Former Pittsburgh Steeler Mike Withycombe made headlines this week when he saved a mother and daughter from a “lurker” threatening to kill them. Dressed in nothing but a kilt, Withycombe raced out of his Las Vegas apartment and dropped the threat.
“I heard my landlord screaming at the top of her lungs. So the first thing I grabbed is my kilt, which is by the bed,” said Withycombe in an interview with local ABC affiliate KTNV. The 6’5″ former lineman asked the women what was happening. “They were saying this guy’s a lurker, he’s hiding in the shadows, he’s following me, stuff like that,” Withycombe said. The younger woman, who asked to remain anonymous, is one of Withycombe’s neighbors. The lurker had followed her home and threatened to kill her and her mother.
He told the man to leave, but the lurker wasn’t going to budge. “I guess he wasn’t too worried about an old man in a kilt,” said the 52-year-old former NFL player. “He decided to take a swing at me and woke up very happily to see the police there as they were handcuffing him. (The) cops loved it. They are like, ‘(He) took him down in a kilt like a boss.'”
“He took a swing at me, I grabbed him, hit him a couple of times. He hit the pavement and then my knee hit him and then I pinned him,” said Withycombe. “I ended up just choking him out.”
Withycombe suffered a few minor lacerations to his hands and feet, but he said the injuries were completely worth it. “I have a mother and two sisters, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to stand by and let a single mother lose her daughter to a predator,” he said. Withycombe will need to take a few days off work to let the cuts on his feet heal.
When asked why he was wearing a kilt, Withycombe said he simply grabbed the “first thing” he could and ran outside to help.
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