[H]e came upon the scene \u2013 a man only in his underwear coming after the deputy with a weed eater and acting erratically. Riley immediately stopped his vehicle, identified himself to [Preston County Sheriff\u2019s Deputy Thomas] Mitter as a Soldier, and did not hesitate to help the deputy contain the disturbed man. By the time he got to them, they were in a scuffle on the ground.<\/p>\n
A young boy sat in the vehicle the man had been driving before he attacked the deputy. During the dramatic and fierce encounter, the man had fought him, came after him with a weed eater, and reached for his pistol. Mitter had shot him with the taser gun, but it did not faze the man.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy next option, well, it was to shoot him,\u201d Mitter said. \u201cHe had reached for my pistol and would not stop.\u201d<\/p>\n
Riley\u2019s intervention helped save Mitter from resulting to that decision and helped him successfully end the attack.<\/p>\n
\u201cI helped him control the man and get him to the ground, we made eye contact, and he was able to handcuff him,\u201d Riley said. \u201cWhen I came upon the scene on my way home, I didn\u2019t really think of anything, I just reacted. I just got back from Iraq a year prior to that, and my military training just kicked in.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t doubt that he helped save my life, too. I don\u2019t know how it would have ended,\u201d Mitter said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
SSG Riley, supply sergeant for Charlie Company, 2nd Battalion, 19th Special Forces Group, earned the Soldiers Medal for his heroism which probably saved two lives that night.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Chief Tango sends us a link to DVIDS which recounts the story of West Virginia Guardsman … Staff Sergeant Shawn Riley saving the world<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":57725,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[130],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-57724","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-real-soldiers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57724","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=57724"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57724\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/57725"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=57724"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=57724"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=57724"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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