Rasheen Bingham doesn’t consider himself a hero but after he stepped in front of a gun-toting woman many people are calling him one.
“I just reacted the way I thought I was supposed to react,” Bingham said.
Police in Upper Darby, Pennsylvania believe that had Bingham not stepped in, what unfolded aboard a bus last Thursday could have ended in tragedy. Bingham and his sons Seth and Sebastian were headed home on the bus, when 56-year-old Cordelia Chisholm pointed a loaded gun at another passenger who was apparently talking loudly and cursing on her cell phone. The whole ordeal was caught on surveillance tape.
“She said, ‘This old lady will put a bullet in your mouth!’ She did say that, yeah but I thought it was still talk,” Bingham says. That was until she took out a gun.
“I was worried about the lady putting the gun away…my main concern was getting her off the bus,” Bingham said.
At the same time, Bingham was trying to keep his children calm as his sons tried to get off the bus too. The whole ordeal last just a few seconds, “it was basically a blur,” he said. Bingham isn’t exactly sure what he said to Chisholm but it seemed to work. She got off the bus and no one was hurt.
Chisholm was later arrested and faces weapons and assault charges. After Chisholm left the bus things quickly calmed down and everyone went about their business Bingham said. The Good Samaritan still wasn’t sure Monday night if he would have stepped in to help if he faced the same situation again.
“Knowing the lady had a gun I was pretty surprised by my reaction. If I had to do it over again, I don’t know that I’d have the same response.”