(July 10, 2015 at 2:03 pm)Yeauxleaux Wrote: ... That's one of those situations where people could have come together and collectively manhandled that guy to the floor. It would have been so easy for a couple people to quickly grab him while he was focused on his target then for someone else to grab the knife out his hand. ...
Have you ever taken a knife away from someone who is not wanting to hand it over to you and is willing to kill you to keep it? If not, then what makes you think is would be "so easy" to do it? Do you know what has happened to a lot of people who have tried to do such things? What makes you think you would have better luck?
Also, as Napoléon stated above, the other passengers were not a group who had trained together and worked together, and they had no reason whatsoever to think that if one of them stepped forward that anyone else would do so with them. And certainly, they have not practiced a coordinated attack together for this type of situation.
Being on a subway train, there is not the same room to maneuver as in open space, and so when he tries to stab you with the knife, there may be nowhere for you to go to avoid being stabbed. And we are discussing a very short period of time, as mentioned in the better article to which Minimalist provided a link:
Quote:Jasper Spires boarded the Red Line Metro train at Rhode Island Avenue shortly before 1 p.m. Saturday, joining passengers from the District and elsewhere headed to various Fourth of July festivities, among them the Foo Fighters concert at RFK Stadium.
As the train rumbled toward its next stop, at NoMa-Gallaudet, a three-minute ride, ...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/crim...story.html
So we are talking about a struggle that probably took no more than 3 minutes from start to finish, including when the guy first grabbed for the victim's cell phone.
"A wise man ... proportions his belief to the evidence."
— David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Section X, Part I.
