By Ashley Silver
Police1
WASHINGTON — A woman is being hailed a hero after disarming a gunman who shot three people, killing one, that started on a city bus and ended in a Metro tunnel last week.
Isaiah Trotman, 31, boarded a city bus at the Potomac Avenue Metro station with a gun in hand after shooting three people, fatally wounding 64-year-old Metro worker Robert Cunningham, according to FOX 5 DC. It was there that Trotman and Shante Trumpet’s paths crossed.
“He walked into our car, he’s like, ‘I’m not going to hurt anybody, I’m not going to hurt anybody,’” Trumpet told FOX 5 DC. “He started walking up and down the aisles, and he started yelling. He started saying he was a vet. He was just, it looked like he was manic. He was getting in people’s faces, one man was trying to leave. He said, ‘You’re not going anywhere.’”
Trumpet stared at the gun that sat on Trotman’s lap after he sat next to her on the bus. Once she noticed his grip had loosed on the gun, she knew it was her time to act: “I wasn’t listening to anything he was saying. I was just looking at the gun and I was looking at the door. And I was looking that he wasn’t gripping the gun. I was thinking I could grab it enough and get it out of here and get it away from him.”
Once Trumpet managed to grab the gun, Trotman began to chase her, scrambling to tackle her as she sprinted away. Two other riders tackled the two of them to the ground. The gun was knocked loose from Trumpet’s grasp, but she was eventually able to free herself from the scuffle, retain possession of the gun, run out of the bus and throw the gun to safety.
“It’s honestly surreal,” Trumpet said. “I feel like I’m telling somebody else’s story. My first thought, I just needed to get off that train. He wasn’t a threat without the gun. He wasn’t a big guy. Once he didn’t have the gun anymore, he didn’t attack me. He just grabbed me, but once the gun was gone, he was no longer a threat.”
One man, Tyrell Knight, who witnessed the Metro riders take down the gunman, told WUSA News that he credits Trumpet with saving his life and the lives of others.
“I will never forget her,” Knight told WUSA. “She will always be the person who saved my life on the day a man almost took my life.”
Robert Cunningham was a WMATA mechanic who was killed by Trotman. He leaves behind a wife and four children. A GoFundMe has been set up for Cunningham’s family and it has already raised more than $150,000.