Parenting

Badass Grandpa Stops Armed Suspect, Literally Saves The Day

by Thea Glassman
Image via ABC News

The Columbus Police Department says it was all due to some ‘fancy footwork’

Forget Captain America. A brand new superhero has just joined the ranks, and he’s one badass grandpa. The man — who has been identified as Bill by the police — stopped an armed suspect from fleeing with some quick, skilled legwork.

The footage will have you grabbing fistfuls of popcorn and cheering.

Bill, a 54-year-old veteran, was waiting for his granddaughter to finish up at the library when all the action went down. He saw an armed man running away from the police and swiftly stuck his leg out to trip the suspect. “[He] was coming my way so I got in his way,” Bill told ABC News. “I heard him hit [the ground] and the gun went sliding out. He went one way and the gun went another.”

The moment was captured on camera and it’s really something else. Here’s hoping all of us would be so wildly smooth and graceful under pressure. Oh yeah, and carrying a cane no less.

See? Pure cinematic gold. Superheroes, please turn your capes over immediately.

Thanks to that quick legwork, the suspect was arrested and no one was hurt. Despite his moment of truly impressive bravery, Bill isn’t letting anything go to his head.

“It makes you feel good when you help and the outcome is a positive and nobody got shot,” he told ABC 6. “I don’t think I did anything heroic I was just trying to help. Did you see the way I moved out of the way after I tripped him? That was all adrenaline, 100-percent adrenaline.”

Others would beg to differ. Commander Scott Hyland, who was chasing the armed suspect, said that Bill might have prevented some serious bloodshed. “We don’t know whose life was potentially saved in that moment, it could’ve been one of my officers, it could’ve been that young man’s life.”

The Twitterverse also applauded this real-life superhero. After all, there’s very few good things happening on Twitter right now, so you better believe we’re all going to celebrate this man who’s saving the world, one leg sweep at a time.

https://twitter.com/jetpack/status/992382277266083840https://twitter.com/jetpack/status/992459671523995648

So, basically, the moral of this story is that not all superheroes wear capes. But some of them might carry canes.