samurai sword attack

this story of shopstaff fighting off some booby wielding a 'samurai' sword reminds me of an odd incident in hong kong. nay, also an odd incident in seattle.

the hong kong one took place back in the early 1980s when i was in connaught building on the harbour front from where it was a mere 50 storeys down to the square to gawp at some unfortunate who'd been handing out $100 bills to passers-by and then whipped out this sword and started waving it around.

the police surrounded him and we had what's called an impasse with the fuzz not daring to get too near.

then - according to reports on the evening news - a young copper asked his superior for permission to disarm the man. permission given. the youngster then borrowed an umbrella off one of the crowd and advanced in what looked like classical mode and proceeded to send the sword spinning from the man's hands, much to his annoyance and complaint that the umbrella's tines had hurt his fingers thus causing him to drop the sword.

the policeman said something or other and must have offered the man a second chance because he picked the sword up and they tried it again and again the blade went whirling up into the air to clang harmlessly on the ground.

by now the swordsman was thoroughly pissed off and shouted at the policeman to the effect that how come/dare he knew moves like that? no one knows moves like that, ok maybe NAME or NAME or NAME.

One of them turned out to be the policeman's uncle or grandpa or whatever, anyway he'd learnt his skills from there.

the poor chap fell to his knees shouting what an honour it was to be out-fenced by such an opponent and why hadn't anyone lent him a fan to do the job, much more graceful moves involved.

it was on all the news channels and would have been a youtube hit no question.

the seattle one was less dramatic. it was around 1997, i guess, some black dude in central seattle, around the market i think, was waving a sword around and no one dared come near. they hosed him and pepper sprayed him and everything but the guy kept standing etc.

in the end they wore him down and marched him away but i remember thinking 'what stamina'.