The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil…Is for good men to do nothing. Sir Edmund Burke
“(On July 4th) Police and a witnesses interviewed…said passengers trapped in the moving train huddled at both ends of the car and watched in horror as Spires punched 24-year-old Kevin Joseph Sutherland until he fell to the floor, then stabbed him until he was dead. Court documents say the victim was cut or stabbed 30 or 40 times, in the chest, abdomen, back, side and arms. Police said the assailant then threw the victim’s cellphone and returned to stomp on Sutherland’s body.” The Washington Post; July 7, 2015 By Peter Hermann, Michael Smith and Keith L. Alexander
James Hiromasa – There you have it. Some call it the ‘Bystander Effect’, and sadly it’s a growing phenomenon particularly in the US and in big cities where a sense of community has diminished, and rather than help, people simply ignore it or worse, start recording it. In more rural settings there still exists enough of a community feel that people tend to rush to help their neighbors in need especially with older generations. But increasingly in modern society you’ll find more and more stories like the tragic one above from Washington DC. It seems everyone is waiting for someone else, be it the Government, Police, or anyone of authority, to help first.
It’s not like that everywhere, and we can see many cases where all that was needed was for someone, ANYONE, to start helping and it opens the flood gates of good citizens getting involved to save other people. Flight 93 on September 11, 2001 comes to mind. It’s an easy enough concept; create or find a leader, and someone will follow. Paraphrasing from Derek Sivers’ famous TED speech on How to Start a Movement; Once someone follows, more people will feel comfortable also following. The more people that follow, the lower the risk (of harm in this circumstance), but also the lower the risk of being “singled out” for targeting or ridicule or even blame for failure. It’s true for any situation where you want to start a public movement between strangers. You need a leader to start it, and some followers to gain momentum in the crowd.
In the tragic story above from DC, a single leader could have started a movement on that train. That’s not to say anyone is to blame. There is no shame in NOT getting involved. It’s scary, it’s bloody, it’s violent…I get it. It takes a special kind of psychotic to stab another human being in anger and hatred. It’s a very personal, tactile, and messy affair. At the time of writing this article, the talking heads are still discussing the fact that no one stepped in to help. Witnesses are largely remaining anonymous (understandably), but many are saying the same things…”I was waiting for someone else to step in, then I would’ve helped out. There wasn’t anything I could have done on my own”. And they’re probably right. Taking down a violent person armed with a knife and with no regard for human life is a difficult task, particularly if you are unarmed. If someone on that train was armed with a gun that day, things might have turned out differently….or not. You see, even if you have a gun, unless you train in a way that develops a leadership mindset and equally importantly train to be decisive by using scenarios and role playing, you’ll still most likely wait for someone else to become involved first. In fact, we don’t know if anyone on that train was armed or not! (but being that it was DC, the likelihood of someone being LEGALLY armed was slim). But I’ll leave that discussion for another time…
Let’s get back to doing something on your own. First, understand that there is great power in numbers. If you are trying to take down an active stabber on your own, you will need skill, strength, speed, explosiveness, a combat mindset and possibly a bit of luck. Your chances dramatically improve with 2 or more people. Your chances improve EXPONENTIALLY if the people with you have trained together and you have a PLAN! If you planned for it and drilled it, have a good chance of success. But let’s assume you are on your own on that train, and decide you need to help.
Disarming this attacker should not be thought of in the ‘traditional’ sense, where you try to get the knife away from the attacker. In this type of scenario, your primary goals will be to 1) stop the next stab from occurring. 2) control the individual enough to stop subsequent stabs to you or the original victim, even if only momentarily. And 3) disable or disarm the attacker to a point where they can no longer pose a threat and can be taken into custody by someone OR long enough for you and the victim to safely escape.
It’s worth noting that all 3 goals can be accomplished on first contact if you can make the attacker suddenly unconscious or otherwise unable to function. That’s where we start our Active Stabbing Interdiction training. By taking the time to train on the ‘not as cool looking’ solutions, we set ourselves up for the best chance of success in a very difficult scenario because we remember the faster, simpler, more finite course of action possibilities first and then only attempt more difficult options if those opportunities aren’t presenting 
themselves. In one case that comes from Rotterdam, a man is seen on video stabbing his 22-year old ex from a mounted position on a sidewalk, completely oblivious to a trio of men attempting to get him to stop. At first, one tries to push the attacker off with a briefcase. Then a pair of men tries pushing him off with their feet…sort of half-hearted kicks…followed by few attempted sidekicks to move him. Eventually they pulled him off by the hood of his sweater after many more stabs. Where did they fail? They failed by using the tools they had in a less-than-optimal manner. I doubt the man with the briefcase had ever practiced swinging it like a club or bat so that the corner contacted someone in the side of the head. If he had, he may have taken to that action under stress. It’s not likely that the other would-be-hero had practiced round kicks with his shin to the head or face of an opponent while they were mounted on top of a 3rd party. If he had, it’s much more likely that’s what he would have done. Either one of those actions stood a very high chance of success in this scenario, even higher because the attacker was quite oblivious to their presence the entire time, let alone their attempts to separate him from his victim. He was single mindedly focused on stabbing her as often as possible, carefully choosing vital areas to puncture. (Miraculously she survived with over 70 stab wounds to her neck, face, and upper torso)
Lesson: Be sure to spend some of your training time with everyday common objects as weapons. In this case you want to use them offensively, as opposed to using it as a shield or defensive object, to try to shut down the attacker’s brain. Readers that shoot and train in good firearms tactics may have heard this before; there are only 3 ways to stop an attacker immediately from continuing to attack….1) shut down the brain (headshot). 2) Disable the nervous system (sever the spine). Or 3) break down their structure severely enough that movement is no longer possible (blow out a leg or pelvis with high caliber). Out of those three, number 1 is just about the only certainty and choice in the above scenarios. Sure we’re taught to shoot ‘center mass’ in order to get hits, but our goal here is instant stoppage. So, if we revisit our 3 goals, #1 being to stop the next stab, then #1 on our ‘how to stop someone immediately’ list would be the best option. Therefore train with that end in mind. Use your improvised weapons to target the head of the attacker. Take approach angles that best obscure you from their vision…generally anywhere between 4 and 8 o’clock. If at all possible, attack from the NON-KNIFE WEILIDNG side. Partly because you want to stay away from the knife and not get inadvertently cut or stabbed in the leg when kicking them in the head, but mostly because you don’t want the attacking limb to get in the way of a full power swing or kick! Try to limit your attack vectors to ones that would snap the attackers head or move their weight either backwards or away from the victim at an angle greater than 90degrees. Our goal is stop the very next stab, so we don’t want to help the attacker move their weight forward onto the victim.
This approach works whether the attacker is standing or mounted on top of the victim on the ground though it’s much easier to do on the ground because of the distances and heights, and available angles. Plus, we don’t suggest using the round-kick option to the head of a standing attacker. We may only get one shot at this…and in a high round kick too much force is lost in height and distance, and it forces you closer, elevating the possibility of that kicking leg getting tangled up on something on the way to the head. Remember also that a standing attacker stabbing a victim is highly unlikely to be stationary unless they’ve been backed up against a wall. The victim is likely fighting to get away or stop the stabbing arm, and the attacker is likely holding onto the victim. All of that is worst case scenario, but that’s how we must train! That way any other scenario presented is easier than what we trained for.
So, knowing that these options are harder when standing, and assuming you don’t have your team with you and you are closest and need to take action now. You’ve already decided in a split second decision that since you are unarmed and have no nearby objects to use as an improvised weapon, you are going to go ‘Hands-On’. Remember the 3 goals and work systematically. The following are some specifics on how to achieve your goal of stopping an active stabbing, more important than the technique is the principle. The dynamics of the attack can vary greatly, and so therefore so may the technique you have to use, but the principles will always remain the same.
Let’s assume a standing attacker stabbing another standing individual. Our first goal is to stop the very next stab. To do that, we are going to want to wrap the arm that’s doing the stabbing with an over-hook from the BEHIND the attacker (see step by step instruction in the next section). Consider that the hand is moving the fastest and with the least amount of predictability, the shoulder/upper arm is moving the least with relative predictability. Therefore we’re not aiming for the hand or wrist to grab at, we’re simply making a huge over-hook somewhere around the bicep with our same side arm. We can then slide down to around the elbow and create an immense amount of backward pressure against the shoulder, effectively stopping any forward movement of the arm, therefor stopping the next stab once we’ve established head control. Of course, simply trapping that arm isn’t enough, especially if the attacker is bigger or stronger and of course powered by rage. So we have to wrap the arm and simultaneously effect their balance, focus, or ability to rotate their torso toward us thereby relieving the back pressure on the arm. Since we know that “where the head goes, the body follows”, we’re going to, simultaneously with the over-hook, deliver a palm strike or cross face to the strong side of the jaw line, forcing their head to rotate away from us and further stretching out that shoulder. At this point, we use our chest somewhat against their shoulder blade as a fulcrum. Try to imagine ‘breaking’ them in half or splitting a wishbone. With the immediate stabbing danger eliminated for a moment, and some control of the head and arm achieved, we need to follow up. This could come in many forms, and it depends on how you train. A leg sweep takedown from behind is a possible option, so is coming off of the cross-face into a figure 4 arm control of the knife hand followed by knee and other strikes. Another option might be to slide down the arm with both hands and effect a standard wrist lock disarm (Known as a Cavalier in Krav Maga). Whatever you decide to go with, make it decisive, explosive, and damaging. You can NOT let up here or you will find that you are now defending yourself against a very aggressive attacker with a knife.
The principles match our goals; Stop the immediate stab (wrap the arm), control the limb and or the attacker (violent cross-face with back pressure on the arm), disable/disarm (follow up with takedowns or massive counter strikes).
You can apply this principle to a mounted attacker as well (see step by step). One minor change in TECHNIQUE, not principle, would be to wrap the head from the opposite side using a hook with your hand on the chin instead of the cross-face. Now you have more leverage for the neck torque than you did with the cross-face because you can effectively PULL with both of your arms; pulling back on the stabbing arm with your strong side arm, and pulling/rotating the head away in the opposite direction. This time we use our hips as the fulcrum against their shoulder blade. Because separating the attacker from the victim is more difficult here on the ground and we can’t hope the victim will naturally create distance from this position like we hope they do when standing, we need to move the attacker. Remember, where the head goes the body follows. We’re going to continue to “unscrew” their head from their body by continuing to pull around on that chin, and rotate them off the victim and down to the ground by pivoting on our strong side or outside foot, and moving our inside foot around about 90degrees…think ‘basketball pivot’. After rotating the attacker off and down, our options are more limited than when standing considering we don’t want to end up rolling around down there with a guy with a knife! Aim for a head stomp or kick or knee to the head while sliding down the arm to catch the wrist holding the knife. If a wrist lock disarm presents itself, break it. If not, you can continue with massive attacks as long as you have some control of the knife hand and you’re not going to be pulled down with the attacker.
The same principles apply to a threat as opposed to an active attack. This time we look at a hostage taker standing behind the hostage with a knife to their neck. 
Again, we need to keep it simple. There is simply not enough time in our lives to train on EVERY different variable of every scenario imaginable. Stick to the principles. In this technique we’re assuming we can approach from behind the hostage taker. The technique is almost identical to the standing active stabbing interdiction, however this time it’s not that we’re trying to stop the next immediate stab. Instead we’re trying to isolate the threat without getting the hostage cut or stabbed. We need to move the knife away from the neck on very first contact. Since the attacker and hostage are so close together there isn’t space to over-hook at the shoulder or bicep, and if there was it wouldn’t help the immediate problem. However, we’re also not worried about the knife hand moving around a lot in space making it hard to catch like we are during an active stabbing. To do that we’ll reach under the attackers arm and/or around the hostage making a ‘plucking’ movement down on the attacker’s wrist that’s holding the knife in order to move the knife away from the hostage’s neck. This happens simultaneously with the cross-face as before. At this point we assume the worst in that the attacker is still holding onto the hostage with the other arm and still has them partially wrapped with the knife wielding arm so a takedown would cause more issues. Here the best course of action is to use the hand that just delivered the cross-face, and quickly dive an over-hook over the knife arm elbow, forcing it between the attackers arm and the hostages body if necessary continuing around to a figure 4 control. Once there, you MUST attack with ferocity. Use knee strikes and head-butts if available, or try to drive the knife into the attacker. Once separated from the hostage, continue to attack and disengage when safe or an opportunity to use a higher-force option presents itself.
The techniques in this article are very high-risk. But if you simply must do something, hopefully this gives you a starting point. More importantly, if there are other people around, hopefully you are only acting alone for a second or two, and your leadership inspired a follower who inspired another which helped create a movement of good citizens doing good things for someone in need.