'I didn’t have time to be scared': Hero who decked man stabbing Rand Paul staffer speaks out

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) staffer Phillip Todd and Christopher Barnard, a vice president at the American Conservation Coalition, were eating at a Mexican restaurant on March 25 in Washington D.C. when a knife-wielding stranger lunged at them and stabbed Todd in the head without warning.

In an interview with The Washington Post, Barnard said he saw the man lunging toward them “kind of like in those scary movies when the knife is above his head.”

Barnard says that when Todd put up his hands to defend himself, he could see blood. That's when he tackled the attacker from behind.

“It all happened so fast, I feel like I didn’t have time to be scared in the moment,” he said. “But in the days after, it was like being stuck in a bad, surreal dream. The ‘what ifs’ were the worst part.”

Glynn Neal, 42, was arrested on a charge of assault with intent to kill. According to The Post, he had been released from prison a day before the attack. He was convicted in 2011 of pandering, making threats to kidnap and other charges and was sentenced to more than 12 years behind bars, with five subsequent years of supervised release.

As a result of the attack, Todd had to undergo trauma surgery and his now recovering. He was stabbed four times and suffered a punctured lung and possible brain bleeding

While declining to be interviewed, Todd's parents, Chuck and Helen Todd, said in a statement that their "hope is that Washington D.C. continues to be the safe and beautiful city our son loves so much.”

Speaking to The Post, Barnard called out the District government for being “soft on crime at a time that violent crime is rising."

“D. C. likes to pretend it’s autonomous with this push to become a state and being upset that Congress is meddling,” Barnard said in regards to Congress’s recent vote to block the city’s crime bill, which would have lowered the statutory maximum penalty for certain crimes, such as carjacking.“But I think it’s so clear that there are thousands and thousands of employees from the federal government who work in D.C. and are impacted by this crime situation.”

As The Post points out, violent crime in D.C. was up one percent compared to the same time last year, which is driven partly by a 23 percent increase in homicides.

“Now, I feel like it’s so easy for something to escalate so quickly that I feel like I should be more wary,” Barnard said. “In hindsight, I am realizing all the times that things actually were pretty sketchy.”

“I feel like there is an approach to crime that isn’t taking into account the safety and needs of people who live here,” he said. “It’s more about the politics and rhetoric, and that’s done a lot of damage. They need to get a grip on the crime.”

Read the full article over at The Washington Post.