Recently, I was sitting at home listening to my children trying to decide whether or not they should jump on the trampoline first or play football in the garden when my phone rang. To my surprise it was a young man named Gabriel J. who I hadn’t really spoken to in nearly a year and a half. Gabriel had been a teenage student of mine who I had trained in martial arts and self development. He had called to thank me for the training and explain how it had been instrumental in saving his life only a few days earlier. He began to explain in greater detail how he had survived being brutally beaten and held hostage in his home for nine hours.
I asked Gabriel if he wouldn’t mind sharing a shortened version of what might have seemed like a never ending ordeal at the time. The attack took place on May 22nd in his house on Blarney St. in Cork where he had been relaxing with some friends. I have changed the names of his friends for obvious security reasons.
(Gabriel J.’s email to me)
The night started on Sunday when my two housemates, a friend and I were all having a few cans and some rum. (Three lads and one girl.) It was turning out to be a relaxing night as we had a stressful week with one of the housemates falling out and leaving the house.
At around half one in the morning, there was a knock at the door. David started for the door but Clara was faster and had beaten him to it. I heard the door slightly open and then heard a loud bang as the door slammed into the wall. Within a split second Luke and I were up and heading into the hall way. I came around the hallway corner and everything slowed down. David was sent flying and sliding down the hall as I was confronted by a tall guy in a balaclava. Instinct said hit, so I hit him and hit him again. Then I shoved him down. I was thinking one thought, “We need to get them out of the house.” I remember pulling on Luke’s jacket to bring him into what I thought was a fight. He stood frozen. Another really big guy sprinted around the corner. I quickly saw two shiny things in each of his hands (weapons) but I did not see what they were. (Chain and Fork) I hesitated for a moment. In that instant we lost the forward momentum. Luke and I were thrown onto the chairs less than a meter away. The taller guy started laying in to me; hitting me six times as I stared him in the eyes. I was delighting in the fact that he could not hurt me but the last one must have been his haymaker because I saw white for a split second. I thought better about staring him down. Now they were mixing between the three of us. Hitting, kicking and threatening us with the fork when anybody moved. Soon enough they seemed to think that David was the one they wanted but the things they were saying did not make sense. All the facts were not true about our house so that seemed to reassure me that I wasn’t going to die and it was a mistake. They were saying they were vigilantes or IRA searching for drugs. They were acting erratic at times and pacing across the floor. They started hitting Clara and threatening to rape her. That was when we all decided it was best not to keep trying to confront them. This was the point when we lost the battle of wills; the will to fight back.
David was taken upstairs to get beaten as we were guarded by the taller guy. He threw ashtrays and smashed glasses on our heads. The bottle of rum was too hard to smash off of our heads. When David came down he was in a bad way; half conscious and bleeding all over his face. He passed out after half an hour. One of the guys took off his balaclava and then I instantly became scared. I had heard about this in books and movies. It means you’re going to die because you have seen their face. They started playing games like ‘rat out your friend’ and ‘stand up so I can punch you’. They had us take our clothes off and put them back on several times. Collecting our mobiles and checking if we had anymore on us. They revelled in this while laughing all the way. They then started choking David with the chain until he passed out. At about five in the morning he woke up. I was ordered to make sandwiches. I found a large butcher knife in the kitchen and picked it up. I decided after serious contemplation that I would not have it in me to kill someone and also, I would get into too much trouble.
The night went on with our attackers eating sandwiches, drinking our beer and smoking our ciggs. One of them left at about seven in the morning and I became bored, annoyed and so tired that I fell asleep for about ten minutes. I was woken by the big built guy saying that somebody was coming up to sort us out. This was the second time I felt genuine fear. He continued for about two more hours claiming that someone was coming up, to what it seemed to be, to kill us. The guy then decided to take my laptop and big TV. He finally left at about half nine or ten o’clock.
We then stared and paced around the house while cleaning the mess. We all went to the hospital. Luke and David were seriously injured. Damien stayed hospitalized and was treated for fractured ribs, a fractured jaw, a cracked skull and draining of fluid on his eye. We told our story to the Garda (police) who took our statement but so far there has been no progress in finding them.
It was a hard night but for most of it I felt in control, not of the situation but of myself. There was always the feeling that if anything extreme had happened I could have been able to react in an extreme way.
As you can imagine, this incident has since left Gabriel looking at his life and personal security in a new way. A few days later, he and his housemates moved out to find new living arrangements. He came to visit me with me a week later to go over what happened to him and understand what he was thinking and feeling prior to, during, and after those nine hours. In most cases, being held hostage requires you to follow your intuition and stick to some basic survival principles, if you want the chance to make it out alive.
In Part II we will explore the mindset needed and some key basics that could help you survive a similar situation.
Written By Mark Lee of Real World Defense Systems
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1 comment
Rick says:
June 29, 2011 at 12:02 am (UTC 1 )
First of all, I’d like to congratulate Gabriel on a situation well handled, that he and his friends got out of alive. Secondly I’d like to make it clear that I am not passing judgement of any kind, and having not been in a situation like that I can not be sure exactly how I would react either.
Ok now that’s out of the way I’d like to speculate on how the situation could have been handled differently (or how similar situations could be handled in the future), and whether various courses of action would have made the situation better or worse. I just figure it’s best to try and learn from these things.
My initial thoughts are:
- This is a a good advert for a peephole, as the girl could’ve seen who it was. Though I suspect they might have prepared for them not opening the door, it could have bought them long enough to dial the police.
- It says he hit the first guy, but it doesn’t say where so I’m assuming it was in the face/head. Perhaps the throat would have been better, if he had time to hit the guy several times, two or three hard punches to the throat are enough to incapacitate most men. I try to ingrain this self-defense response into myself incase I need it. How the bigger guy would have reacted though we can’t be sure. It might have deterred him, or it might’ve made the situation worse. Without knowing why there were there or who they were it’s impossible to say.
- An alternative could have been to pick up a non-lethal weapon. I’ve had a few instances when I’ve thought noises could have been an intruder and I always pick up something, even if it’s just to throw at them as a temporary distraction.
- His friend/flatmate stood frozen when he was needed. This just highlights that you cannot rely on other people to protect you or themselves in dangerous situations.
If it’s welcome I’ll have a think and comment more another time, it’s late here! Thanks for an interesting (though alarming) article!