What a night!

This evening my husband & I went for our nightly walk. We usually walk about 2 miles every night to every other night. We have several different locations we like to walk: the track at the high school, the walking trail close to our home and of course the good ol' treadmill. Well, this evening, the boys' went to stay the night with Joe's mom and so it was just the two of us. Before heading to the grocery store for the Thanksgiving goodies, we decided we would walk for about 30 minutes. There is a nice little walking trail with a few hills not too far from us. Usually the area is pretty well lit because of the baseball fields. Well, since baseball is over, needless to say it was pretty dark. But, we didn't notice how dark it was until we started out on our venture. I had just made a comment that wow it was pretty dark, but we still felt safe. ok, so fast forwarding here, we noticed a gentleman walking but seemed to be walking a little slower than us, so I figured we would be passing him in just a few short minutes. On top of the hill that we were coming up on, we noticed what we "thought" were 3 teenagers. As they were making their way down the hill, towards the gentleman that was walking ahead of us, we thought that maybe they all knew each other and were huddled together. NOT! As we continued walking closer and closer, we knew NOW that trouble was ahead. All we could hear was "gimme your wallet" and the gentleman yelling, "help me". I didn't have my cell phone BUT Joe did. Not sure if weapons were being used in the attack, I kept asking Joe "what should we do--what should we do?". I forgot that I had walking weights in my hand..about 6-lbs total. I was ready to start swinging..but remembered I knew I needed to remain calm. By this time, the gentleman is down on the ground bleeding out of his mouth and face....one of the guys started running into the woods behind us and there I was trying to run after him. Then I was thinking..what are you doing..so I stopped and went back to the other two guys still hitting and trying to take this man's wallet. By this time Joe was counting...and I was like..oh my gosh..he's going to knock this guy out....so he was on "2" and the guy yelled I'm trying to get my hand out of the pocket. So by now the other two guys were running into the woods. We call the ambulance and the arrive with 4 police cars. Long story short, this little venture was about 3 hours long. They found 2 of the 3 guys and brought them back to the location for us to identify. I thought that was unusual as I thought they would've taken them to the station. Anyway...after looking at them...we had all agreed YEP, they were the ones. So, filling out the affidavit and giving our stories over and over, we left. (oh yeah, the oldest "suspect" was 28)
The gentleman, I still don't know his name, just now realizing this...said I will be forever "thankful" for you and your husband and will pray for you everyday. I'm still distraught as I've never seen an attack happen in front of me. Thanking GOD for putting us in this gentleman's path this evening.