In 2006, a man in Portland, Oregon hired a hitman to kill his 51-year-old wife, Susan Kuhnhausen. She ended up killing the hitman with her bare hands. When she had her hands on his neck she asked him, “TELL ME WHO SENT YOU HERE AND I WILL CALL YOU A FUCKING AMBULANCE!”
For many people, the presence of an intruder brandishing a hammer in a darkened bedroom would prompt an entirely understandable response. They’d run.
But Susan wasn’t most people. An emergency room nurse for nearly 30 years, she had disarmed injured men, helped crack open people’s chests to perform heart massages, and administered IVs in patients thrashing from drug withdrawal. She and all the other nurses at Providence trained regularly in self defense, learning how to slip out of headlocks and clutches.