A father from Feltham has been praised for a ‘self defence’ video he created with his son to teach young people about how to defend themselves against knives, because he tells people to simply run away.
Knife crime and murder rates have soared across England and Wales by 16% in the past year, and more than 50 people have died from knife attacks in London since January.
The father’s video starts with stating that knife crime among young people is extremely high, adding that “we see on the news all the time how many young people are being stabbed and killed left right and centre”.
Garvin Snell, who is stood in a back garden with his son, introduces “step one” of his self defence lesson and pulls a knife out of the grass, facing his son and shouting, “Come on then!”.
The camera then follows his son as he quickly turns and runs the end of the garden, jumping the fence and disappearing out of sight.
“There’s no shame in running away,” Snell then tells the camera.
“If someone pulls out a knife on you, get the hell out of there. Get as far away as possible. There’s no shame in that. There’s too many brave people in the morgue. There’s too many brave people that end up dead.” he said.
Snell’s video has been over two million times and garnered thousands of comments since he uploaded it to Twitter just two days ago.
Many people have agreed with his advice, with some adding that their martial arts, judo and boxing coaches had given them the same advice.
The video has even been retweeted by local police force in Croydon Town Centre, who said: “Great video from @Garvinsnell - don’t get involved in a knife fight, we need you alive!”
Gerry Campbell, Scotland Yard’s former Detective Chief Superintendent, also retweeted the video, with the message: “My advice: unless you’ve got great ‘Kung foo’ moves - run as flippin’ fast as you can in the opposite direction.”
Speaking to the Evening Standard, Snell said that knife crime in London is at the highest rate it has been in six years, and he wanted to “offer a simple message”.
“But if it saves one life, then it will have been worth it,” he said.