Parkland student on TV

BET awards show honors Anthony Borges.

Parkland student Anthony Borges was honored Sunday night at the 2018 BET Awards with a humanitarian award.

Wearing a white blazer and standing on stage with crutches, the teenager joined five other honorees who were presented with the real life hero award by singer John Legend.

“Typically, the BET Awards honors a celebrity humanitarian who has done something extraordinary for our world," Legend said as he presented the awards at the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles.

“But tonight, we want to honor a few of the individuals who have had the opportunity in their everyday lives to do something unexpected and impactful for our community.”

The first award went to Borges, the 15-year-old who was shot five times as he shielded his classmates from gunfire during the Feb. 14 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. The bullets struck his lung, abdomen and legs and he received nine surgeries at Broward Health Medical Center in Fort Lauderdale where he was released in early April.

At the awards show, he stood next to James Shaw Jr., known as the Waffle House hero for wrestling an assault rifle from a gunman and saving the lives of patrons at a restaurant in Nashville, Tennessee in May. Shaw Jr. also received a BET humanitarian award.

The other humanitarian award recipients were:

Justin Blackman the lone high school student who walked out of his class in North Carolina during National Walkout Day to protest gun violence; Mamoudou Gassama, the man who sprung into action and climbed up an apartment building in Paris to save a 4-year-old boy danging from a balcony; fifth-grader Naomi Wilder for her passionate speech at the “March for Our Lives” event in Washington D.C. in March; and Shaun King, a citizen journalist who has reported on racial discrimination and police brutality.

Borges