BLACKSBURG -- When Eugene Carroll Leftwich pulled a folding knife out of his pocket and fatally stabbed Cory Deon Allison, it was only to protect himself, a judge ruled Thursday as he dismissed a murder charge against Leftwich.

A 26-year-old Radford University student who spent six years serving in the Army National Guard, Leftwich was charged with second-degree murder after the Dec. 9 fight outside Attitudes Bar and Cafe in Blacksburg left Allison dead.

At a preliminary hearing Thursday in Montgomery County General District Court in Blacksburg, the shackled and handcuffed Leftwich stood in front of District Court Judge Gino Williams and demonstrated how he pulled his knife out of his jeans pocket, opened it and jabbed upward with it as Allison, who was several inches taller than him, beat the top of his head.

The 20 minutes of testimony Leftwich offered up was key to Williams' decision to dismiss the charge and release him from custody of the Montgomery County Jail.

Williams told Leftwich's defense attorneys, Dave Rhodes and David Lawrence, that he knows they don't like to put defendants on the witness stand during preliminary hearings, but that he needed to know how the altercation happened.

Leftwich testified that he was leaving the bar as it closed when he saw a woman he had briefly spoken with earlier being shoved by a man. He asked if she was OK, but she didn't answer and looked scared, he said. He told the man that he shouldn't treat a woman like that.

As he turned to walk away, Leftwich said, he was struck on the back of the head by someone else.

Leftwich and three Attitudes bouncers testified that four or five men severely beat Leftwich, knocking him onto the asphalt parking lot and kicking him as he lay curled on his side.

At one point, bouncer Anthony Powers testified, the men kicked Leftwich so hard that his body came off the ground.

"It was many guys on one," he said, shaking his head.

When Powers yelled that police were on their way, the fight broke up, he said. But Allison, a 28-year-old from Welch, W.Va., yelled that he wasn't done with Leftwich yet.

Leftwich said that someone yelled to Allison, "Break your hand on his face."

Allison jumped on Leftwich, hitting him hard on the head. In more than two years of working as a bouncer, Powers said, he had never seen anyone hit that hard.

Leftwich said he stabbed Allison, who didn't stop hitting him. Leftwich testified he began to swing the knife from side to side.

Allison finally retreated, but continued to yell threats until he realized he was bleeding, Leftwich and the bouncers testified.

Leftwich testified that he tossed the knife to his side and put his hands in front of him so he wouldn't be seen as a threat to police when they showed up.

He was in and out of consciousness from his injuries, he said, and was taken to a hospital. He was released about a half-hour later, he said.

Five people, including two police officers, testified for the defense.

Attorneys Patrick Jensen and Dean Manor, who presented their case first, called two witnesses.

Attitudes' bouncer Chris Hixon said he saw Leftwich pull out the knife after the group of men beat him but before Allison attacked him.

After his testimony, Lawrence moved to strike the second-degree murder charge against Leftwich.

"This is as clear of a case of self-defense as you can probably have," he said. "I don't know how anybody can infer anything other than he was in fear for his life.

"I can't imagine anybody in this room, if they had a pocketknife, wouldn't pull it out."

Williams declined to strike the charge at that time, saying there was no evidence to show that Leftwich didn't somehow provoke the altercation.

He did, however, amend it to a lesser charge of voluntary manslaughter.

When Williams later ruled to dismiss the charge rather than certify it to a grand jury, Leftwich began to cry.

Williams said there was nothing in evidence to show that Leftwich's actions had been unreasonable.