LYNCHBURG, Va. – The past week has been tough. From the shooting at Bridgewater College to the incident at the Melody Hookah Lounge in downtown Blacksburg, there’s been a lot of violence in the Virginia community.
“Attacks are a reality, they’re occurring all around us. We’ve had a lot of homicides and violent acts just in the past week in this area,” Marko Galbreath says. “We have to recognize that they are a reality and we’ve got to get trained. We’ve got to get trained on what we’re going to do.”
It’s why Galbreath opened T4Tactics in Lynchburg about a decade ago.
He is working to give people the education, confidence and skills to not only recognize an attack but how to handle one if it were to happen.
“Most attackers are going to send out some type of signal, or continuous signals to people, that they’re getting ready to attack,” he adds. “People don’t pick up on that because they think it’s not going to happen to us here, it always happens somewhere else. Well, unfortunately, it’s happening all around us.”
T4Tactics offers classes and covers a variety of topics to train situational awareness, de-escalation techniques, pre-attack indicators and much more.
The instructor, Galbreath, was in law enforcement for more than two decades. His goal is to continue sharing his knowledge to help save lives.
“A lot of people think this is just for law enforcement and military. You can learn it. You can learn it in two hours,” he says. “A lot of it is where do I park, where do I sit when I go out to eat, why do I do this, I have to know my exits and I have to know how to handle a stalker.”
He says the most important thing is going with that gut feeling. He adds when the hairs on the back of the neck stand up, it means something is wrong and people should be prepared for what they’re going to do about it.