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4th of July Inner Harbor Stabbing

My family and I went down to the Inner Harbor to watch the fireworks on the 4th. As the crowd shuffled off of Pier 6 after the show, we walked past a man lying on the ground bleeding from his neck just outside of McCormick & Schmick’s. (I was carrying my youngest child, with the other two beside me.) First responders were trying to apply pressure to the man’s wound, but it took a while before paramedics and an ambulance could work their way through the crowd. They had started chest compressions as they loaded the man into the ambulance.

26-year-old Joseph Calo had been visiting Baltimore from Alabama when he and his brother became involved in a shoving match with a group of other men, including 32-year-old Marcus Harris. The fight was broken up at first, but Calo and Marcus apparently “re-engaged” each other later on. Calo was stabbed in the neck with a broken bottle and died after being taken to the University of Maryland Medical Center.

It was a disturbing end to my family’s 4th of July celebration, less than 24 hours after I returned from Sama Sama, but it served as a reminder that violence can erupt anywhere and anytime. All the more reason for an “all blade, all the time” mentality, paired with training in mass attack and improvised weapons concepts …

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Class Notes – May 4, 2010

Mosi and Frank ran class this evening … In attendance: Mosi and Frank (instructing), David, Brian, Mark and Martin.

Tonight Dr. Bob wasn’t able to attend class, so Frank and I were asked to step in and teach the class the Atienza Trapo Hit Set we had just learned from a recent seminar. Since we only had one handkerchief between the 6 of us, we improvised and taught the set using knives instead. Of course, since the reach of a knife is different from that of a “loaded hankerchief,” We had to adapt the template to knife: changing the targets slightly and the defenses a bit. After learning the hit set & getting a few reps in, we spent the last 7 minutes of class free flowing.

Mosi