The man who snatched an AR-15 rifle from a gunman at a busy Tennessee restaurant says his was a “selfish” act of self-preservation and he does not consider himself a hero.
Never mind that he is being credited with saving several other lives.
“When I grabbed the barrel of the weapon it was hot, but I didn’t care. It was life or death,” said James Shaw Jr, a 29-year-old Nashville resident who found himself wrestling with the suspect after four people had already been fatally shot at a Waffle House bustling with patrons early on Sunday in a Nashville suburb.
Photo: EPA
Shaw later on Sunday joined law enforcement officials and Nashville’s mayor at a news conference, about 12 hours after the shooting, his right hand bandaged.
There he was singled out by Waffle House chief executive Walter Ehmer, who was present and thanked Shaw for his bravery.
“You don’t get to meet too many heroes in life,” Ehmer said before addressing Shaw, who dabbed at tears in his eyes. “We are forever in your debt.”
Shaw said that after going to a nightclub he had decided to stop with a friend at a Waffle House, but the first one he visited was too crowded with overnight patrons, so he ended up going to another.
He said he entered the Waffle House about two minutes before the gunman and when he heard a loud noise, he first thought it was freshly washed plates had crashed from a stack.
Then he saw restaurant workers running and turned and saw a body near the front door as the gunman burst in, and he realized he was hearing gunshots, he said.
“I looked back and I saw a person lying on the ground right at the entrance of the door, then I jumped and slid... I went behind a push door — a swivel door,” Shaw said. “He shot through that door; I’m pretty sure he grazed my arm. At that time I made up my mind ... that he was going to have to work to kill me. When the gun jammed or whatever happened, I hit him with the swivel door.”
Shaw said it was then that they began wrestling, ignoring his own pain as he grabbed the hot barrel of the AR-15 weapon.
“I grabbed it from him and threw it over the countertop and I just took him with me out the entrance,” he said, gesturing with his bandaged hand.
After getting the man out of the Waffle House, he then ran one way and saw the suspect, naked save for a jacket, going another way, Shaw said.
“I didn’t really fight that man to save everyone else. That may not be a popular thing,” said Shaw, a Nashville native who went to college in Tennessee and now works as a wireless technician. “I took the gun so I could get myself out” of the situation.
Nashville police along with agents from the FBI and the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and Tennessee Highway Patrol troopers were still searching early yesterday for the suspected gunman, Travis Reinking, 29.
Nashville Police Chief Steve Anderson said there was no clear motive, though Reinking might have “mental issues.”
He might still be armed, because he was known to have owned a handgun authorities have not recovered, Anderson said.
Reinking was arrested in July last year by the US Secret Service after he crossed into a restricted area near the White House and refused to leave.
Reinking was not armed at the time, but at the FBI’s request, state police in Illinois revoked his state firearms card and seized four guns from him, authorities said.
The AR-15 used in the shootings was among the firearms seized, but later returned to Reinking’s father.
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