John Hopkins student kills intruder with samurai sword, police say

[SuperFerret]

Samurai are the only bit of Japanese culture that interests me. Plus, I know my swords fairly well, though I prefer the European ones to the Asian ones.

 

[piccolo]

So just how stealthy were ninjas?

 

[SuperFerret]

Not as stealthy as people make them seem, nor was it a particularly honorable profession.

 

[terry78]

edit

 

[ChickenScratch]

So just how stealthy were ninjas?

I've got a thing for Jananese cluture too since I've been training in Japanese martial arts since I was 5.

Most of what people think of ninjas is outright wrong and completely a Hollywood fabrication. Even the word "ninjitsu" is completely made up. Ninjas usually trained not in one art named ninjitsu, but in a variety of arts united under the school name. The Bujinkan school teaches 9, the Genbukan teaches 9, and the Jinekan teaches 10, which includes aiki-jitsu (the hand to hand style samurais did).

Ninjas were about as stealthy as a modern day Delta Force or Navy Seal is. They are after all, people just like us. But they were good at spreading lies about their abilities so people did fear them. At the end of the day a samurai spending his entire life studying how to use his sword and aiki-jitsu is way more prepared for a fight than a ninja who's spent a few years trying to learn 9 or more arts, the hand to hand element "Taijutsu" as well as Kosshijutsu, Bikenjutsu, Koppōjutsu, etc. is a far less focused fighting machine. It's a difference between a guy who's mastered 2 arts as opposed to someone who's pretty ok at 9 or 10.

 

[piccolo]

Ninjas were about as stealthy as a modern day Delta Force or Navy Seal is. They are after all, people just like us. But they were good at spreading lies about their abilities so people did fear them.

Like Drake's buzz.

At the end of the day a samurai spending his entire life studying how to use his sword and aiki-jitsu is way more prepared for a fight than a ninja who's spent a few years trying to learn 9 or more arts, the hand to hand element "Taijutsu" as well as Kosshijutsu, Bikenjutsu, Koppōjutsu, etc. is a far less focused fighting machine. It's a difference between a guy who's mastered 2 arts as opposed to someone who's pretty ok at 9 or 10.

So in loose terms, its like Shang-chi vs. Batman.

 

[ChickenScratch]

I guess you could say that. Though I do have my own personal issues I have against Kung Fu and Chinese martial arts as a whole. Learning 9 arts, one dealing with hand to hand, another with swords, another with throwing weapons, infiltration, exfiltration, and it goes on. The different parts of the ninja's various ryu are sometimes taught all at the same time (Bujinkan) or one after the other (Jinekan, Genbukan) but either way, what you got was never the unstoppable beast you see in the movies. Just like anything you had guys who were good at one art while terrible at another, just like in school you may have the classes you are good at and the ones you just barely get through.

 

[piccolo]

I think I prefer the glamorized version I see in the movies. Where all the ninjas are 30th degree black belts and can completely vanish into thin air using smoke from a cigarette butt.

 

[Tex]

Should have beheaded him. Then we could make Highlander jokes.

haha the guy yells out there can be only one. that would of been great.

 

[Raiden]

Samurai are the only bit of Japanese culture that interests me. Plus, I know my swords fairly well, though I prefer the European ones to the Asian ones.

I really like the samurai sword, or katana. From what I've read, the weaponsmith from ancient feudal Japan used a process called "folding steel", in an effort to create amazing density in the sword while retaining its lightness that is ideal for quick strike. This process is supposedly lost and can't easily duplicate even using today's technology. European swords always seemed too heavy and bulky, much like the medieval armor.

 

[omid17]

Police: Student swordsman didn't mean to kill


pisses me off, burglars sister want's than man charged for her brothers death, he didn't deserve to die. Dumb ass had " long rap sheet of burglary arrests" and was released from jail 2 days before that incident happened obviously the idiot didn't learn from his mistakes, guys like him do deserve to die imo

BALTIMORE -- Baltimore homicide detectives don't believe a Johns Hopkins University student had "the intent to kill" when he used a samurai sword to confront an intruder behind his home, a police spokesman said Thursday.
John Pontolillo, 20, a junior chemistry major from New Jersey, killed the man with a single blow early Tuesday after police said the suspected burglar lunged at him.
Mr. Pontolillo has not been charged in the death of Donald D. Rice, 49, who had a long rap sheet of burglary arrests and was released from jail just two days before the altercation. Prosecutors will determine whether charges are appropriate after consulting with police, a process that could take weeks.
"We do not believe he went down there with the intent to kill somebody," police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said of Mr. Pontolillo. "We're looking to see if he was the aggressor, and so far the evidence doesn't suggest that."
When Mr. Pontolillo saw Mr. Rice, he raised the sword and yelled for his roommates to call police, Mr. Guglielmi said. Mr. Rice lunged at the student, who backed up against a wall. At that point, Mr. Pontolillo struck Mr. Rice once with the sword, nearly severing Mr. Rice's left hand and causing a severe wound to his upper body. Mr. Rice died at the scene.
Mr. Guglielmi said Thursday that when the student found Mr. Rice, he was was hiding in the small, fenced courtyard between the back porch and the detached garage behind Mr. Pontolillo's off-campus home. Police initially said Mr. Rice was hiding inside the garage.
Police also revealed that Mr. Pontolillo and his three roommates, all Hopkins students, were warned by a city officer and a campus security officer late Monday about a suspicious person in the neighborhood just east of campus.
At that point, the students told the officers that Mr. Pontolillo's XBox video game console and two laptop computers had been stolen from their home earlier that night. Police investigated and found no signs of forced entry, according to police reports about the thefts.
After the officers left, Mr. Pontolillo retrieved the sword and decided to perform a more thorough search, including the garage and his car, Mr. Guglielmi said. The officers heard the screams during the encounter with Mr. Rice and rushed back to the scene, he said.
Mr. Pontolillo has not returned calls seeking comment. A man who answered the phone at the home of John A. Pontolillo in Belmar, N.J., said he had no comment.
Mr. Rice's sister, Peggy Rice, told WJZ-TV in Baltimore on Wednesday that her brother did not deserve to die and that the student should be charged.

 

[Manic]

"OMG, I want the police to arrest that guy for homicide after he killed my brother who broke into his house at night and lunged at him!"

There's not a jury in America that'd send that guy away for killing a burglar who attacked him.

 

[Manic]

"OMG, I want the police to arrest that guy for homicide after he killed my brother who broke into his house at night and lunged at him!"

There's not a jury in America that'd send that guy away for killing a burglar who attacked him.

 

[ChickenScratch]

Cry me a river, we must forget the victim because the aggressor got hurt or killed? Well poor him, but he got what he deserved. He has shown a pattern of such behavior from his record and being out of jail just a few days and back at it! Nobody wakes up in the morning planning to kill someone, it just happen in this case because he was defending himself.

The necessary consequence of man’s right to life is his right to self-defense. In a civilized society, force may be used only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use. All the reasons which make the initiation of physical force an evil, make the retaliatory use of physical force a moral imperative.

If some “pacifist” society renounced the retaliatory use of force, it would be left helplessly at the mercy of the first thug who decided to be immoral. Such a society would achieve the opposite of its intention: instead of abolishing evil, it would encourage and reward it. - Ayn Rand

 

[ChickenScratch]

Double post

 

[omid17]

^

 

[omid17]

...

 

[Raiden]

If the student were to be charged for the murder of that burglar through self-defense, essentially it'd give future burgulars the freedom to steal or burglarize any homes without fear. There's no way that he'll be charged by the DA.