Understandable, but personally, I would risk my life for my pops. Very easily. He could also remove his shirt, put it around his forearm and use it as a shield.Yeah a gash that could end up hitting the wrong spot and you end up bleeding to death.
But again, I'll never blame the person; we're not all the same, and at the end of the day, this POS lunatic shouldn't have been attacking his father in the first place if they didn't let him out.