“After being praised as a hero by the mayor of Nashville, James Shaw Jr. said he was just trying to save his own life when he wrestled an assault rifle from a gunman who fatally shot four people at a Waffle House in Tennessee.” James Shaw Jr. doesn’t want to be  seen as a hero. He believes that, what he did was selfish because, him wrestling the shooter was selfish.

“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 that I was the Terminator or Superman or anybody like that. I figured if I was going to die, he was gonna have to work for it.” Shaw, the father of a 4-year-old, and a friend went to the waffle house early Sunday morning after going to a nearby club.

He was also burned in his right hand after, grabbing the blistering hot barrel of the assault rifle. The gunman took the lives of four people, including a chef who had gone out for a cigarette break.

“I saw the Waffle House employees scatter. And then I looked back and I saw a person lying on the ground right at the entrance of the door,” Shaw said.He said he went to an area near the restroom and hid behind a swivel door that had no lock.He said a shot came through the door and grazed his elbow.

“It was at that time I kind of made up my mind … that if it was gonna come down to it, he was going to have to work to kill me,” Shaw said.”So at the time that he was either reloading, or the gun jammed or whatever happened, is when I ran through the swivel door,” he said. “I hit him with the swivel door and then the gun was kind of jammed up and it was pushed down. So we were scuffling and I managed to get one hand on the gun and then I grabbed it from him and I threw it over the countertop.”