Man who saved lives pays visit to hospital

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — The young woman, bandaged and shrouded in bedsheets, began to cry when James Shaw Jr. walked into Trauma Room No. 26 on Monday morning. Then, as the woman’s father drew near, one of Vanderbilt University Medical Center’s surgeons spoke up: “Have you met James? James saved a lot of lives.”

The men embraced, crying, the woman’s father clapping Shaw on the back.

“Thank you,” the older man whispered to Shaw, who a day earlier wrested an assault rifle from a man who opened fire at a Waffle House restaurant just southeast of downtown Nashville. The rampage left four people dead.

The police, as well as other customers in the Waffle House, quickly praised Shaw as a hero for preventing even more bloodshed.

“I’m not a hero. I’m just a regular person,” Shaw said a few hours after the shooting, a sentiment he repeated in talk-show appearances Monday morning.

Later Monday, he slipped into Vanderbilt’s trauma unit, visiting two women who survived the shooting. He spoke to them softly and stayed perhaps two or three minutes in each room, deflecting any talk of his bravery.

“How you doing, mom and dad?” he asked in one room before he talked about donating money raised through a GoFundMe page to the injured and the families of the dead.

“Hey girl,” he asked in the second. “How you doing?”

Through their quiet tears, it seemed, the