A Mid-Pacific Institute spokesman said Thursday the school will exercise a "heightened level of vigilance" after a man tried to stab an assistant football coach in an unprovoked attack Wednesday night just outside the Manoa School.

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

Brown, who is also a restraint instructor at the Kapolei juvenile detention home, noticed a man approaching him from his left.

"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 pulled the man down, pinning him under the tire well of his truck, he said.

The man was able to poke Brown in the 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 was also jabbed in the palm.

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

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, the butterfly knife. He had three warrants on his record.

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

Mid-Pac Chief Financial Officer Pat Garvey said the school already has 24-hour security at the gates, but security guards will now be more vigilant and "we will watch who is in the park" — an area students go through — at University and Kaala.

Garvey said most summer school students are gone by midday, but students participating in sports are often on campus later in the day.

Security guards at the gates will stop "generally anybody who doesn’t look like they belong," Garvey said.

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.

Star-Advertiser reporter Leila Fujimori contributed to this report.