Armed Good Samaritan Saves Police Officer Being Attacked

When photographer Thomas Yoxall woke up early one morning, he got in his car to start his five-hour journey to a conference. He imagined he would spend his day photographs, but what he did instead has people hailing him a hero.

While driving to the conference in Anaheim, California, Yoxall noticed a patrol car fly by. “I was thinking, not a good way to start the morning with someone getting pulled over,” Yoxall said. But when he finally caught up and saw the patrol car again, he realized the cop was responding to a call not giving someone a ticket.

When Andersson arrived, he saw two potential victims and he quickly got to work blocking the lane with his car, setting up flares, and calling for a medical helicopter. But when he returned to the victim, the man that had just been beside her was gone. “I scan with my flashlight, and I found him standing in the emergency lane,” Andersson said about the shooter. “I could tell he already had his weapon pointed at me.”

In an instant, the man shot his last bullet and struck Andersson in his shoulder, which left his arm paralyzed, and then lunged at him. “A half inch to my right, it would have missed me,” Andersson said. “A few inches to my left, it would have hit my vest… I would try to get my taser out, but every time I would do that, he would strike me in the head and pound my head on the pavement.”

All Andersson could do was try to endure the beating and roll onto his right side to keep the man from getting his gun.“I knew, if he got my gun, it’d be all over right then,” he said. Yoxall, a former felon, saw the brutal attack and pulled over. “He’s beating him in a savage way, just fist after fist,” Yoxall said. “I yell out to the suspect to stop. I said ‘Get off him!’ His facial expression, the look in his eye was ‘evil’ if I had to put a word on it.”

“I hear a voice… ask me if I needed help,” Andersson recalled. “I said ‘Yes, I do.’ The next thing I hear is two shots… As much as I fought, at one point, I probably couldn’t have gone on anymore. I probably wouldn’t be here if not for him.” Andersson was then rushed to the hospital for emergency surgery, but knows he’s alive today because of Yoxall. “I hope people understand that he had to do what he had to do to save somebody else’s life,” Andersson said. “Getting involved isn’t a bad thing, even if it’s just stopping to call 911.”

“I get to see my grandkids grow up, my daughters get married eventually. He did a fabulous thing,” Andersson said. “God chose to put me in that place at that particular moment,” Yoxall said. “I just can’t see an evil like that perpetuated without intervening.”