“The bayonet is probably still up there,” Hilton later told investigators.
“I had to hand-fight her,” Hilton said. “She wouldn’t stop fighting and yelling at the same time so I needed to both control her and silence her.” He kept punching her, blackening her eyes, fracturing her nose, and breaking his own hand in the process. He figured that he had worn her down as they moved farther off the trail, but suddenly she began fighting again. He finally got her to stop by telling her that all he wanted was her credit card and PIN number.
Once she relaxed her guard, he restrained her hands with a zip tie, took her to a remote location, and tied her to a tree. Predators often take their victims to secondary crime scenes where they have the privacy to perform their depravations. Sadly this was no exception. He kept her captive in the wilderness for three terrifying days before telling her that he was ready to let her go.
Then he beat her to death with a car-jack handle and cut off her head.
Hilton made a plea deal with prosecutors, leading investigators to his victim’s remains so that they would not seek the death penalty for his crimes. He was subsequently sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole after 30 years.
The goal of self-defense is not to win a fight, but rather to avoid combat in the first place. After all, the only battle you are guaranteed to walk away from unscathed is the one you never engage in. Taking a beat-down can seriously mess up your life. Nevertheless, sometimes despite your best intentions, you may find yourself in a situation where there really is no alternative but to fight. When it comes to such circumstances, particularly in an asocial violence scenario, you cannot stop until it’s over.
Once engaged in battle, it is critical to remain mentally and physically prepared to fight or continue a brawl at a moment’s notice. Always keep your opponent in sight until you can escape to safety. Even if your blow knocks an adversary to the ground, remain alert for a possible continuation of his attack. Most fistfights end when one combatant gives up rather than when he or she can no longer physically continue. Weapons bring a whole new dynamic into play. Even fatally wounded adversaries do not always succumb to their injuries right away; they can continue to be a critical danger for several seconds, if not minutes. That is a very long time in a fight.
Never give up until you are sure that you are safe. Sadly, too many victims do not heed this lesson, with tragic results.
Never believe anything an assailant tells you. His actions have already demonstrated beyond any doubt that he’s a bad guy. Do not relax your guard and get caught by surprise; that is a good way to die. If the other guy thinks that he is losing, he might be more inclined to play possum or pull out a weapon in order to cheat to win. Worse yet, street attacks sometimes involve multiple assailants, many of whom may be seasoned fighters who know how to take a blow and shrug off the pain. Be mindful of additional assailants, potentially latecomers, and be prepared to continue your defense as long as necessary.
As the Chinese proverb states, “Dead tigers kill the most hunters.” Remain vigilant during any pause in the fight. You may be facing multiple assailants, an adversary who pulls a weapon in the middle of a fight, or an opponent who just won’t quit. Once you have removed yourself from the danger and are absolutely certain that you are no longer under threat, you can safely begin to relax your guard.
When I took a defensive handgun course several years ago, I was taught to train for handling the survival-stress reaction commonly associated with actual combat. To simulate the reaction, we had to do as many pushups as we could as fast as we could for one minute. Immediately after completing the pushups, we sprinted to the parking lot and raced around the building four times as fast as we could go, covering close to a mile in the process. We then sprinted back into the building and attempted to accurately fire down range under the watchful eye of our instructors.
While I could normally hit the bulls-eye of a static paper target much of the time at 25 feet during shooting competitions, and always put every shot in the black, the first time I attempted to do so after this stress test, I missed the paper completely. It was an eye-opening experience.
When adrenaline courses through your system during a fight, you can be stabbed, shot, or badly mangled and yet persevere, at least until the pain kicks in afterward. Your ability to think rationally is greatly reduced. The good news is that you tend to become stronger and more resilient than usual. The bad news, however, is that you will likely have degraded motor skills, experience tunnel vision, and perhaps even suffer temporary hearing or memory loss.
While precise movements are extraordinarily tough, even imprecise ones like grabbing a wrist or hooking a leg can be problematic even if you are highly trained. If you try to get too fancy, you will hurt your chances for success in a fight. However, gross motor movements, especially those that target vital areas of the adversary’s body, can work pretty well.
The more comprehensive and realistic your training is, the better you will perform in actual combat because conditioned responses can help you counteract, or at least work through, the effects of adrenaline. Conversely, the more stressed you are through exertion, fear, or desperation, the harder it is perform. Mostly. A friend of ours, who hijacks planes (from terrorists) for a living, puts it this way:
“The body’s reaction under critical incident stress has almost nothing to do with how you think rationally. Instead, it has almost everything has to do with ingrained responses, be they trained ones or instinctive ones. The amygdala will choose. It has the chemical authority to override your conscious thoughts and decisions.
“It also has the chemical authority to enforce its decision despite your conscious will. This is why divers are found drowned yet with full oxygen tanks—something happened to them and the amygdala reacted to that critical incident stress with its preferred strategy—clearing obstructions from the breathing passage. As a general rule, getting stuff out of your mouth is an excellent strategy for a land-based species in land-based confrontations. But spitting out your breathing tube is a terrible strategy under water. The fact is none of those drowning victims really thought they could breathe water. Something happened and their bodies reacted.
“Like a diver in duress, when you face a threat on the street you won’t be doing much thinking. Unless you have a very high adrenal threshold and/or a LOT of training. Deliberate thought is slow, taking several seconds to accomplish. That’s an eternity in a critical incident. Might as well go get a massage while you’re at it…
“Deeply ingrained reactions are far more likely than conscious decisions. And don’t even get me started on how much training you have to do to override and replace your body’s instinctive responses with new ones. Regardless, you won’t be selecting an option from a menu of choices calmly and rationally like you do in the training hall. Your body is going to pick its own response in a maelstrom of shit and adrenaline.
“Training then, to me, is all about trying to give the amygdala better choices. Because you won’t consciously be deciding on much on ’that day.’ Or maybe it’s about getting your body so used to adrenal stress that you can actually think, somewhat, during pauses in the action. Or more likely a combination of the two. End of the day, training isn’t about what most people think it is.”
—M. Guthrie, Federal Air Marshal
