A musician from Los Angeles used his water bottle to fight off two men who tried to break into his home. Binoy, who uses the name binoymusic on TikTok, posted videos about what happened. The videos have been watched over 22 million times.
It happened around 9 p.m. on a summer night. Binoy was sitting on some pillows near his patio door when he noticed the door handle shaking hard. He tried to turn on his home alarm, but the glass door started breaking. Through the cracking glass, he saw two men wearing hoodies. One of them had a long pick and a hammer.
The alarm was going off and Binoy needed to act fast. He picked up the closest thing he could find, which was his Owala FreeSip water bottle. “I was holding the bottle like this, and as he lunged at me, I swung once, hit him kind of on the temple, and then again on the side of his head,” Binoy said in his TikTok video. The bottle’s handle broke off when he hit the man. The intruder pushed Binoy against a wall, but Binoy grabbed the bottle again and hit him several more times on the head. The man fell backward and climbed back over the fence.
Nobody saw a water bottle becoming the hero here
People got really interested in this story because nobody expected a water bottle to work so well as a weapon. The Owala FreeSip bottle usually costs between $30 and $40 in the US. After Binoy’s videos went viral, the bottle became famous online. Even the official Owala account left a comment saying “fight or flight? definitely fight.”
A lot of people asked how Binoy was able to hit hard enough to put dents in the metal bottle. The answer is that Binoy works as a tennis coach. Professional tennis players can swing their rackets between 70 and 85 miles per hour. Binoy used that same kind of power when swinging the water bottle. The bottle was about 75 percent full of water when he used it.
After the men ran away, Binoy threw their backpack over the fence. He did not want them coming back to get it. Officers came to his home and made sure everyone was okay. The light green bottle now has dents all over it from that night.
Most safety experts say people should not try to fight intruders. SafeHome says about 1.65 million home break-ins happen every year in the United States. Security experts usually tell people to hide, stay quiet, and call the police instead of fighting. But in this case, Binoy’s quick thinking and his sports training helped him protect his home.
tiktok.com/@binoymusic/video/7562662713646746910
The story got people talking about home safety all over social media. A lot of parents said they would show the video to their kids to prove that water bottles can be useful in different ways. Binoy finished his story by thanking Owala. He said the bottle basically saved his life and told everyone to be safe.
