How NOT to Act During a 3rd World Mugging

I want to thank everyone again for their messages of support and healing over these last three days. And to be honest, I wasn't gonna write about this so soon after the event because I had other things lined up, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that there is a lesson learned from my misadventure Saturday night. And I want to stress as vehemently as possible to anyone who reads this, do not react the way I did in the same situation. The consequences could cost you your life....

The village I currently live in.

It was Saturday evening, and the incredible full moon that comes around once every few years was taking up the night sky. It was absolutely gorgeous. The pueblo where I live is very small one and is just on the outskirts of a huge network of mountainous rain forest that stretches from here to the border of Panama. Needless to say this background combined with a clear starry night and that full moon inspired some reflective thought in yours truly.

So as is customary on my Saturday evenings after the workweek is finished, I decided to partake in some locally distilled rum. This in and of itself was not where I made the mistake. I made the mistake of thinking it would be a good idea to take a walk under this full moon while as drunk as a poet on payday. So I left the safety of Hacienda de Gipson and decided to wander and wax philosophic underneath this celestial gorgeousness the earth had been blessed with.

Now I don't want to give anyone the wrong impression here, Costa Rica is a lot safer than about 99% of the world. Violent crime is actually pretty rare here, especially in my location. But wherever there are impressionable young men, stupidity is bound to follow. And wherever a visibly drunk and stumbling (possibly singing) gringo is meandering through the barrio at night, that stupidity shifts gears and becomes opportunistic. Which is what happened to me.

I saw the three of them walking towards me in the distance and they were constantly turning and chattering amongst themselves as they got closer. One was much taller than me, but incredibly skinny and he was wearing a dark blue hoodie with the hood up, partially obscuring his face. Another was a little bit smaller and he was wearing a winter hat pulled down over his face with eye holes cut out. And the last one was wearing a baseball cap and bandanna combo that instantly screamed "genius". I was unsure of their intentions until the taller skinny one smashed a bottle on the pavement and kept the jagged broken neck in his hand like a knife.

Who my attackers THOUGHT they were like...

This is where a smarter man than myself would have turned and run. And this is what you should always do if there is at least 100 yards distance, as was the case here. But I, being the drunken former Marine and current black belt that I was, saw this as somehow comical. I stopped walking, and waved at them as they approached. I don't think a single one of them was over the age of 18 or 19, and the one with a broken bottle was shaking like a leaf. I saw this as an opportunity, in my inebriated state, to add some positivity to their lives and maybe diffuse the situation with friendliness and compassion..

"Hey kid, I think you broke your bottle, you might want to drop the rest of it or somebody is liable to get hurt*"  I said jokingly with a big smile. As I was talking to him, one of his friends circled around me and behind my back while the other was uncomfortably close to my right. The kid with the bottleneck then said "give us everything in your pockets, or I'm going to use it to stab you in the neck and you will die*". In that split second, the one behind me tried to wrap his arms around mine in some strange restraining bearhug. And that's when instinct and training kicked in...

Who my attackers were ACTUALLY like...complete with hoodie.

I stepped back, and stomped on the foot of the one trying to restrain me while simultaneously headbutting him with the back of my head onto the bridge of his nose. He screamed, "hijo de puta!" and ran off quite quickly. I then gave the tall one in front of me with the bottleneck a "This is Sparta!"style heel kick to the chest which resulted in him stumbling backwards, dropping the bottleneck, and hitting the back of his head on the phone pole behind him. Lastly, I yanked the one with the black mask by the arm and threw him over my shoulder headfirst onto the pavement. The resulting "clunk" was both sickening and audible from quite a distance, and he was quite obviously seriously hurt. But unfortunately, I grabbed his arm and pulled him in a submission hold while he was face down on the ground. That's when the rock hit me....

His friend, the tall one in the hoodie, had picked up a large rock from the side of the road and chucked it as hard as he could and bull's-eyed me right in the forehead. The blood from the resulting wound came quickly and swiftly with a lot of volume, and I was instantly stunned. Luckily for me, the kid just wanted to help his friend who he helped to his feet and ran off with in the distance. I should have just given them my wallet... It's not like I wouldn't have been able to track it down afterwards with police help because this is such a small town. But my ego and my blood alcohol content rewarded me with a deep head wound that I had to stumble back home with. Even now, three days later it hurts like hell and is in constant danger of infection because of the tropical environment I live in.

If my attackers were better armed and / or had a better killer instinct, I would be another violent crime statistic. I would be dead. And this is the lesson I really want to hammer home to all of you. Martial arts training, while incredibly useful in one-on-one nonlethal situations, is useless against numbers. Don't be fooled by movies and TV, real combat is fast and dangerous and subject to the laws of physics and mathematics just like anything else in the physical world. So if you ever find yourself in the same situation as me, try to get out of that situation as best as you can. Run. If you can't run, comply. If your compliance results in more violence, defend yourself as best you can while simultaneously trying to escape and make as much noise as you can to attract attention. This is a lesson I learned the hard way this Saturday night, and I hope this story inspires you need my warnings....