Washington DC woman who helped stop Potomac Avenue Metro Station gunman recalls 'surreal' moment
FOX 5 spoke with Shante Trumpet, the woman who helped disarm the gunman at the Potomac Avenue Metro stop Wednesday.
A woman in Washington, D.C., is being credited as a hero after she disarmed a shooting suspect who entered the metro car where she was sitting on Wednesday after he allegedly shot four people near the Potomac Avenue Metro station.
The suspect, identified as Isaiah Trotman, allegedly shot and killed a metro employee and wounded three others in the shooting rampage before getting onto the stopped car when the door was open at the station.
Robert Cunningham was identified as the metro employee who died from his wounds. The other victims are expected to be OK.
"He walked into our car, he’s like ‘I’m not going to hurt anybody, I’m not going to hurt anybody’," Shante Trumpet told FOX 5. "He started walking up and down the aisles, 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."
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Shante Trumpet said she was focused on getting the gun away from the suspect and off the train. (FOX 5 D.C.)
She said all she could think of when the suspect entered her car was "I have to get this gun off this train."
Washington Metropolitan Police officers investigate a shooting at Potomac Avenue Metro Station, in Southeast Washington, Wednesday, Feb. 1, 2023. Isaiah Trotman, 31, is in custody for the rampage. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)
Trumpet said he sat down next to her on the train and seemed to loosen his grip on the gun.
"I wasn’t listening to anything he was saying," she told FOX 5. "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."
Trumpet said she grabbed the gun from him and ran for the door, but he grabbed her. That’s when at least two other passengers, including Timour Skrynnikov, who told FOX 5 he had never been in a situation like that before and felt he reacted by "instinct," tackled Trotman.
She grabbed the gun again and ran off the subway car, throwing it on the tracks. Trotman was arrested soon after and charged with murder.
Her fellow passengers hailed her as a "hero."
"I did not imagine that the woman who I got on the train with … would be the one to save my life and many others who were on the train," passenger Tyrell Knight told FOX 5.
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The suspect shot and killed Robert Cunningham, 64, a metro worker who tried to intervene when the suspect confronted a woman. (FOX 5 DC)
"It’s honestly surreal," Trumpet said. "I feel like I’m telling somebody else’s story, honestly."
She said Trotman wasn’t a big guy, and she felt he wasn’t a threat without the gun.
"Once he didn’t have the gun anymore, he didn’t attack me," she said. "He just grabbed me, but once the gun was gone, he was no longer a threat."
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"I will never forget her," Knight told the station. "She will always be the person who saved my life on the day a man almost took my life."
Fox News' Pilar Arias contributed to this report.
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