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I'll try not to bore you with the details, but here it goes:
The night of January 4th, 2007 ( Thursday evening ) I was sitting at the bar down the street. It was Karaoke night, so many of the patrons were lit, like Fish...one of the regulars at the bar. Fish ( his nick-name ) is a 70 year old man who had been mugged several times walking home from the bar. This particular night the bartender asked me to walk Fish home safely. Now, this is something that many of the bar patrons have done in the past, without incident...so I accepted this duty.
I got him to his doorstep where his brother ( another older man ) was waiting with the door open. As I turned around to walk home, this guy from the end of the street walked up to me asking me " Who the fuck are you and what the fuck are you doing here"? I replied that I was a friend of Fish and I was just walking him home safely. Then he got right in my face ( which I don't like ) and repeated his question. I noticed that the man was sweating profusely and his eyes were bulging out of his head, so my first thought was that this guy was either high on coke or he was dusted out of oblivion. I got a little cautious and asked him to step away from me, since he was RIGHT in my face. He refused, so I shoved him back...he then proceeded to pull a six-inch knife on me and started swinging it in my direction ( quick, jabbing motions ) screaming " I'm the security on this block, motherfucker "! I told him repeatedly to calm down and drop the knife. He chased me down to the corner, and when I turned around ( to see if he was still following me ) I saw him go towards the house where I just walked Fish home to ( violent, wielding a six-inch knife and dusted ). I panicked, this was the first time I have ever been in a situation like this, and ran around the corner and up the stairs to my apartment. I was looking for some kind of deterrent ( baseball bat, i.e ) and the very first thing I saw was ( try not to laugh at this ) my roommates civil war replica sword sitting up in the corner of the den ( at the top of the stairs ). I grabbed it, thinking that time was short, and my neighbors were possibly getting stabbed to death at that moment. I put the sword under my trench coat and ran down the stairs.....
Well...as I rounded the corner, someone was shining a flashlight in my face and asked me to stop. I didn't know who it was...they did not identify themselves, and my gut reaction was that it was a crony of the guy with the knife, so I kept walking....the person with the flashlight shouted again "Get your hands out of your pockets"! At that point, I saw the outline of a police uniform pointing a gun and I immediately dropped to the ground and put my hand behind my back...with the sword I was carrying falling to the ground ( sound funny, right? ) Well, they took me into the station and fingerprinted me and I had to hold that silly sign up in front of me ( this is the sort of thing I thought would NEVER happen to me ) I was in shock the entire night. They questioned me, and I told them the truth...that I was just looking out for my neighbors, who weren't able to defend themselves. The cop told me that my crime was coming back to the scene of the crime, and that I should have called the police. I told the cop that " Well, I WOULD have called you guys, but the crackhead with the knife was ALREADY at the house, and what was I supposed to do?" I panicked, and I thought I was doing the right thing. Many of my friends have called what I did "heroic" but I wasn't looking to be a hero that night, I was just trying to do what I felt was the right...no...the JUST thing to do. I ended up going to court over this incident, and paying a $150.00 fine for disorderly conduct. That's what you get for being a nice guy and a concerned neighbor, I suppose....
We really DO need a Charles Bronson this day and age, I guess...but I have learned my lesson. If I suspect that someone I care about is getting stabbed to death, do nothing...just call the police when it may already be too late at that point.
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