Back in the early 1980's, I encountered a kid walking into the middle of a busy street, looking at me defiantly and daring me to run him over.
I took my belt off, took him to the curb and blistered his hide.
His mother came out before I left and thanked me.
It takes a village. Wise mother.
And the way it turned out didn’t excuse what you did — it only means God’s mercy was upon you.
It would be interesting to speculate on what the circumstances were. But I won’t go too far and please fill in anything you know. It sounds like you were on your motorcycle. Fast forward 15 years, now the boy is a man driving a cage, he sees a biker, he remembers the attack, he succumbs to rage and does something like stop short in front of the biker, the biker dies. As one possibility. On the other hand maybe he took it all in good humor at the time, ah one of those bad-ass bikers cared enough to whup him and now he has a “father figure” and he’s a bad-ass biker in spirit too... and later he goes on and does something bad-ass in a bike gang and innocents die. Really don’t know, but the consequences you see don’t always justify what happens.