JACKSONVILLE BEACH, Fla. — A rape in Jacksonville Beach during Memorial Day weekend has the community fighting back.
“I always bring somebody with me, don’t go nowhere by yourself,” a young woman named Brida told first Coast news Wednesday afternoon while walking with two of her friends.
“You definitely need to be with someone around here,” said Taylor Williams, visiting from St. Augustine, also accompanied by a friend.
It’s an unfortunate price of paradise on the First Coast. But one local business is offering help without adding to the cost. Karate America, at 556 Atlantic Blvd., is offering three weeks of self-defense classes to anyone who shows up, free of charge.
“We heard about the incident that happened at the beach Memorial Day weekend,” chief instructor Ryan Martinez said while preparing to teach incoming students.
Martinez said the rape, which police say happened late at night in an alley near Second Avenue North and Second Street North, Is what spurred him and his colleagues to offer the free instruction. At least one class participant told First Coast News she has had some close calls.
“I was approached one night when I was out at the beach bars, Harlow Skylair Thompson recalled. “Luckily I was able to get away.”
Friend and classmate Raley Moore shared a similar sentiment.
“Rape happens across the country but this hit really home,” Moore said of the Memorial Day incident.
Martinez, who has studied martial arts and self defense since he was a toddler, pointed out that the material he’s teaching it’s similar to what he teaches JSO SWAT and the military.
“All hand-to-hand combat stuff. If somebody comes up to you to choke you, somebody comes up to you to grab you.”
The scenarios he teaches are many.
“Two or more people coming to attack you, somebody came at you with a knife, a gun,” Martinez continued.
Moore and Thompson, along with the many others on hand, were smiling much of the time, but they were serious about sweating their way to greater safety.
And they said their confidence is already enhanced.
“Just learning some of the moves and how to kick and where to kick, it helps,” Thompson said.
“Knowing which way to grab, like which way -- if I grab one it’s not doing anything, if I grab the opposite way, then I think I could do something,” Moore narrated while pantomiming some of the technique she had just learned.
Martinez asserted that the first part of self defense is not placing oneself in harm’s way. He also suggested that the assuredness that accompanies ability to self-protect is a repellent to attackers unto itself.
“When you walk around with confidence, a lot of people aren’t going to mess with you.”
To learn more about Karate America’s offer, call 904-241-0100 or visit the studio’s Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/KABeaches/