My fiancee and I went for a long evening walk along the river from Crystal City to Old Town Alexandria for dinner/drinks, with the plan to cab it home after. About 10 mins after sunset we were maybe 200 yards from the main part of town/population center, but still having to cross a park (surrounded by million dollar homes and a nice office complex) and it was getting dark. I saw a group of what looked like 10-15 teenagers on the path ahead and didn’t think much of it. Regardless, the safest place was on the other side of them, not the direction we came from, if they had bad intentions. As we passed by them the ring leader pulled in behind and started to follow/provoke us. He started with insults and escalated to threats. The others started to close in, so I grabbed my fiancee’s hand, said “walk fast” and picked up the pace so as to avoid being circled in. It wasn’t until I was shoved violently from behind for the 2nd/3rd time that I started to think, “shit... I am going to have to fight for my life tonight. Or at least hold these fuckers off long enough for my fiancee to get away.” I told my fiancee “get ready to run,” expecting an escalation (body blow, violent punch, knock to the head, etc.) and the need to turn around and engage. During all this, I had my head on a swivel, had to stiff arm the ring-leader and a few others multiple times, and kept forcefully saying, “get back, get the fuck back.” After about 100 yards of getting shoved, blocking a few projectiles thrown, etc., we finally neared lit city streets, and they skulked back to the shadows, but man was it close. The biggest lesson I learned is how quickly things can change. One minute we are entering a nice park surrounded by beautiful homes, the next minute, a small window of opportunity (still dusk, but just dark enough and rare moment of no one else around) opens up for a group of thugs to pounce. Next time I’ll leave 15 minutes earlier. We are white and they were all black btw.