This is how I interpreted it.
The boys were being complete fools. I just really cannot understand where the “oh my god that must have been so scary” sentiments are coming from. Because the boys were being loud and obnoxious and saying mean things to him? I mean, I can see wanting to be like “ohhhhkay, these guys are clearly teenage morons and probably drunk and therefore somewhat unpredictable” and making my exit at the first possible opportunity, for sure. But he went back to them, and he held a couple of them there by their tubes, AND you can hear people telling him to leave multiple times. There’s no “come here and fight me”, “you’re not going anywhere”, “I’ll kick your [redacted]”, etc. you don’t see the boys grab him by the ankle and drag him over. No one else was showing him a weapon or even claiming they had one when they didn’t.
If you find a group of random young people that threatening even in theory, then like…why approach them in the first place? If The Youth Today are so terrifying that the idea of them just yelling stupid insulting garbage at you would have you in such fear that you think you’d need to stab someone to death over it, then why was he even over there to start with? If the stupid lost phone (which it sounds like no one but the defendant was that invested in anyways) was so critically important why not just wait a few minutes for the boys to clear out? Why go back towards them after already having unpleasantness with them? And then to not only brandish a weapon, but immediately use it AND stab FIVE people? He jumped to using it so fast that people were saying they hadn’t even registered that he HAD a knife until after they’d been stabbed.
There’s just too much here for me to ignore. And he was 52 when this happened. I get that he might not have been in peak physical condition but he wasn’t 95 and frail and confused. He was not that much older than I am and I certainly don’t plan to be using “I’m just an elderly frightened old woman” to excuse my poor choices for many many years yet, LOL