A True Story…
By now you know that my wife loves to pick seashells. We vacation in warm places with pretty beaches. During a visit to St. Maarten with the family, while on the beach with my wife looking for seashells, I need to keep myself occupied.
I grab my video stabilizer, known as a gimbal, my external microphone, and my iPhone. I started shooting video at one end of the beach.
I’m shooting video after video while also in ankle deep water, I’m wearing a baseball hat, sunglasses, and a t-shirt.
Moments after finishing my last video, I notice some guy in the distance screaming, yelling and waving his arms running on the beach. He seems to be making a beeline directly toward me.
There’s nobody else on the beach this morning, I haven’t encountered anyone while shooting video I was shooting with the ocean in my background. This guy is gesticulating wildly and aggressively and is making his way quickly toward me. At first, I can’t understand what’s he so agitated about, I can’t figure out why this guy is approaching me on an empty beach, clearly, he’s angry and upset. As he gets closer, he’s screaming and cursing that I videotaped him. “What The**** Are You Doing Taking Video Of Me?”
I realize he thought I was videotaping him.
“No, no, you’re mistaken, I wasn’t taking video of you, I was shooting educational video of me!” I said trying to reason with this man. That didn’t mollify him. He continued to approach me very aggressively. This was a dangerous and credible threat. “Hey man, no disrespect. I’m sorry if you thought I was videotaping you. I wasn’t. Sorry about that,” as I backed away further into the water. I’m now at mid-thigh depth. I’ve got my video gear in one hand, up in a defensive posture and my other hand also up in a fighting position.
I tried to ignore the guy as I walked away from him while still in the water. Unfortunately, he kept following me, screaming and yelling and muttering that I had videotaped him. I moved in the water to my right, he followed. I moved to the left, he followed. It didn’t help that I had on flip-flops that kept getting sucked into the soft sand. Doesn’t make for an ideal fighting situation.
I noticed two things immediately. First, he didn’t appear to want to enter the water fully to engage me in a physical attack. Second, he didn’t appear to have any buddies around to help him. I backed away further into the water.
I’m now in water up to my waist, my wife is trying to reason with him. I yell at her to get away from him, she quickly realizes that this guy is emotionally unstable, and his eyes are still locked on me. Nothing we say or do is defusing the situation. He turns away for a moment as if searching for something, that’s my cue to keep moving away. Remember, I’m in waist deep water with flip-flops getting sucked into the soft sand trying to walk quickly away. Not ideal.
I glance back and notice the guy went up the beach to a retaining wall where there were large conch shells.
He grabbed the two biggest ones he could find and raced back toward me in the water. His intention was clear. He raised his arm up with one conch in his hand as if to throw it at me and I yelled at him “Don’t do it!”
He stopped for a moment, considering what to do. At that moment, I noticed a man and woman walking by on the beach and I yelled out to them “HEY! A Little Help Here!”
The woman wanted nothing to do with this violent interaction, she shook her head “No” and walked quickly away. The man started to follow her, and I yelled out “Listen! I don’t need you to do anything, just slow down and walk with us as we walk away!”
He did slow down, and my wife was able to catch up with him as I slowly made my way toward them and away from this crazy, unstable man.
All because he thought I was videotaping him, a homeless guy living under an umbrella on a public beach, thought I was violating his rights. If he only knew I was shooting educational video to help injured people learn what rights they have and how the lawsuit process works in New York.
What would I have done if he hadn’t backed off and instead attacked me?
The concept of Krav Maga.
.1. Always understand and be aware of your surroundings.
2. Defuse the situation if possible.
3. If you can’t defuse and you have no choice, you must attack.
4. You must attack forcefully, aggressively using whatever means possible and end the encounter as quickly as possible.
On the way back to our hotel I kept replaying the surreal scene in my mind.
We’ve been coming to this island for 25 years and never saw anything like this before. As I write this article the following day, my wife asked me if we could go shelling on the same beach as yesterday’s violent encounter. I told her, yes, but we were going to avoid going anywhere near that man’s camp. This morning we went to the same beach and I shot fifteen videos in one hour. We stayed far away from where we were yesterday, and it worked out fine.
As for me and my video marketing efforts? I learned I need to be more careful where I’m videotaping. Even though I had no idea I was near this person, he perceived I had violated his ‘rights’. I’ll bet you don’t find many
other lawyers who were almost attacked while shooting great educational video on the beach in a foreign country.
If you can defuse the situation, even if it means admitting you did something wrong, even though you know you didn’t, it’s a better outcome than if you must physically defend yourself.
The bottom line?
Keep shooting your great videos anywhere, anytime.
Just be aware of your surroundings as you do so. Till next time, see you on video!
