Time Warp--On Science--On Health-- On Defense-- Artcam

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Believe it or not, this is a true story of a young lady who successfully defended herself against an attacker armed with a fork. At the time of the attack, she had a little bit of karate training.

She was walking on the sidewalk in a nice part of town at dusk when, without warning or provocation, a crazy man came out of a doorway and lunged at her, jabbing a fork at her eyes.

Due to her karate training she instinctively brought up her right hand striking his wrist with her hand. This action deflected the fork away from her face.

She then followed up by kicking into one of his knees causing him to collapse onto the pavement. At this point she ran to a nearby store and called the police. The police searched the crime scene and found the fork.

Each prong of the fork was sharpened making it a very lethal, "multiple needle" weapon. Had she not deflected the attacker's thrusting arm, he would have disfigured or blinded her.

Figure 1 depicts the defender (at right) getting out of the attacker's way while deflecting his lead arm with her right hand

Figure 2 shows the defender's follow-up kick into the attacker's knee.

(The model playing the role of the defender is Mary Grooms who is a brownbelter at the Topanga Karate School in the Los Angeles area. She is also a clinical sonar researcher at the UCLA's Medical Center.)

© 1997 Bernd Weiss

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