Unforeseen Attack, Unforeseen Hero

I wrote this article for a magazine writing class in the fall of 2021.

I received the news in my college dorm room, sitting cross-legged at my desk. My mom sent me a short text, and stunned, wanting more information, I called her. She answered immediately and dove into the story.

“He’s my hero,” she declared near the end of our conversation, her voice cheery yet serious. At first, I thought it was a strange, almost girlish thing to say. Yes, my grandpa had done a brave thing. I was proud of him and proud to be his granddaughter. In fact, the minute my mom and I hung up, I excitedly recounted the story to my roommate. But the word “hero” seemed silly, and I know now it’s not a title my grandpa enjoys being called.

“People started calling me a hero, and I didn’t like that,” my grandpa, Bill Strong, told me while recounting his experience more than a year after the incident occurred. “It was just instinctual. … I didn’t think about it. I just did it. The hero badge doesn’t seem to fit.”

Of course, when he told me that, my first thought was, “Well, that’s exactly what a hero would say.” I then imagined myself standing feet away from an unexpected, brutal attack. What would my instincts have told me to do? Perhaps calling him a hero wasn’t silly at all.

“I 1,000% owe everything in my life now pretty much to your grandfather,” Spartanburg Police Officer Erin Hansen, the target of the attack, said to me. “Without him stepping in, I don’t think anyone else would have. I can’t say for sure, but I think he was really the difference-maker in me being alive and talking right now.”

Hansen spoke of an incident that occurred Thursday, August 20, 2020, which both he and my grandpa described to me in great detail more than a year later.

At around 2 p.m. that day, Hansen stood silently monitoring the self-checkout area in the Dorman Centre Walmart in Spartanburg, South Carolina. He was off-duty, two hours into his security shift at the store. Eight to go. Almost ten feet away, my 73-year-old grandpa stood scanning and bagging his items. Neither sensed anything strange. It was a typical day.

As my grandpa placed another item in a bag, a man in black clothing appeared in the self-checkout area. Security footage later featured in a WSPA article caught something small and dark abruptly fall beside him, later revealed to be a sheath. Six feet away from Hansen, the man suddenly charged at full speed toward the officer, arms outstretched. With no time to react, Hansen’s eye caught a glimmer. A flash of silver. A knife.

Instinct and training assumed control, and he knocked the deadly weapon away. Unfazed, the man wrapped his arms around Hansen, pushing him violently to the ground. Footage caught his body skid across the white tile. The world tilted and blurred when his skull thudded against something hard.

My grandpa turned to face the commotion, and driven by a single feeling, an inkling of a thought, he moved toward the attacker. You have to do something. The attacker’s hands scrambled to reach Hansen’s gun, but he fought to control his weapon, instinctually moving his hands from his head to his holster. My grandpa moved closer. A half-second passed, then the man’s fist connected with Hansen’s face as he began raining down a relentless assault of punches and blows. Pain became a strange fuzziness, and he heard buzzing. Another punch. Another blow. Perhaps he heard nothing. Perhaps he felt nothing. Another punch. Another blow.

The footage revealed that the attacker slid Hansen’s unconscious body back and forth across the tiles, still trying to secure the gun. That’s when my grandpa raised his right leg, and aiming in between the man’s legs, kicked hard. The attacker was not deterred. My grandpa’s body forced him into a hasty retreat, but almost immediately, the instinctual thought returned. You have to do something.

He moved back in, now joined by two other men. Footage showed the attacker pull on the gun with enough force to lift Hansen’s unconscious body off the floor. Still, he could not release the weapon from its holster. The other two men grabbed the attacker, trying to pull him away from Hansen. My grandpa clenched his fists and started incessantly pounding the man’s head. The scuffle moved into the main aisle.

Footage showed another man, a Walmart employee, grab the attacker’s shoulders, and together, the men dragged and beat him off Hansen. The attacker stood and spun, punching the employee and ramming him into my grandpa. The employee skidded backward. My grandpa lost his balance, falling hard on his back. He rolled over and stood. The attacker was gone.

A WYFF article and a FOX Carolina article detailed the attacker's following actions. He sprinted from the store, punching another customer several times in his hasty exit. Jumping into a 1999 Chevrolet Cavalier, he attempted to leave the Dorman Centre parking lot, only to crash into a 2019 Ford entering from the highway. Running from the scene, he headed to a PetSmart next door, and there he was arrested by police while attempting to hide in bushes.

He was identified as 22-year-old James Cunningham, a man who had been charged with many other violent crimes. According to the WSPA article, Spartanburg County deputies reported in 2017 that Cunningham stabbed his brother in the neck. As a result, he was charged with attempted murder, although the charge was later dropped. In 2018, he assaulted a female coworker at McDonald’s by punching her and slamming her to the floor.

Solicitor Barry Barnette revealed during Cunningham’s bond hearing the day after the incident that Cunningham was on bond for the McDonald’s assault when he attacked Hansen, according to the FOX Carolina article. An attached video showed Barnette describing the attack.

“[Hansen] was just standing there, Your Honor. The defendant comes from nowhere,” he described. “I’ve been in this business for a long time, and I’ve never seen an attack like this ever.”

He continued, explaining that Cunningham told police officers after the incident that his intention had been to kill Hansen, take his gun, shoot people nearby and then shoot himself.

“Fortunately, one thing that I’m very proud of, three or four citizens came forward to help this officer,” he said. “If it wasn’t for that, I don’t know what would have happened.”

Hansen regained consciousness soon after the attack, although he awoke strangely. He didn’t know he’d been knocked unconscious but only that he’d lost control of his sight and hearing. When that control returned, he was propped against a bagging area at the end of a cash register, and a woman was crouched next to him pressing paper towels to his face. Some of his coworkers stood close. My grandpa lingered nearby. The woman told him to relax, to stop removing the towels. He didn’t realize he’d been doing that.

Hansen’s first thought was to remove himself from the open floor. He didn’t want to ruin anyone’s shopping experience. A minute passed, and he arose, walking slowly into a side room. Soon, an ambulance arrived, and he was taken to the hospital where his wife met him. On top of bruising, swelling and minor cuts on his face, he had a fractured skull, broken nose and burst eardrum. He spent about six hours in the hospital, after which he returned home to be with his wife and one-year-old son.

After the attack, my grandpa stayed close to Hansen and gave a brief description of the incident to another police officer. Then, he collected his bags, went home and told his wife what had happened. Soon, news outlets were publishing articles on the assault, and he began telling his family and close friends what he’d done. He told his daughter, my mom, and that’s when she texted me.

About a week later, my grandpa, whose arm had been slightly tender after the attack, realized his injury was far more serious than he had thought. He went to the emergency room and discovered bones in his hand were broken, something the doctor called a “boxer’s break.”

Around this time, Hansen watched the security footage of the attack for the first time and was surprised to see how many people jumped in to help.

“I didn’t really get that perspective until I watched the video — how many people [jumped in] and how quickly they came. … I think your grandpa kicked that off,” Hansen said to me. “I think he realized that he had to do something, you know, bless his heart, and went over there and did the best that he could. I think that kind of sparked other people to do something. … I was just surprised to hear that anyone helped at all. That’s not something you see a lot. A lot of times, it’s just a lot of people with cell phones recording it.”

Hansen was right about my grandpa. When I spoke to him later, he said, “I didn’t know [Cunningham] was going for the gun. I had no idea. I didn’t know what the risks were. I just felt like I had to do something.”

Both my grandpa and Hansen healed quickly. About two weeks after the incident, Hansen went back to his home state of Connecticut to be with his mom, dad and brother. While there, he officiated his friend’s wedding, his only visible injury being a small yellow spot left from a black eye. But his skull fracture left invisible injuries that plagued Hansen for many months.

He had piercing migraines and a constant ringing in his ears that eventually forced him to acquire hearing aids. It didn’t help that he had already suffered hearing loss in his left ear from a childhood ear infection, and it was his right eardrum that burst during the attack.

He also felt deep anger and sadness. Sleep often evaded him, and he sometimes thought about what the attack could have cost him and his family.

“Every now and then, I would sit there and just think about how close — I mean really, really close — I was to not seeing my kid grow up, or, you know, leaving my wife behind with a little kid and no family down here [in South Carolina],” Hansen said. “... I had a lot of sleepless nights thinking about stuff like that and how close it was. It kind of makes you appreciate things a little bit more.”

About two months passed, and he returned home. He started working again and began therapy, both of which helped him return to a healthier emotional state. But releasing his anger and frustrations was not an easy task.

“I had to speak with counselors because there’s a lot of anger when it’s just an ambush because it’s a lot of what-ifs; it just feels unfair,” Hansen described. “I didn’t really have a chance to defend myself, you know? Could I have done this differently? What happens if I did that? And unfortunately, that’s a terrible mental game to play: the what-if game. Because there’s no way of going back and changing it. But after a little while and kind of expressing those feelings, you kind of have to learn to live with it. I’m okay with what happened now.”

When he returned to work, Hansen obtained the contact information of the people who had helped him during the attack. Some were apprehensive about speaking to him, but not my grandpa. They texted back and forth. In January, Hansen called my grandpa and asked if they could meet in person. He agreed, and Hansen drove to his house.

The meeting started off a bit awkward. Both were wearing masks, and my grandpa was unsure how the interaction would go. But the awkwardness quickly turned into a heartwarming scene. They spoke, and Hansen handed my grandpa a small medal. My grandma took a photo of the two men together, and they embraced.

“That was emotional, especially for two men to hug each other, you know?” my grandpa said about the moment.

The two men would not see each other again until Cunningham’s trial on November 15, although they continued to keep in touch. A secretary from the solicitor’s office called my grandpa three days before the trial, told him Cunningham was pleading guilty and asked if he wished to attend. A work cancellation allowed him to do so.

When he entered the Spartanburg County Courthouse the day of the trial, he didn’t recognize Hansen. He was out of uniform, wearing a mask and standing next to his wife. But the two men soon reunited, and after introductions, my grandpa and Hansen’s wife hugged one another. The two men then spoke to the solicitor together to review what would be presented at the trial. They walked into the courtroom and, along with Hansen’s wife, sat together, awaiting the arrival of the defendant.

Cunningham strode into the courtroom wearing an orange jumpsuit, hair grown out, wrists and ankles chained. Seven months earlier, he had assaulted a fellow inmate at the Spartanburg County Detention Center, according to the WYFF article. To Hansen, he appeared distant, as if he had been away from people far too long. The situation seemed unreal, and Hansen didn’t know how to feel.

“It had been over a year, so I had been anxiously waiting for this moment. But when the moment got here, I didn’t know how to feel,” Hansen described. “It’s a little different seeing them in person. Especially when, you know, he’s sitting across the aisle from you. It’s tough to just kind of sit there.”

Some of Cunningham’s family and friends were present, and Hansen felt a sort of relief knowing that Cunningham had support. Cunningham submitted the expected plea of “guilty but mentally ill.” As the trial proceeded, Hansen noticed Cunningham’s placid, even-keeled behavior. When he answered the judge’s questions, he was typically unexpressive, small emotions swiftly passing over his face to only be overcome by austere indifference.

The trial seemed lengthy to my grandpa, with the judge and lawyers frequently entering the judge’s chambers. During these pauses, he spoke with Hansen and his wife about their son and one-month-old daughter. Near the end, the judge looked my grandpa straight in the eyes and asked if he wished to speak. He did.

He arose, a bit anxious, stated his full name and proceeded to describe the incident that had occurred over a year earlier. Before the trial, my grandma had asked him if he felt scared to state his name in front of Cunningham.

“She says, ‘What are you going to do if he gets out of jail in 15 or 20 years and is going to come after you?” my grandpa said. “Well, I don’t think I could live with that kind of fear. I have to do what is right.”

The judge asked my grandpa if he wanted compensation for his injuries. He confidently declined.

Cunningham received a 24-year prison sentence. Hansen was pleased with the ruling, and when he left the courtroom around 6 p.m., he called his family to tell them the news.

“You know, sleepless nights have gone away, and the anger has gone away. The sadness has gone away,” Hansen said while describing his emotional recovery. “I’m almost appreciative of it now. In fact, I think it’s made me maybe a better husband, maybe a better dad. Because I really cherish those moments that I get with them. Better brother and friend, son, you know, all those things. I think I’ve got a better grip on what it means to actually be that for somebody … because I almost had all that taken away.”

When asked how the attack and consequent events permanently changed him, Hansen described both increased awareness and empathy.

“I was always very good at being aware,” Hansen said. “I mean, obviously as a cop you’ve always got to be aware, but I think I’m a little bit better now. But as far as the empathy and kindness toward people — maybe that. That might be what changed, you know, for the better. … I think I can just kind of relate to some people a little better now.”

When asked the same question, my grandpa simply responded, “Well, I think I’d do it again if I had to.”

I told my grandpa what Hansen had said about his actions, how he thought no one else would have stepped in if he hadn’t acted first. Hansen said he had saved his life. My grandpa seemed a bit surprised and unsure of what to think.

“I don’t know that,” he responded. “You know, I hadn’t thought of that, that I really, truly saved his life. But to hear you talk about how he talks, yeah, maybe I did.”

I proceeded to follow Hansen’s instructions from our conversation by saying hello and thanking my grandpa once again on his behalf. My grandpa chuckled lightly in response.