[pax]

He won. That's all that matters, for him. But it's not all that matters for us, because sometimes luck happens too. Many people win encounters with criminals simply because of good luck. Not because they planned well or did good things, but simply because they were lucky. When you're looking for strategies and techniques to imitate, it is best to look for the ones that do not rely entirely on good luck. It's also best to look for strategies that are available to you personally, as opposed to ones that might be available to someone else who has different physical abilities or a different situation than you are likely to find yourself in. So the fact that he won is all that matters to him, but it's still okay for us to look at what he did and carefully consider whether what he did was the "best of all possible options," and also whether what he did is something we ourselves could realistically do.

That said, he did very very well. He definitely found a way to solve the problem and he had the physical skills he needed in order to carry out his plan. Good for him!

Was it perfect, in some absolute sense? No, of course not. As John points out, keeping car doors locked might have helped tilt the odds even more in his favor. Keeping your focus wide, paying attention to the world -- that might have helped, too. It is always better when you see an attack coming than it is if you get blindsided and ambushed.

Was it the only way to solve this particular problem? Nope, not that either. But in the heat of the moment, he chose a response that worked for him and he carried it off successfully. That is the name of the game after all! But there are other things that might have worked, too. For example, I was surprised that he threw down an excellent weapon that was already in his hand, in order to stall for time and fish through his pocket so he could then access his firearm. A face full of gasoline, coming out of the pump, makes an excellent distraction all on its own, and would likely have blinded and thus disabled at least one of the attackers – the one with the gun, ideally – long enough for him to get his own gun out. He could very easily have used the pump handle that was in his hand to buy the same amount of time, or even more time. So there's more than one way to skin that cat.

pax