Balam "Mike" Miles knows all about mean streets. He grew up on them in Los Angeles, he says.

But yesterday the 43-year-old unemployed Army veteran had his hands full when the streets near Chinatown went from mean to downright malicious.

Miles, who probably saved some lives, says he simply reacted without thinking in the early-morning brawl.

And Honolulu police say a 20-year-old Schofield Barracks soldier faces several felony counts. The man had not been charged by last night.

Miles, as he recounts it, was walking up North Beretania across from 'A'ala Park around 2:20 a.m. when he spotted an acquaintance pushing a bicycle, walking toward him with a female friend. The three came together at the bus stop.

As Miles and the acquaintance greeted each other, "Suddenly, out of nowhere, this man ran up to my friend and stabbed him in the chest," Miles said.

Stunned, Mile shoved the woman and yelled, "Run!" As the woman fled, Miles squared off with the assailant.

Miles said that as he moved to keep the man away from his friend, the assailant wheeled around and began plunging his knife repeatedly into the chest of another man who was half-asleep on a bench at the bus stop.

Miles grabbed his friend's bike and knocked the attacker down. Miles pinned him to the ground beneath the bike and yelled for help.

"I'm yelling, 'I can't hold him down! Get the knife!' And one of my friends came over and hit him in the head a couple of times, and it didn't faze him."

Miles described the attacker as muscular, about 5-feet-7 and very strong.

"He was on something," he said.

Miles' left index finger took a bad cut to the knuckle, and he sustained a minor stab wound to the back of the neck.

When the man broke free, Miles grabbed a crutch belonging to another man sleeping at the other end of the bus stop and used it to fend off the attacker.

Miles continued yelling for someone to call for help.

"This guy was out to kill somebody," he said. "He was on a cold-blooded rampage. And I'm like, 'Everybody call the police! This guy is stabbing people.' "

The assailant ran into the street, laughing, and began slashing at the windows of oncoming cars — "like something out of 'Halloween,' " Miles said.

At one point, the man jumped on the hood of a car and rode it with his arms folded, until the driver slammed on his brakes and the man slid off and stood defiantly in the street.

Miles said he couldn't believe his eyes when a woman pulled her car to the curb, stepped out and began walking toward the man, saying: "Brother, brother, what's the matter? Take it easy."

Miles said he was horrified when the man motioned for the woman to come closer while he held the knife by his side.

"And I'm like yelling, 'Stay away from him! He's been stabbing anyone around! There's two guys laying on the ground over here!' "

Police arrived, guns drawn, and made the man drop the knife, but it took several officers to subdue and handcuff him, Miles said.

Ambulances took the two stabbing victims to the hospital in critical condition, later upgraded to guarded.

Miles' minor wounds were treated at the scene.

Police said the melee actually began moments earlier on North King Street when the soldier attacked a cab driver, and then a passing bicyclist.

Miles said that about a year ago, a couple of blocks from where yesterday's fracas happened, he saw a man beating up an old man, trying to rob him.

"I punched the guy out," he said. "I hit him with a bike, too."

Reach Will Hoover at whoover@honoluluadvertiser.com.