An Alabama firefighter was honored by his department for stopping the sexual assault of an elderly woman earlier this month.
Capt. Jim Cox was named Mobile Fire-Rescue's firefighter of the month for September. He earned the award for helping the victim of a violent attack Sept. 4 outside a fast food restaurant, WALA-TV reports.
"In an almost 20 year career, I don't think I've seen anything that stood out to me that much," Cox said.
The woman had stopped at a McDonald's in downtown Mobile before a job interview. She was in the parking lot when a 39-year-old man viciously attacked her while she was sitting in her SUV.
"I don't know how this man got on top of me because I'm short, and I was at the wheel," the woman told WALA after the assault. "And he pressed against me on top of me, and he started biting my face. He bit my nose and broke it. He bit my chin and my neck and started scratching me and lifted my top and went in my pants."
At that time, Cox drove into the McDonald's parking lot, and someone told him about a fight outside. Because Cox was wearing his uniform, that person had mistaken him for a police officer.
Once he was alerted to the assault, Cox approached the woman's SUV and heard her calls for help. He also witnessed the brutality of the attack.
"What I could see was an undressed man—undressed from the waist to just below his knees—through the windshield of a car, small SUV, on top of a lady, biting her in the face, and of course, she's asking for somebody to help her," he told WALA.
As Cox walked up to the vehicle, he tried to startle the attacker by ordering him to open the door and get out of the car in a raised voice, a tactic that appeared to work because the man let go of the woman, who then was able to escape the SUV. Cox, however, credits something else with helping him stop the attack.
"I think the uniform is actually what spooked the guy," he told WALA.
Police arrived and the man, Vincent Scott, was arrested. His next court appearance is Sept. 30.
Cox said he didn't recognize the full severity of the incident in the moment. In fact, his most striking memory of what happened is of the bystanders recording the assault on their cellphones and not helping the woman.
"I believe there were able-bodied people there, that could've stepped in way before I got involved and I, I didn't see that," Cox told WALA.
