The Hatchet Wielding Hitchhiker

Have you heard about Kai, the hitchhiking hatchet hero?

If you haven't, you will.

It's the hottest video on the Internet right now.

-What do you wanna talk about? -What happened?

This was not a typical news story.

It may have started out as one,

but it very quickly progressed into a heck of a lot more.

I mean, there's no doubt that day Kai was a hero.

Everyone around the world wanted a piece of this kid.

He could have had anything he wanted.

I mean, he could have had the money, the fame.

But this dude that I introduced the world to

went, in the matter of three months,

from this amazing, heroic, beautiful person

to wanted by authorities for murder.

-So it's a really fucked-up story. -

He's calling right now.

- Who is? -Kai.

-Hello? - You have a prepaid call.

You will not be charged for this call.

This call is from an inmate at the New Jersey State Prison.

This call will be monitored and recorded.

When we began to hear about this next story in the newsroom

a little after 2:00 p.m. this afternoon,

it sounded very strange.

And, as KMPH news anchor Jessob Reisbeck shows us,

it only got crazier.

It's February 1st 2013.

I had been tabbed to report news that day.

And over the scanner came,

"There's been a car accident. It looks pretty bad."

"There's someone pinned between the car and a utility vehicle."

"The driver's yelling crazy things."

"'I'm Jesus Christ." "All Black people deserve to die.'"

Racist things. Terrible things.

An absolute bizarre scene here in West Fresno

at the corner of McKinley and Marks.

I was a sports anchor and reporter,

and, for whatever reason, we were short on news reporters.

So this was literally my first day covering news,

and it turned out to be,

man, something else.

A man plows his car into a PG&E worker,

pinning him against his truck, because the worker was Black.

And innocent bystanders come to the rescue.

He must have done this on purpose. Like, he tried to kill this dude.

My mom ran to the driver to make sure he was okay

'cause we thought maybe it was just an accident.

He just kept saying he was Jesus Christ

and he's gonna save all of us and that, but we have to get…

He used the N word, meaning the Black people and that.

He said we need to get them off of the earth.

The driver ends up being this 6'4", 300-pound huge guy.

Then he turns to this woman that tried to come and help

and starts to physically hurt her, got her in a bear hug,

is choking her.

All of a sudden, she said the passenger,

who looked like a hitchhiker, a homeless guy,

comes and attacks the driver and saves her.

And, as I'm doing this interview,

I look across this two-lane farm road

and down walking on the other side of the road

was a guy with long hair, a bandana, a really big backpack,

and not to stereotype, but looked like a homeless hitchhiker.

-Can we talk to you? Do you mind? -What do you wanna talk about?

What happened today?

Well, went straight outta Dogtown.

Skateboarding, surfing it up…

The first thing he wanted to do was send a loving message

to whoever sees this interview. It's powerful. It gives me goosebumps.

He'd been through this crazy,

what to most people would be a traumatic situation,

and he looked right in the camera…

Before I say anything else, I wanna say

no matter what you've done, you deserve respect.

Even if you make mistakes, you're lovable,

and it doesn't matter your looks, skills, or age, size, or anything,

you're worthwhile. No one can ever take that away from you. Now…

He just had such a different perspective

of what he was supposed to do in that moment.

I look over. The guy's pinned there.

Buddy gets out. These two women are trying to help him.

He runs up, and he grabs one of them, man.

A guy that big can snap a woman's neck like a pencil stick.

So I fucking ran up behind him with a hatchet.

Smash! Smash! Smash!

Yeah.

Who would expect a hatchet-wielding hitchhiker

to be coming to save the day?

I was blown away. Absolutely blown away,

'cause you looked at him and he's rough around the edges,

and then you see

the treasure he truly was.

That woman was in danger.

He just finished, what looked like at the time, killing somebody.

If I hadn't done that, he would've killed more people.

Did it strike you as odd that he had a hatchet?

Did it-- Not really. I mean, I just--

You know, I figured being kind of a homeless transient,

a hatchet would be a good thing to have, you know.

He saw a woman that was in danger. "I'm gonna help her."

But how willing and able he was to use it on another person's skull,

maybe, yeah. That's kinda shocking.

How'd you get in his car? I was… I was hitchhiking.

Well, good thing I was hitchhiking.

Yeah, people say, "Don't hitchhike. This is what happens."

-Yeah, well, at least I was here. - Can I get your name?

-I'm Kai. - Can I get the spelling for it?

-Straight outta Dogtown. K-A-I. - Do you have a last name?

No, bro. I don't have anything.

As crazy as things got here, the best news is,

somehow, luckily, none of the injuries suffered are life-threatening,

and the guy driving that car is right where he belongs, in police custody.

In West Fresno, Jessob Reisbeck, KMPH News.

After I finished the interview, reporters from other stations came up to him.

and said, of course, "Can we talk to you?"

This guy was the most charismatic dude ever.

He's gonna talk to everyone. He wants everyone to see him.

For whatever reason, he said, "Nope. I'm not talking to anyone else," and left.

And when that happened, I knew.

Holy shit. We got something really special now,

because we're gonna be the only one with this interview.

When you look at a story, any story, if you're going to tell a story,

you need a villain,

you need an unlikely hero,

you need an amazing scenario, and you need someone in distress,

and this had all of that.

Yeah, it was fucking gnarly, man.

Holy shit. It was like the biggest wave I've ever ridden in my life.

We knew we had gold on our hands.

That night I decided I wanted the world to see the entire interview,

the six-plus minutes of interview,

because, up until this point, people had only been able to see

the minute-and-a-half piece that I'd put on the news.

So I put it on YouTube, I clicked "upload,"

and then I went to bed.

I woke up the next morning, and my world was different.

It was a game changer in my life, for sure, just uploading that video.

I had my own YouTube channel, and I had about 20 followers.

And I put it up when I got home, and I looked at it that night,

and it's like, "Oh, it's gotten about 20 hits."

"That's nice. That's average. Cool."

Jessob called me the next day. He's all, "Terry, dude!"

Just like, "Yeah, Jessob? What?"

He's like, "Have you seen your video?"

It's like, "Oh yeah, it was doing good. I think it was about at 20 or 30 people."

I thought it was good. He's like, "Dude, it's at, like, half a million."

I knew that day

that Kai the Hatchet-Wielding Hitchhiker was born.

Now, this stuff right here, I was driving…

-Smash! Smash! Smash! -

-Smash! -Smash!

He literally has a hatchet in his hand.

I'm absolutely obsessed with this guy.

This guy's my fucking hero!

Kai the Hatchet-Wielding Hitchhiker.

Fuck yeah.

Every time you would refresh,

someone else had taken the video and reposted it,

and that had tens or hundreds of thousands of views.

So it was just literally like a snowball that rolled and rolled,

and the Internet just fed into it.

There's dozens and dozens of different autotunes and different songs.

It was insane.

I mean, the memes? Gimme a break, dude. That guy is a walking meme.

He might have started memes.

Axe-wielding hitchhikers.

I can't tell you how many times I've rolled up my windows

and sped past a hobo sharpening a hatchet.

When I saw Stephen Colbert do his skit,

I mean, I didn't watch Colbert that much until then,

and then I became an instant fan of his show.

For the first time in human history, people are saying,

"Boy, we sure are lucky

that homeless hitchhiker was carrying a hatchet."

Kai equalled ratings. It equalled ratings because he was fresh and interesting.

People liked him, and ratings equal money.

So everyone was wanting a piece of him, to jump on the Kai train, as it were.

My name is Brad Mulcahy.

In 2013, I was the human interest researcher

for the late-night television show Jimmy Kimmel Live.

Ready or not, here's Jimmy Kimmel!

My job is to find interesting stories

or interesting clips and bring them to rehearsal or email them to Jimmy

or to track down what Jimmy likes.

Then I try to find that person to get them on within 36 hours.

We tend to air things that are funny.

Leave Britney alone!

We especially like people who are genuine

and whose reaction to something unexpected is genuine.

And the best example that I can think of at the moment is Paul Vasquez,

who was the double rainbow guy.

So this gentleman is in Yosemite Park,

and one day in the park, he's filming a rainbow,

and as he's filming it, a second rainbow begins.