Flashlight guy breaks up fight at SXSW

neogoon

Newly Enlightened
Joined
Apr 4, 2003
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100
Location
NoVA
Jeremiah Owyang, a social media consultant I met a while back, was at the South by Southwest conference in Austin this week, and came upon a guy getting beat up by 3 other guys. As he tells it (on Leo Leport's This Week in Tech, at the 26 minute mark), he took out his Fenix PD31 and shined it on the scene, and the attackers stopped (with one putting his hands up). He then turned on the strobe, which bought enough time for the cops to break things up.

LzmPV.jpg


It's a good story, and Jeremiah is a pretty good evangelist for flashlights for EDC.
 

TEEJ

Flashaholic
Joined
Jan 12, 2012
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7,490
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NJ
That's the difference between a high performance light's impact vs a std pocket light....the bad guys assumed he was a cop when the light looked professional, and probably prevented them from seeing who was holding it.
 

enomosiki

Flashlight Enthusiast
Joined
Mar 13, 2011
Messages
1,109
"...and the guy who was getting assailed turned around and threw a couple of punches, some of them landed and some of them didn't. So, this light, in a way, turned the tide of the battle."

It's too bad, really. At the moment where the "tide of the battle" turned, I would've simply maced all four of them. If I was in that position, the purpose of using the light would've been to break up the fight, not to give the guy who's getting the beatdown a chance to throw some punches.
 

eh4

Flashlight Enthusiast
Joined
Oct 18, 2011
Messages
1,999
pretty cool.
I think it's completely absurd to count on a bright light to neutralize an aggressor, but if you already have a working strategy whether it's some sort of armed or unarmed martial art, running shoes, mace or whatnot then a bright light is a hell of a card to be able to play to shift the situation.
 
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