simply trying to explain the reason behind the multiple stabs. You gave a solid description above. The physiological effects of imminent danger can trigger the fight or flight response and this hightened state can account for the gross motor response described. Understanding how your body will react under stress and training to fight through it---including the ability to disengage when needed, is vital. Unfortunately it appears the defender here was unable to distinguish friend from foe under such chaotic conditions.

I agree.
This story is bizzare. But than again not something that I can't even imagine. What you say about exercising judgement and not only fighting ability when you are practicing under stress - practicing dissingagement and not only takeouts, is well in place. But I think the fact that this was a multi-attack changes the perspective. A multi-attack is a scenario you take the most pasimistically when you train - a situation you usually consider to have the least chances of getting out of and therefore don't really train any disingagement in that context. This might be a problem as we see in this case - the guy survived the attack but went on going without considering that the context has changed.

But regardless of speculation on what might have happened -
Its realy hard to say without more details of this case how bad was this guys judgement (yes objectively it was a verry poor judgement if we look only at the unnecessary victim).
If indeed the information that was available to him was that this was still a multi attack at the time he was (wrongly) engaging the bystender than I don't know.

In my opinion there are two important parts to judge this mans actions:
1. what made him attack a bystender ?!!! - that is the most problematic part.
2. And even if it were one of the attackers, what made him think he should finish him off?

I wouldn't otomatically say his judgement was wrong on both parts without more information.
Just to be clear - objectivelly from a third person point of view its all wrong, but when we talk about judgement the question is how good were his decision based on the information that was available to him.
One thing we can say for sure even without more information is that the ultimate respnsibillity for the killing is on the 'original attackers' who created this dangerouse situation in the first place.