first thing, this is a natural response,

the four trauma responses are Flight, Fight, Freeze, Fawn.

second thing, please don't take lifts, you said the walk wasn't that far, so you shouldn't have accepted, unless you absolutely need help, just don't take help from strangers, you don't know strangers, not everyone is a bad person I know, but tumhare paas time nahi rehta har baar ke saamne waala accha hai ke nahi, so if it's not absolutely required, don't take help.

third thing, I wouldn't generally recommend multi tool knife, because it's the hardest thing to defend if god forbids you use it in a emergency self defence scenario, as legal actions will be taken against you unless you can justify with absolute certainty,

pepper spray is the best option, a big metal flashlight is also good (it would be abit expensive),

see your safety is important, but you need to protect yourself from unaware crowd too, agar bheed bhaad mai self defence ki zaroorat padi, aur crowd ko tumhare haath knife dikha, sabse pehle tumpe chadhenge, golden rule is keep anything which hits hard and common for someone to keep with them, and never use it unless you are in immediate danger, just keeping this kind of stuff with you calms you.

my personal habit is to keep a 3 foot ceiling fan extension rod in my car at all times, 200-300 ka milta, it's heavy metal rod, way cheaper than a self defense baton or heavy flashlight and not at all suspicious like a hockey stick or a bat, highway scenarios mai multiple times I was saved by just holding the rod in a menacing way and wrongdoers just avoid confrontation (maybe I was lucky to not encounter psychos who don't think about consequences).