James Shaw, 29, is being hailed as a hero after wrestling an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle away from an active shooter at a Waffle House restaurant in Nashville, TN. early Sunday morning.
Four people were killed and four others were injured in the shooting. According to Shaw, after leaving a club at approximately 2:30 a.m., he and a friend headed to the Waffle House on Murfreesboro Road, where they both spotted the shooter – suspected to be Travis Reinking, 29 – before entering the building.
Shaw recalls hearing the first shot fired, and mistaking it for crashing dishes – he’d previously taken note of the dishes on the counter, as the chef was “stacking them pretty high up,” he told reporters Sunday afternoon.
“When we first heard what I know now was the gunshot, we first thought it was plates crashing. Then a second one happened, and a third one happened, and I think that’s when the glass broke through.”
WATCH: Waffle House customer recounts stopping shooter: ‘He was gonna have to work to kill me’
Customers scattered, recalled Shaw, and he saw one person laying on the floor. As the shooter came inside, Shaw slid from the tabletop he’d been sitting at to the space behind the restroom door.
According to Shaw’s re-telling, the suspect then shot through the door, and the bullet may have grazed his arm.
The Nashville native then told reporters that in the moment before he reached over the wrestle the gun away from the shooter, “I made up my mind that he was gonna have to work to kill me.” At that time, Shaw says the shooter had paused to either reload or inspect a jam in the rifle. Shaw jumped at the opportunity to grab the rifle and get it away from the shooter.
WATCH: ‘You’re my hero’: Waffle House CEO thanks man who stopped shooter
“I managed to get him with one hand on the ground, and then I grabbed it from him and I threw it over the counter top.”
The suspect, Reinking, first became known to officials in July, 2017, when he was arrested by the U.S. Secret Service for being in a restricted area near the White House. His Illinois firearms authorization was then revoked and his four weapons were seized. Among the weapons was the AR-15 that would wind up being thrown over a counter top by 29-year-old-Shaw over nine months later.
While the guns were returned by authorities to Reinking’s father, it’s suspected that he then returned those firearms to the suspect.
Shaw received thanks and standing ovations from each speaker during the press conference, including the mayor of Nashville, the FBI, and the CEO of Waffle House.
“You’re my hero,” said CEO, Walt Ehmer.
Nashville Mayor David Briley also thanked Shaw for his “courage” and “bravery” during the press conference.
“Thrown into crisis, he acted with courage. He told me he saw an opportunity and he took it. He saved lives, that is certain and we are all thankful to him for his bravery.”
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Shaw is a Nashville native who’s attended high school and college in the city. He currently works at AT&T and also has a daughter. While Shaw has been widely applauded for his actions, he made sure to tell reporters that he does not consider himself a hero.
“I want people to know that I did that completely out of a selfish act. I was completely doing it just to save myself. Me doing that, I did save other people, but I don’t want people to think I was the terminator or superman or anything like that,” Shaw told reporters.
“I figured if I was going to die, he was going to have to work for it.” He concluded that his friend also left the scene of the crime unharmed, and that he didn’t think about his daughter until he was sitting in the ambulance later on.
After raiding the suspect’s apartment and finding it empty, police say that he is still at large. Furthermore, he may be armed with two weapons, which are also believed to be among the four returned to him in 2017. An investigation is ongoing.
As for Shaw, he told a Tennessee paper that upon arriving home from the hospital that day, he changed his clothes and headed to church with his family.
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