To preface this story, I've been practicing Karate for as long as I can remember. It is something that my family has always been involved in. As such, I've had a black belt since my early teens. While I stopped actively participating in Karate around the time I was 19, it is something that does not leave you.
As anyone involved in Karate or any martial art will tell you, you never start a fight. No matter what.
When I turned 21 my friends and I thought it would be a good idea to go to one of those loud obnoxious night clubs to celebrate. I don't enjoy drinking or dancing, but we thought it might be fun and a good place to meet some girls.
After about 5-6 drinks (Keep in mind I'm a lightweight), I start talking to a very beautiful girl. She seemed like she was into me, so I took her to the dance floor.
After about five minutes of dancing, I get tapped on the shoulder by a dude who is much bigger than I am (I'm about 165 pounds and around 5 foot 10). He and his friend inform me that I'm dancing with his girlfriend. Being pretty drunk I told him she was my girlfriend now. They then proceeded to drag me outside.
At this point I started sobering up and explained that this was my first time at a place like this and didn't want any trouble. I didn't want to fight. They informed me that this wasn't something I was going to get away with. After begging a little more with the boyfriend, his friend sucker punched me right when we got outside.
At this point all of my martial arts training had kicked in. As I was getting up off of the ground the boyfriend went to punch me. I dodged the punch and countered with a straight right directly to the side of his throat. He went down right away.
At this point his friend didn't seem so tough, and got extremely worried. I felt pretty good about beating a bully up. That went away quickly when his friend realized he wasn't breathing. They called an ambulance but apparently there wasn't anything they could do as I crushed his windpipe and his body was without oxygen for more than 15 minutes by the time help had arrived.
It was a hassle dealing with the cops, and I had to get a lawyer to deal with this. A month of my life and $10000 my family will never get back.
Am I proud of what I did? Absolutely not. Not a day goes by that I wish I couldn't take back what happened. After a lot of therapy and reflection I'm starting to realize that it could have been me who died that night.