Surveillance video released over the weekend shows the dramatic moment an Oregon high school coach disarmed and hugged a student who showed up to school with a gun in May, reports NBC News.
Keanon Lowe, a former football player at the University of Oregon who works at Parkrose High School as a security guard and football and track and field coach, embraced the student, Angel Granados-Diaz, then 18, after disarming him and handing the gun off to another student.
“I looked at the gun and I realized it was a real gun and then my instincts just took over,” Lowe said afterward.
Granados-Diaz had made suicidal statements in the past and had been experiencing a “mental health crisis” at the time, according to the Multnomah County District Attorney’s Office.
Lowe had been sent to locate him.
Granados-Diaz was in the bathroom with a shotgun. When he exited, he pointed the gun at himself and tried unsuccessfully to fire. That’s when Lowe took the gun.
“I just wanted to let him know that I was there for him. I told him I was there to save him. I was there for a reason and that this is a life worth living,” Lowe said in May.
“The universe works in amazing ways. I’m lucky and I’m happy that I was in that classroom for all those kids and I was able to prevent that tragedy," he said.