We finally get to meet the man behind the hatchet.
On Feb. 1, a homeless hitchhiker named Kai saved two innocent bystanders from the insane clutches of a giant raving racist who claimed he was the reincarnation of Jesus Christ.
“Smash, smash, suh-mash,” was how Kai described himself as he beat down the man with his hatchet. He was speaking to Jessob Reisbeck of Fresno’s Fox affiliate KMPH in an interview that quickly reached near-double-rainbow proportions of popularity on the Internet.
People were as taken with the weird series of events as they were with Kai himself. Like a superhero who’s defined by his nemesis, Kai was the very antithesis of the raving murdering racist he stopped cold with his hatchet. He explained he intervened that day because he’s guided by a simple philosophy of just being decent, of treating people like people, no matter where they come from or what they look like.
It was high-minded moral philosophy from a homeless surfer dude who just beat down an attempted murderer with the blunt end of a hatchet. Naturally people wanted to know more about Kai. Where did he come from? Why was he so damn nice? Could he riff on the guitar?
Kai became has become an international celebrity of sorts and has fielded interview offers from all over the world. But he still gave his first post-hatchet beatdown interview to Reisbeck, the reporter who he first spoke to.
Here’s what we learned about Kai:
- His real name is Caleb Lawrence and he’s from Western Canada.
- He was “raised by the TV” in the “ghettos.”
- He was molested as a child and perhaps abused in other ways, too. The interview isn’t clear. Reisbeck says some of the stuff that happened to Kai when he was young is simply too graphic to air.
- He copes with his traumatic childhood by “being the dad [he] always wanted” to his “inner child.”
- He speaks French and supposedly two other languages.
- Something about a giant car battery at the center of the Earth.
- He can sing.
Photo via Jessob Reisbeck/YouTube