It was three twenty-five in the morning on April 22, 2018. James Shaw Jr. was sitting at the counter of a Waffle House in Antioch, Tennessee, when a man with a rifle began shooting.
Shaw was 29 and had a four-year-old daughter. He threw himself to the floor and crawled toward the bathroom. Four people were already dead: Akilah DaSilva, DeEbony Groves, Taurean Sanderlin, and Joe Perez.
When the weapon jammed while reloading, Shaw ran toward the attacker. He grabbed the barrel with his bare hands, tore it away from him, and pushed him toward the door. The metal was still hot. He came away with burns on his hand and a bullet wound grazing his elbow.
He later said he had not wanted to be brave. He had only wanted to live, and the man with the rifle seemed surprised that he managed to.
That same afternoon, he started a campaign for the victims’ families. He asked for $15,000. Four days later, it had already surpassed $150,000. When he closed the account, the total exceeded $240,000, all of it presented in a private ceremony at Tennessee State University on May 15.
An armed stranger with a rifle wanted to extinguish four lives in a restaurant. Thousands of strangers, without knowing one another, decided to light them again.
