GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — Matthew Kolakowski had simply left the Walmart checkout lane when a employee screamed {that a} man had a knife.
Then he heard a “mass wave of simply blood-curdling screams from the again of the shop.”
He noticed the person stab at one other shopper, then stab an aged girl within the again. He informed his daughter and her buddy to remain put whereas he and his brother-in-law gave chase.
The aged girl “went down and there was blood pouring out of her. He had taken his knife from his left hand and shuffled it again to his proper hand and rotated like he was going to get her once more. And he had locked eyes with me on the time, and he noticed me with the cart,” he mentioned.
Kolakowski drilled the person — recognized by police as Bradford James Gille, 42 – with the purchasing cart. Gille tried to rise up however one other man with a purchasing cart struck him from the opposite facet.
Kolakowski had raised his cart to “simply smash it on prime of him,” when one other buyer, Derrick Perry, armed with a pistol, held the accused stabber at gunpoint.
Kolakowski, 39, a disabled U.S. Marine who served in Iraq, and his brother-in-law, Chris O’Brien, 43, who backed Kolakowski and started recording when Perry confirmed up with a gun, spoke Tuesday, July 29, at a press convention in Grand Rapids.
Eleven folks suffered stab accidents within the assault Saturday on the Traverse Metropolis Walmart retailer.
Gille, with a historical past of psychological sickness, is charged with 11 counts of tried homicide and a single terrorism cost. He’s held on $100,000 bond. Police mentioned he randomly attacked victims inside and out of doors of the shop.
Perry, who additionally served within the U.S. Marine Corps, informed ABC’s Good Morning America: “I finally wished him to place the knife down and again away till legislation enforcement received there,” Perry mentioned. “I didn’t see myself as any sort of choose, jury or executioner — I simply wished everybody to be protected.”
Perry repeatedly ordered the person to drop the folding knife. Kolakowski, too, demanded that the person drop the knife. Gille lastly dropped the knife and Kolakowski grabbed it.
Perry put his legally owned gun away seconds earlier than a Grand Traverse County sheriff’s deputy handcuffed Gille, who was being held down. Kolakowski then helped one other deputy who utilized a tourniquet to a person’s shoulder.
Whereas Perry lives within the space, Kolakowski and O’Brien, who reside within the Grand Rapids space, had been visiting with household.
Ed Kolakowski, a retired Kent County sheriff’s detective who now works as a personal investigator, mentioned his son and the others acted heroically. He mentioned they gained management in a chaotic state of affairs, holding the person at gunpoint, utilizing loud verbal instructions and recording the episode.
“All of them three did an outstanding job, and they need to be appeared as much as as heroes,” he mentioned.
“That would have been a lot worse if these guys weren’t there.”
Two others, together with the person with a purchasing cart, helped management the stabbing suspect however Matthew Kolakowski and his brother-in-law didn’t know their names.
“And I believe our present of pressure is what induced him to place that knife down,” Kolakowski mentioned.
He mentioned his Marine coaching taught him to face challenges head-on.
It was an sudden occasion however his coaching kicked in, he mentioned.
Kolakowski mentioned his concern is for the victims. He is additionally anxious about kids, together with his daughter, who had been within the retailer and positively traumatized.
“She went the exact opposite path of the place the risk was … . And I simply really feel like she’s extra visually traumatized by the screams.”
The victims vary from 29 to 84 years outdated. All are anticipated to outlive.
Kolakowski mentioned police got here flying in, with the brakes smoking on one of many patrol vehicles.
“So we knew they weren’t taking part in round both. … So, for something to go down, it might have been any of their youngsters, any of their household, and perhaps a few of them had been, however I do not know,” Kolakowski mentioned.
“However they got here in scorching, in full pressure.”
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