A weird and macabre samurai sword attack. But strangely not uncommon.

The man, named Diamond Seltzer, 32, drove up in a Hummer, got out, pulled a Wakizashi sword from his waistband and went after Wombles from behind. He aimed at his head and neck.

“He didn’t say a word,” Johnson County Sheriff Greg Rowland told me. “He just walked up to them and started swinging.”

Wombles, in an interview from his hospital bed, told my colleague, Alexis Stevens: “He had apparently started walking toward the store and decided he’d rather take me than the ladies that were in the store.”

Wombles had no idea why Seltzer attacked him. He just knew he was suddenly fighting for his life.

Wombles ducked the head shot and “fought him off to a certain point to where I could get away from him, and he was still swinging.”

Thankfully, Wrightsville officer Jay Hood, Wombles’ friend, immediately fired several times at Seltzer, killing him.

It might have taken all of 5 seconds, Wombles recalled.

The sheriff said one of his deputies had the presence of mind to find Wombles’ severed right hand, grab a bag of ice from the store and rush it to the hospital.

Wombles was transferred to a Macon hospital, where he underwent emergency surgery to reattach the hand. He was optimistic of recovery when he spoke with my colleague last week.

Credit: Family photo

Credit: Family photo

Doctors have gotten pretty good at reattachment surgeries, especially if it’s a clean cut and if the appendage is brought in quickly, as it was done here.

Such operations take hours and are done microscopically, reattaching bones, tendons, blood vessels and nerves. He went in for a second operation Friday and probably needs more.

And then he’ll face months of therapy.

The GBI is investigating the incident because it is an officer-involved shooting. The GBI has, so far, not released a reason for the diabolical attack.

Who knows? Maybe he was intent on attacking the two workers at the convenience store, Wombles reasoned.

Senseless acts of violence are common in America, although a man using a medieval weapon in a midnight attack at a convenience store is certainly outside the norm.

“We just don’t have stuff like this,” Rowland dutifully told my colleague.

But it does happen and, strangely, is not uncommon. There are a lot of such weapons out there, as there are quick-to-anger and unstable people.

I Googled “samurai sword attacks” and quickly found dozens of cases: They occurred in Hawaii, Illinois, California, New York, Washington, Ohio, Massachusetts, Arizona, Alabama and Arizona. Worldwide, you can add New Zealand, Australia, England, Ireland and, perhaps fittingly, Japan.

In 2018, a woman in South Carolina fended off a man breaking into her home, police said, when she “grabbed a samurai sword she has by her bed and stabbed the subject in his arm with it.” Another case like that occurred in Pennsylvania.

A twist on the NRA’s “good guy with a gun” mantra.

Britain, a country long tough on gun ownership, has outlawed “ninja swords,” defined as being 14-24 inches long, after the slashing death of a 16-year-old boy.

There has been a campaign this year for citizens to surrender them.

Like they say, if you outlaw ninja swords, then only outlaws will —

There is something exotic about such weapons. The samurai warriors of Japan were noted for their honor, courage, loyalty and devotion to self-discipline. I think many of those picking up such weaponry like to see some of that rubbing off on themselves. Or maybe they just like karate flicks.

And they are certainly menacing. In a defining scene in Pulp Fiction, the Bruce Willis character considers a hammer, a baseball bat and a chain saw as weapons before settling on a samurai sword to dispatch a couple evil doers at a pawn shop.

In the late 1980s in Chicago, I heard a brief story on news radio of a man in a black ninja outfit with a sword slicing off another man’s hand in a late-night attack.

The reports were obtuse and it was the crack era, a time of anything goes. I canvassed the neighborhood and finally came on a man sitting in a kitchen, nursing his arm that was reattached mid-forearm.

Severed arm and hand injuries are common in such attacks, as seems reasonable, because victims instinctively throw up their arms in defense. In my research, it seems that hand reattachments are often successful following attacks.

In this Chicago case, it was weeks after the attack and the fellow was getting set to go to his therapist for leeches to be applied on the finger. Yes, leeches. The bloodsuckers are known to help draw the fluid into the appendages and improve circulation.

It’s still done. A 2018 study of finger reattachments found more than 10% had been treated with the slimy creatures.

I don’t know what treatment and therapy awaits Chad Wombles, who is said to be a stand-up guy and a fabric of his community.

But here’s to him recovering and getting back to giving back.