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“I think that some people are bigoted, they’re xenophobic, they’re racist and this is just going to feed their bias,” he said. “We had one quite violent incident … and they’re going to ignore the fact that we have tens of thousands of students here from across the world and everyone gets along just fine.”

Casey said he was picking up his mail in the Totem Park common area on Tuesday when two female students ran in, shouting that someone was being choked in another building. He ran to the scene and found a man holding a woman on the floor from behind with his hands around her neck.

Casey said he used his jiu-jitsu and judo training to place the man in a chokehold — but the suspect’s response was surprising.

“One-hundred-per-cent of people I’ve ever met, if they get put in a chokehold they put their hands on their neck and they defend themselves,” Casey said. “He didn’t care at all. He just kept holding on to her.”

Casey said he managed to pry one of the suspect’s hands from the woman’s neck and continued holding him until his friend Luca Berg managed to drag the victim away with the help of other students. With the woman gone from the room, all the fight went out of the attacker, he said.

“He didn’t fight back to me, he didn’t try to leave the room, he didn’t try to run, he didn’t fight the police at all,” Casey said.

Two days later, the assault seems like a dream to Casey. In his martial arts classes, he had learned a lot about self-defence, but he’d never practised a scenario like this. Still, he doesn’t remember feeling scared.