Stabbing Video Clip

Terrorist Stabbing Video Clip

So earlier in the week I posted a video on a security guard being approached by a woman who proceeded to attempt to stab him. In this blog piece I’m just going to go over some points that stood a out to me and as always use the video as a learning tool. According to the reports the security guard was relatively unharmed and deployed his firearm and stopped the attacker off screen.

To help out i’ve taken a few screen shots of the video to put my observations in context

So the chunk of the video, depending on what site you watch it from, is the woman walking up to what looks like a security check point. I’m sure this guard has done this 100’s without incident but with hindsight we can look at it and say in this shot, this is the preferred distance to have, the guard has a very slight vantage point being a step up but that step up also gives an advantage of more distance to be covered by the attacker.

Also there is no need to let this woman any closer to him than this, from the looks of it all he’s doing is looking over some papers but again in hindsight….

So next shot is her advancing up the step and gaining some distance toward the guard, she looks to be handing him her paperwork. So this is kinda clever whether she meant it or not, by walking up and asking the guard a question or handing him something to engage him it acts as a distraction so she can get closer to him and close that gap. We talk about this kinda of technique in Tactical Edge a lot when dealing with a threat position, in order to get that reactionary gap

we can ask the attacker a compliant question to take his mind off the situation, effectively causing a little cognitive disruption which would allow you to act accordingly.

We see here that the woman uses a similar technique knowing or unknowingly. At this moment once the guard has the papers from her he could have ushered her back down the step or motioned her to back up, thats something you see often from police officers in the US they’ll usher a suspect back to create that reactionary distance, good habit to get into, distance is opportunity!

So here the guard gives himself a bit distance, only for the woman to reposition her bag while he looks over her papers.

Again the guard is doing his bit and looking over the documents so isn’t really looking at the woman as a threat and really why would he?? realistically he’s probably already done this 100 times that day, its habit, its regular, nothing really out of the ordinary has been spotted yet

These next few shots run together nicely. So here the woman unzips and goes inside her bag. Why? she’s already handed the guy her documents and yes we don’t know the conversation they’re having, she might be telling him she has more papers or ID in her bag but from the mere look of the silent video this looks odd. The guard should really be asking her

what she’s going for or moving into some kind of stance or authoritative posture. 

the hand in the bag is obviously the woman checking for or repositioning the knife ready to be drawn, this persistent or constant checking for the weapon is something i’ve seen a few times. It’s almost like its a reassurance action from an attacker, they’ll be talking or shouting getting more aggressive but one hand will tap a pocket a few

times or the hand will be covering the area the weapon is in almost like a protective motion or they’ll be hiding a hand in a pocket ready to be brought out. The reassurance tap/hover is a very subtle pre-fight indicator that can be difficult to spot when things are kicking off, here though there doesn’t seem to be much aggression on the onset until

the knife is drawn.

The last set of shots is the guard looking right at her and she’s looking right at him with a fixed stare, the next few shots are of the knife being drawn and thrusted.

Ive included the elapsing time in the screen shots, it might be too small to make out but from the knife being draw, raised and thrusted its less than a second! LESS THAN A SECOND for the woman to draw the knife from concealment and thrust it!! for the draw, raise, thrust and attack to the guard is just over a second until the guard is off screen. This is violence in action folks, less than a second to pull a weapon and strike and this looked like ideal “low stress” conditions, doesn’t look there was large shouting matches, no threats beforehand by all accounts this would be a ideal defence situation to be in. The guard has no initial flight or fight response because he only has the time to react so theres no big adrenaline dump until maybe after or during. Typically your defensive response to a situation is decided upon before a punch is even thrown

because theres a “pre-fight” phase of an altercation, this is the play ground style shit you see when guys hands get lower and there voices get louder, typical “alpha” posing until the first punch swings in. We don’t have that here, everything is by the numbers ordinary for all accounts until the knife is drawn.

Another classic we see is that dominant hand no1 angle line of attack.

 

This is actually a great video to pull from because of the very nature of it, the majority or cases I’ve seen, read or reviewed have had a pre-contact phase of either posturing or threatening before hand, we get none of that here it very much looks completely out of the blue. you could pick holes in what the guard did and could have done all day but thats not for anyone to judge. we should view this video as a learning tool and look at it as objectively as we can and realise just how quick something can kick off especially when we don’t expect it.

Again from the news report I read the guard managed to stop the attacker and came away with little to no injuries so sitting saying he should have done this or that makes no difference, this situation brings a favourite phrase of mine to mind “no right or wrong way just a more preferred way”