The woman who took the gun from the accused shooter during Wednesday morning’s deadly rampage at the Potomac Avenue Metro station said she was thinking about getting home to her two children when she took courageous action.
The gunman had already shot three people, killing Metro mechanic Robert Cunningham, when Shante Trumpet grabbed the gun.
As the Metro train she was riding pulled into the Potomac Avenue station, she saw a man’s body on the platform, and in a split second, the man she’d seen standing over him with a gun got on her train.
“As soon as he got on the train, he says, ‘I’m not going to hurt anybody. Y’all are OK, y’all can stay there, y’all are OK, I’m not going to hurt anybody,’” Trumpet said. “Then he just started to rant and yell.”
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She said when the man when pointed the gun at a rider to prevent him from leaving the stopped train, she feared it was about to turn into a hostage situation.
When the gunman, who had been pacing the car, sat down in the seat next to her, she saw an opportunity to stop him.
“He put the gun down, but he still had his hand on the gun, but the gun was on the seat,” Trumpet said. “He had his hand on it, and I saw the door open and I was like, We gotta get out of here; I gotta get out of here. Like, I can’t sit on this train.”
Trumpet – the daughter of a military father, a former ROTC scholar and a licensed gun owner in Maryland – said the thought she might not make it home to her children flashed before her.
Then, she made a move that could have ended in her death had it gone wrong.
“He didn’t have a grip on the gun,” she said. “He wasn’t holding on to it, so I just grabbed the gun and I ran. As soon as I ran, he grabbed me from the back, and I think at that time, people on the train grabbed him, so we both fell.”
Two fellow passengers, who in the chaos believed Trumpet was about to be shot, tackled the man, knocking her down, too.
“I guess the guys who had grabbed him, grabbed him long enough so I could get up, get the gun," she said. "I grabbed the gun and then threw it onto the tracks on the other side.”
John T., who asked that his last name not be used, said the agitated gunman got on the train shouting things he couldn’t quite understand
“And he is preaching and screaming and whatever is going on, and I seen his hand, OK, and I knew that was real gun,” he said.
Within seconds, the gunman began threatening the passengers, John T. said.
“You could hear him interrogating or giving people a hard time,” he said. “I believe I remember him doing something with one dude. I did not see it, keep your head down, but I could hear him saying, ‘Don’t shoot, don’t shoot.’”
The doors on the car began opening and closing and the lights dimmed, John T. said.
“I think somebody in the back hit the emergency button or whatever, and it did open the doors,” John T. said.
Then another man, Timour Skrynnikov, leaped at the gunman, taking him to the floor of the car.
“We both went down, and I was on top of him,” he said. “Then there was another passenger help me who also jumped on him, and I saw the the gun at this point was not in the perpetrator hands.”
“And when I got up, I got on top of Timour, OK, and at this point, everybody is trying to get out,” John T. said. “Everybody is dropping their stuff and, of course, my stuff. Everybody is dropping stuff – phones, glasses, coffee cups.”
Trumpet does not consider herself hero, reserving that title for Cunningham, 64, who was fatally shot intervening as the gunman harassed someone on the platform.
She is grateful to have been able to go home to her family and friends, who lovingly told her, “Don’t ever do that again.”
John T. said he didn’t think he did much and just reacted by instinct.
“I don’t think I did anything,” he said. “I did nothing that nobody else would have done.”
Trumpet received a 2017 Cafritz Foundation Award as part of a D.C. government team that helped simplify the way seniors and D.C. residents with disabilities get Medicaid services. She said the trauma of Wednesday morning leaves her feeling she could never get on a Metro train again.
The attack began as a confrontation on a Metrobus. The gunman shot one victim after getting off the bus and another person inside the station. Another person suffered a laceration unrelated to gunfire, police said Thursday.
The accused gunman has a criminal history and suffers from mental illness, according to police records and his lawyer on a separate case. D.C. police records show officers responded to Isaiah Trotman's home in Southeast two weeks before the deadly shooting to check on his welfare but were unable to find him. According to the police report, Trotman was enrolled in behavioral program but had not shown up for more than a week.
Trotman has not yet appeared in court for the charges he faces because he remains hospitalized. Police sources close to the investigation said Trotman was hospitalized for mental health reasons.
