Family of Taekwondo instructor saves Texan woman from sexual assault – NBC Los Angeles

The piercing scream, which sounded like a sound from a horror movie, prompted Taekwondo instructor Simon An to draw on his years of martial arts training.

On Tuesday around 4 p.m., shortly after the doors of his family-owned and operated studio opened for evening classes, An and his father, mother, older sister and younger brother heard screams from a neighboring store.

The family of five, each a fourth-degree black belt, runs the Yong-in Taekwondo Dojo in Katy, Texas, outside Houston. They initially ignored the noises, assuming they were from coworkers messing around in their break room. But then a piercing “final scream” prompted the An family to act, An said.

His family ran to the store and opened a door that was locked, where they found a man on top of a young woman with his hands “in all the right places” as she tried to fight him off, An said.

An’s father Hong grabbed the attacker by his shirt and pushed him to the ground. An’s sister Hannah grabbed the girl and dragged her out of the room while An and his brother helped to subdue the attacker.

“It just happened so suddenly,” said An, who has been practicing taekwondo for 16 years. “It was all self-defense. The intruder tried to run away – he scratched, bit, everything he could.”

But An’s father, a taekwondo grandmaster, held the attacker for 10 minutes until police arrived, he said.

“My father is strong. He expected us to protect him,” said An. “He had a lot of trust in us.”

The Harris County Sheriff’s Department thanked An and his family for saving the young woman from an attempted sexual assault.

“Through their training and discipline, they were able to stop the attack and detain him,” Sheriff Ed Gonzalez said in a series of posts on X.

According to the Harris County Sheriff’s Department, the attacker was charged with attempted sexual assault and false imprisonment.

“Thank you to the Yong-In Dojo for your quick action to protect others,” the sheriff wrote.

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