2LT Joshua Nelson saving the world

Zero and Ohio sent us links to the story of Second Lieutenant Joshua Nelson of the West Virginia Air National Guard who made a trip to Walmart to pick up some fish hooks, but it turned into something he’d never expected when he heard a woman in a near aisle call for help;

“I could tell she was stressed and she sounded frightened,” said Nelson. “I looked into the aisle, and this young man had a knife to a woman’s stomach.”

According to police reports, the young man was mad at his mother, who he had a knife to, because she wouldn’t buy him a gun. Nelson told his wife Brittany to go alert the store manager and call the police.

Nelson, who has a concealed weapons permit stepped up beside the woman.

“I put my hand on my pistol where he’d notice, and then I stepped in between them,” said Nelson. “I kept demanding he hand me the knife. I wanted him to see only one option. As I was standing beside that lady, I felt like I was responsible for her life. I was going to do whatever I had to do to protect her.”

Then, according to the police report, Nelson went from trying to stop a murder to trying to stop a suicide when the assailant turned the knife on himself.

Nelson pointed to his training and the Air National Guard and previously in the Marine Corps as helping him talk the young man down.

Category: Real Soldiers