[Para Bellum]

Thank you for your time and thought.

after the incident, I immediately gave every employee an OC-Pepper-Spray. And according to your statements I was right doing so.

All the camera and surveillance ideas wouldn't really help. As attorneys we make people either extremely happy (we win for our clients) or extremely angry (we win for our clients, and that means loss for the angry guys). Anyway we live and work on an interface to extreme emotions. Therefore everybody could freak out.

We had let the attacker in before he stabbed my partner in the head. He was known to us and "friendly". We did pro-bono work for his mother and were very successful. He came to our firm with his mother often, so we knew him. After we made lots of money for his mother, he also wanted to be represented by us. But we turned him down because the stories he told us were quite weird.

The fourth time he came, my partner said no again and then he said: "If you are not helping me, even you are against me. Maybe all this conspiracy against me was triggered by you!". He left and my partner shook his head. The next day he came in the morning. As the secretary knew him, she opened the door and offered him a seat in the lobby. He pushed her aside, dashed to my partner's office and stabbed him in the head until his folding-knife broke. Then he left. The absurd part of it is that the attack happened the exact time I would have been in the very room every day, armed and trained with my 9x19 and 15yrs of martial arts. Just that very day I happened to be 500Km away in a court hearing. I dreamed a dozen times about how I could have prevented this.

No we know that this guy actually is insane. He was in a mental-hospital before, is schizophrenic-paranoiac and was arrested for assault and battery three times, and has a heroin problem. Perfect son in law, isn't he?

It took my partner two months and seven operations to recover. He actually was quite lucky and only has little long-term effects in one eye.

Anyway: We sometimes have to talk and negotiate with people who truly hate us because the want to settle a dispute etc. So in any case we have to let people in who have the potential or a "cause" to freak out.

We however have a door security system and reduce the risk, but indoor defense is unfortunately very necessary.