A football coach tackled a man who tried to stab him in an unprovoked attack Wednesday night outside Mid-Pacific Institute. 

Paul Brown, assistant offensive line coach for the intermediate Pac-Five football team, had just finished coaching and was waiting at a red light when the assault happened at Kaala Street and University Avenue, fronting the school, about 6:30 p.m.

Brown, who is also a restraint instructor at the Kapolei juvenile detention home, noticed the guy approaching him from the driver’s side of the vehicle. 

"The guy just came at me," and said, ‘You the guy,’ " Brown said. The man tried to punch and stab Brown through the pickup’s open window. 

Brown moved away, then opened his door and took the guy down, pinning him under the tire well of his truck, he said.  

The man was able to poke Brown in his calf with the knife, leaving a scratch, but Brown’s friends, who were behind him at the light, came to his aid. 

"All I did was bend his thumb," said Ed Edra, the team’s defensive coordinator, who also got poked in the palm.

The man continued to hold onto the knife with four fingers and Moe Failauga, a pastor at Word of Life Samoa whose son is a Mid-Pacific student, opened the man’s grip and took away the butterfly knife. 

"I’m glad he didn’t go to the school where the kids are practicing," Failauga said. 

Police arrested the 41-year-old man on suspicion of unauthorized entry of a motor vehicle, second-degree attempted assault, and carrying a prohibited weapon for the butterfly knife. He also had three warrants.

The man hung his head and waited motionless in the back of the police cruiser just after his arrest. 

Police said the attack appeared "completely unprovoked" and the assailant may have been under the influence of drugs. 

Brown said he was glad the attacker targeted him rather than someone less prepared.

"I’m lucky it happened to me because if it happened to some lady taking her kids home, it would have had a different result," he said.