Keith Metcalf jumped into action after witnessing a man get stabbed on an Amtrak bus near Union Station on Thursday.
“It affected me in a way that I just wasn’t expecting, you know, because I really thought that guy was going to die,” Metcalf said.
Officers responded to a reported stabbing just before 3:15 p.m., according to the Los Angeles Police Department.
Police say a woman stabbed a 60-year-old passenger with a knife. He was taken to the hospital in an unknown condition.
Metcalf was onboard the bus for a trip from Bakersfield to Tijuana. As they were approaching Union Station, he says he started to hear loud noises.
“I hear all this commotion,” he said. “I look back, and I hear this guy saying, ‘Oh my God, she just stabbed somebody. She just stabbed somebody.'”
He said he rushed to the man who was stabbed and used his sweater as a tourniquet to wrap around the man’s arm.
“I was trying to help the man as best I could,” Metcalf said. “And luckily, he was a pretty tough little guy. He really was. He held up pretty well.”
According to Metcalf, the woman threatened to stab the other people on the bus with what he described as a medium-sized knife with curves on both sides.
The stabbing victim survived, and no one else was hurt because fellow passengers intervened to stop the seemingly random attack.
“I saw some people with her. They had like kind of constrained her,” Metcalf said, adding that another man yelled for people to go to the front of the bus, away from the woman and knife.
When the bus came to a stop, the LAPD took the suspected attacker into custody.
Amtrak has not responded to NBC Los Angeles’ multiple requests for comment.