Kali­fa Clyne

A man over­come with road rage got the shock of his life on Fri­day when the man he at­tacked turned out to be a mar­tial arts in­struc­tor.The re­sults were post­ed to the video Web site YouTube and called "Trinidad Fight. White Boy Beats Strong Man." The video has since gone vi­ral.The "white boy" in the video is mar­tial arts in­struc­tor Paul-Daniel Na­hous, who has black belts in three forms of mar­tial arts, karate, ju­jit­su and aiki­do.In an in­ter­view yes­ter­day, Na­hous said he was dri­ving along Sad­dle Road, Mar­aval, on Fri­day when he felt a ve­hi­cle hit the wheel of his Mit­subishi Sportero pick-up truck.He slowed down and pulled to the side, then heard the sound of a door slam­ming and turned just in time to see a man's fist com­ing to­ward his face.Na­hous' shock last­ed long enough for the man to get in a few punch­es and grab the ba­ton he us­es in his karate class­es.

Na­hous got out of his truck and the two strug­gled but Na­hous soon got the up­per hand and pinned the oth­er man to the ground."I nev­er hit him once. I spent the whole time try­ing to re­strain him, while peo­ple were shout­ing: 'White boy, hit him, bust his throat.' I just re­strained him."In a post on his blog at trini­world­views.com on Sat­ur­day, he not­ed: "Aiki­do's clas­sic in­ten­tion is to sub­due an op­po­nent with­out ac­tu­al­ly hurt­ing him.""The in­ci­dent," he wrote, "made me thank God again for my sev­en years of train­ing in tra­di­tion­al mar­tial arts and mul­ti­ple black belts."Na­hous said yes­ter­day that while he re­strained his at­tack­er on the ground, he saw "tears of rage" in the oth­er man's eyes."I re­peat­ed­ly told him to calm down and he just would not lis­ten. When I asked peo­ple who were look­ing at us for help re­strain­ing him, no one re­spond­ed.""On­look­ers," he wrote on his blog, "were egging me on to hit him and oth­ers taunt­ing him to his em­bar­rass­ment."

Na­hous praised the po­lice's han­dling of the in­ci­dent, say­ing when the po­lice ar­rived, they hand­cuffed the oth­er man, then searched him and his car.He and his at­tack­er went to the St Clair Po­lice Sta­tion, where he made a re­port of the in­ci­dent which was un­con­test­ed.Though there were mul­ti­ple wit­ness­es to the in­ci­dent, Na­hous has not pressed charges against his as­sailant and is con­sid­er­ing not do­ing so."When I was leav­ing the po­lice sta­tion he came up to me and he plead­ed with me not to press charges. He said he had a mat­ter in the court and it would not be good for him," he added.Na­hous said he had re­ceived a med­ical re­port from his doc­tor, de­tail­ing his in­juries, and his doc­tor had urged him to press charges.De­spite this, Na­hous, who is the youth chair­man of a char­i­ta­ble or­gan­i­sa­tion, the Jeri­cho Project, said he was will­ing to of­fer an al­ter­na­tive."If he would con­sid­er com­ing in to speak to the youths I in­ter­act with about vi­o­lence, I would be will­ing to give him a chance," Na­hous said.He said al­though the in­ci­dent, which hap­pened on Fri­day, was neg­a­tive, he was hap­py it had got the at­ten­tion it had.He wrote on his blog on Sat­ur­day that al­ready over 100 peo­ple had con­tact­ed him about the in­ci­dent.