Military Vet Takes Down Knife-Wielding Man in South Carolina Walmart: 'We're Trained for Something Like This'

The man dressed in red had a knife. And he was waving it at a Walmart employee.

Demario Davis was standing in line with his 19-year-old son at the South Carolina store, he said, when his son turned to him and said, "That guy has a knife."

Davis, a military veteran who served in the Air Force, told Inside Edition Digital he walked up to a female worker.

"I went to an employee, asking 'Where's security?' She said 'I'm security,'" Davis recounted. 

That's when Davis knew he had to do something. Especially when he heard the man say, "When the cops get here I'm going to start cuttying everybody up," Davis recalled.

Looking around for a weapon, Davis picked up the heaviest thing he could find, which happened to be a metal stanchion used to divide checkout lines. He swung it at the man, and hit him in the back.

The knife fell from the man's hand and he fell to the floor, video of the incident shows. Another customer stepped in and scooped up the knife, and several others held down the man until sheriff's deputies arrived.

"I'm a veteran. We're trained for something like this. I picked up a line divider. I had to find something. It was heavy enough. I connected, and that was it. I didn't touch him after that."

Deputies from the Richland County Sheriff's Department arrived within minutes and took him away. 

Social media videos of the disturbance have since gone viral and Davis is being hailed for his efforts.

"I was just rying to be a good citizen," he said. "You see videos of people with machetes, people are getting cut up and no one is doing anything. Thats just not me," he said.

The man was transported to a hospital for a mental and physical evaluation, a sheriff's spokeswoman told Inside Edition Digital. When he is cleared for release, he will be arrested on a charge of aggravated disturbing the peace, she said.

Related Stories