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When Marine vet now Mansfield firefighter Daniel Gaskey witnessed an attempted robbery taking place at the Midlothian, Texas gas station he was shopping at, he wasted no time applying his good common sense with a little elbow grease in stopping the would-be robber in his tracks!

Stating that he “acted out of instinct” when he saw 19-year-old Dylan Bearden brandishing a knife, in an interview with CW33, Gaskey identified, “I feel like someone who had the ability to do something, and did it. I would like to think that there are many people out there who would have done the same thing if put in that situation.” True to his nature, mixed with a little bit of the “Don’t Mess With Texas” attitude, Gaskey managed to grab the knife from the attempted robber’s hand and further went on to restrain the assailant until police could respond.

Surveillance footage from the convenience store clearly shows Gaskey standing at the counter when he’s abruptly shoved aside by a masked man. Raising his hands in the air and taken aback at first, he quickly jumps into action when the attempted robber threatens the store clerk with a knife. “I jumped on his back and went for the control of the knife, grabbed his arm and flipped him over to maintain control of the weapon and get him on the ground,” Gaskey said. Once disarmed, the robber (later identified by police as Dylan Bearden) succumbed to Gaskey’s control of the situation. “Once he stopped struggling, it became rather civil,” he said.

Gaskey continues to modestly decline on the title of “hero” but doesn’t deny that his instinct and muscle memory somehow aided his good, neighborly nature, helping him defeat an over-confident, under prepared Bearden and control a situation that might otherwise have turned deadly. Go get ’em cowboy!