I had an unusual experience on my afternoon walk today.
Let me set the stage…
I live in a very upscale outer suburb of Austin, Texas. There are tons of city and neighborhood parks nearby. The area is extremely safe with a responsive police force and a really low crime rate. Violent crime in our city parks is exceptionally rare.
I take advantage of the area’s abundant and safe outdoor recreation options by taking long walks or weighted rucks in the nearby parks on most afternoons when I’m not on the road teaching.
My knee was aching a bit after a hard leg workout yesterday, so I chose an easy walk today at a park a few miles from my house. The park featured a very flat three-mile concrete trail that meandered through some wooded areas, small fishing ponds, baseball diamonds, and a disk golf course. The paved and level trail wouldn’t further aggravate my angry knee.
Despite the fact that it was a Saturday afternoon with perfect weather (sunny, low 80s, no humidity), very few people were walking on the trail.
I had a podcast playing in my earbuds and was enjoying my stroll when I noticed a man walking towards me on the trail. I initially spotted him from a few hundred meters away as he was walking in my direction.
At first glance, he appeared completely normal. He was a Hispanic male in his mid-20s, wearing a tank top and basketball shorts. He was walking at a moderate pace, with his gaze trained down at the trail in front of him. His hands were empty and he did not appear to be carrying any weapons. He was wearing white earbuds and seemed to be enjoying an afternoon walk just like I was.
As is my habit on trails like this, I greeted him with brief eye contact, a smile, and a friendly “hi” as he was getting close enough to pass me.
He brought his eyes up to meet mine and grinned with a facial expression that exuded pure evil.
I fed the description of the dude into Canva AI and asked it to create a photo. It was shockingly close, but the guy on the trail had a smile that was 10X more menacing than this.
I was a cop for 25 years. I arrested murderers, rapists, psychopaths, armed robbers, and child molesters. I encountered my share of evil in my former career. Few of the seriously bad men I arrested in my police career had a countenance that was even remotely close to that of the young man I encountered on the trail this afternoon.
His smile was so shockingly hateful that I actually caught myself recoiling slightly away from him. That wasn’t the reaction I wanted to portray, so I stopped, narrowed my gaze, and gave him stronger eye contact without the normal friendly smile.
I instantly had the thought “Here it comes. He’s going to attack you right now.”
This wasn’t some pseudo-alpha tough guy status game. This guy was showing a facial expression I’d only seen a few times in the hundreds of violent criminals I arrested over the course of my career.
The last time I saw that look it was from a carjacker I had arrested. That guy carjacked a mentally disabled man, took him hostage, and made him drive around pulling money out of ATMs until the victim’s accounts were drained. He then marched the guy at gunpoint to a wooded area and pushed him over a 50 foot tall waterfall. The push and subsequent fall paralyzed the victim from the waist down and nearly killed him.
After the arrest, I was present while our detectives interrogated the suspect. When the detectives asked why he had tried to kill his cooperating victim, the carjacker smiled the exact same evil smile I saw on the trail today as he said “Sometimes I just do stupid shit.”
A psychopath recalling his attempted murder of a harmless disabled man with absolute glee.
That memory was passing through my brain, as I processed my options after seeing the man on the trail. I can’t describe the guy in any other manner than by saying his very essence exuded pure evil. He smiled his predatory, malevolent smile. I stopped. He stopped.
We were about six feet away from each other. We engaged in a very brief stare-down. Neither of us uttered a word.
While maintaining his menacing grin, the man slowly averted his gaze back towards the ground and walked away.
I held my stationary position until the man was about 100 yards from me and then continued my walk.
What a strange encounter!
It was an anti-climactic ending similar to many of the stories chronicled in There I Was…When Nothing Happened: True Tales of Real Self Defense From Professionals in the Field, a book to which I contributed a narrative of a much more violent situation that turned out to have an equally tame conclusion.
So what can we learn from situations like this? After pondering what happened, I have a couple thoughts.
1) You can encounter unpredictable people and criminals even in “safe” areas. How many of you would be truly prepared for criminal violence when taking a daytime walk in a park located in a city with a very low crime rate?
I really don’t think that we are ever truly “safe” when out in public today. Take a look at what happened last month in a park in another of Austin’s “safe” suburbs. A man was seated on a park bench taking photos of birds when another man randomly snuck up behind him, grabbed him around the neck, and began attempting to saw the victim’s head off with a knife. It was a random and completely unprovoked attack.
No matter how “safe” the area is, you should be prepared to encounter violent criminals and crazy people.
2) Not every problem is a weapons problem. Most of my readers are very much into weapons and gear. I am too. I was armed during my walk, but my weapons weren’t what deterred any potential attack.
This was the gear I was carrying:
– Smith and Wesson 442UC .38 special revolver equipped with a clipdraw. I was carrying the gun in a Vertx fanny pack. I also had a Tuff products quick strip with four extra rounds of ammunition.
– POM pepper spray clipped to left front pocket of my workout shorts
– Spyderco Delica knife clipped inside my waistband
The loadout for my walk in the park
Although the total encounter only lasted about three seconds, I consciously thought about my options with regards to weapons access. I chose not to draw a weapon for two reasons:
The primary reason was quite simply I didn’t think I needed a weapon to prevail, even if he did attack me. He was lean and muscular, but I outweighed him by at least 100 pounds. He wasn’t carrying any weapons and I felt confident that I could win in a physical confrontation.
Beyond that, I had a feeling that the man was seriously mentally ill. I think he enjoyed intimidating people. I considered pulling my pepper spray, but I thought he would see that act as a tacit admission of being scared or intimidated. The worst violent predators are often encouraged when they sense a victim is fearful. Seeing fear or fearful actions is a “go” signal that makes them initiate or press the attack.
Based on lots of past confrontations in my police career, I thought the best way to dissuade this particular crazy person from attacking was to show zero indications that I was scared of his menacing facial expression. It’s hard to know for certain, but I think if I would have tried to back away or appeared scared enough to draw a weapon or make a call to police, he would have become more aggressive.
Take a look again at the AI generated photo above. That’s roughly what the guy looked like. Could you honestly handle someone like that in a physical encounter? If not, do you carry the appropriate tools to repel him or prevail in the event he attacked you?
I know lots of my readers are gun people and don’t carry intermediate force options like pepper spray or impact weapons. Maybe you should change that habit. It’s nice having “something between harsh language and a gun” as my friend Chuck Haggard has said.
If you were in an encounter like this and didn’t have the confidence to win a physical fight against a guy his size, what are your options if the only tool you are carrying is a pistol? Would you have drawn your gun? How are you going to justify that when the police arrive? Do you think telling the cops “he looked at me in a mean and intimidating way” would be reasonable enough to escalate the situation to a lethal force response?
It’s nice having options. I can’t think of many cops in the USA who would arrest you for palming a can of pepper spray in response to his menacing gaze. I can’t say the cops would react the same way if you put your hand on the butt of your pistol or drew a gun.
3) What else could it be? This appeared to be a single psychopath evaluating a single victim (me) for a possible attack. Where I see lots of folks screw up in similar situations is by assuming what they see is the only thing going on. Could this be a set-up for something else? Somewhere around 50% of violent attacks initiated by strangers involve multiple attackers.
As you evaluate this guy’s actions, you must also realize that he may be acting as a “stopper.” He may be the distraction to ensure you don’t notice his friends coming up behind you to hit you in the back of the head or put a knife to your throat.
Any time you notice one person holding your attention for an inordinately long time, you should expect that it is a setup and start scanning for accomplices.
I was able to watch this guy’s approach for a couple hundred meters. We were in an open area of the park with no vegetation along either side of the trail for about 30 meters. There was no place for another attacker to hide in this case.
If the man had been stationary waiting for my approach, if the encounter happened near a blind curve in the trail, or had the encounter occurred on a section of the trail that went through a wooded area, I would have immediately expected additional attackers.
Do you know how to move in such a way that you can check behind you without turning your back on the primary attacker?
How would the presence of more than one potential attacker alter your response in this situation? Is drawing a weapon a more reasonable response?
4). Training priorities matter. Many of you will spend lots of time trying to get your draw time under a second. Most of you will endlessly practice reloading your gun faster, even though you know reloads seldom happen in armed citizen shootings. Some of you will spend hours on the martial arts mats every week training for a physical confrontation. All those are good things, but those skills won’t help you in every encounter.
How much time have you spent increasing your situational awareness? Can you recognize microexpressions? Have you studied body language? Do you have the verbal agility to convince a criminal that you aren’t a good victim? Have you worked on instantly changing your own facial expression from fear to anger?
Knowing how to fight and shoot is important. With that said, you will use the skills I mentioned in the last paragraph in almost every confrontation while you will shoot and fight in far fewer. It’s worth spending time honing your “soft skills” as well.
4). Life is a training opportunity. Nothing bad actually happened here. I’m going to be watching for this guy in the future when I’m walking in the park.
This is the perfect opportunity to mentally debrief your performance and think about how you might change your actions if you experience something similar in the future.
Don’t waste these incidents that turn out for the best. There are still good lessons to learn from each one.
Some of the links in this article are affiliate links. I make a small amount of money if you purchase anything using those links.