Man stabbed 9 times after asking catcaller to stop harassing his girlfriend

A San Francisco man is recovering from near-fatal injuries inflicted over the weekend, after he asked a stranger to stop catcalling his girlfriend and was promptly stabbed 9 times. Ben Schwartz and his partner, Miyoko Moody, were walking home early Saturday morning with a friend when a man, whom the group had already passed earlier in the evening, began catcalling Moody for the second time that night. Schwartz asked the man to be quiet, which is when the suspect reportedly started trailing the group before he attacked.
“At first we tried to just ignore it, just kind of walk away and make our way home, cross the street and try to take a different path,” Schwartz told ABC San Francisco. “It turned violent very quickly, punches thrown … Next thing I know, I kinda had a knife in the back of my neck.”
Schwartz was nearly paralyzed in the attack, with stab wounds close to his main arteries and one narrowly missing his spine. His friends, who have started a GoFundMe page to raise money for his medical bills, have described Schwartz as “so kindhearted, and you can see that in everything that he does.” The San Francisco Chronicle reports that earlier this year, Schwartz bought a bike on the street because he believed it to be stolen, then sought out the rightful owner to return it. His suspicion was correct, and the owner had been looking for the bike frantically.
“I’ve had friends get their cars broken into, smashed-in windows, stolen laptops, stolen cell phone — there’s nothing I can do a lot of those times,” he told the Chronicle in February. “But this way, it was easy. It was safe, and it got him his bike back. … I just wanted to do somebody a solid for once.”