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| By Macollvie Jean-François | South Florida Sun-Sentinel September 10, 2007 |
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Pompano Beach - What a weekend 17-year-old Kenny Partanen had. While waiting for wire cables to be delivered to his home Saturday morning, the longtime student of the martial art called Hapkido fought off a chain-saw-wielding neighbor who barged into his family's Lyons Park home. "I'm happy I spent all that cash on Hapkido, because that saved us," Kenny's mother, Peggy Partanen, 46, said Sunday. Reached at her home, the neighbor's mother declined to comment about the disturbance. The South Florida Sun-Sentinel is not identifying the man or his mother because he was not arrested. Spokespersons for the Broward Sheriff's Office and Pompano Beach Fire-Rescue said they responded to a disturbance at the home and took one person from there to Imperial Point Medical Center. Neither agency could provide further details Sunday. The Partanens remembered the episode vividly. Kenny, a senior at Atlantic Technical High School, said his friends had just picked up a compressor for a robotics competition at Stranahan High School. He said goodbye and went back inside the house to wait for the cables he would also need, leaving the front door open. Moments later, Kenny said, the 6-foot, 300-pound neighbor walked in with a chain saw belonging to Ed Partanen, 56, the teen's father. Screaming and spewing obscenities, the neighbor tried, in vain, to rev up the tool. Kenny managed to grab the 18-inch saw and ordered the intruder out. The man refused to go, screamed and wandered around the house. Kenny, at 5 feet 6 and 210 pounds, managed to push him to the door frame, where they grappled. "I yelled to my dad, 'Bring something metal and hard!'" Kenny said. Ed Partanen brought a frying pan and struck the man several times on the wrist. "He kept shoving harder and harder, screaming louder and louder," Kenny said. Meanwhile, a frantic Peggy Partanen called 911, and Kenny's brother Donald, 11, ran to his bedroom. Desperate, Kenny said he shoved his index and middle fingers into the man's eye socket. "His head went up, he lost his balance, and that gave me time to close the door," he said. Seconds after the man's mother drove up, about 10 deputies arrived and shocked the man with their Taser guns, Kenny said. The Partanens declined to press charges after learning from the man's mother that he was taking medication, Peggy Partanen said. "This kid did a hell of a job," said Phil Barrett, Kenny's Hapkido instructor. "Now I don't feel so bad I beat him so much." |
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/loc...,5041991.story
