In a sobering scene at an unnamed restaurant, an innocent family sat to enjoy their meal but were met with an unwelcoming surprise. An assailant jumped over the fence into the outdoor seating area and forcefully grabbed their child looking to make off with the kidnapping, fortunately, he was quickly apprehended. One bystander jumped in and dragged the abductor from behind by the neck, took his back, and inserted his hooks, maintaining back control until other bystanders helped intervene and the authorities were able to place him under arrest.
In this Gracie Breakdown, Rener Gracie discusses three principles every parent should keep in mind if facing a similar situation of witnessing a child, possibly their own, be abducted.
1) Talk to your child about the abduction and what to do in case of an emergency.
2) Simply put, learn jiu-jitsu. How do you expect to help your child when you can’t even help yourself?
3) During an abduction attempt, focus on the threat, not the child. It may seem like the right course of action to try to pry the child away from the kidnapper, however, it behooves you to focus on off-balancing and incapacitating the attacker instead.
Rener recently tested positive for the Covid-19 virus and states that he is not trying to work too much, but that this information is critical to disseminate out to the public given that it has never been a better time to start looking at jiu-jitsu for self-defense skills. He confirms to JJT that this Instagram post of the abductor has already become his top-viewed IG post of all time.
Although situations like this appear to be less subtle than what we may expect to occur, it shows that abductors can and will attempt to kidnap a child in broad daylight. The fact that the coronavirus has enabled every person on the planet to wear a mask without other bystanders batting an eye make it so that criminals may be able to conceal their identity even if caught on camera. It is more important now than ever that the public remain vigilant about those around them while looking to empower themselves to take control of a situation like this in light of the inescapable reality of the current state of the world.
While some schools remain closed, others are slowly opening, and many locations are running their gyms without hindrance. Online training has never been more popular. As the Covid numbers slowly creep down around the globe, it is with great hope and optimism that we will see more cases like this where individuals equipped to intervene and handle a kidnapping situation continue to foil the attempts of abductors that continue to remain at large. In a perfect world, we would not have any abduction attempts and everyone would be safe wherever they went. Given the world we live, it would only make sense to continue to have training as part of our everyday lifestyle to be prepared for the worst so that we may enable a relatively ideal outcome when all is said and done, because as Rener states in the video, ““Sometimes you don’t pick the fight, the fight picks you.”
