After returning home from a tour of duty in Iraq, Army Staff Sgt. Eddie Peoples had only been home for a week before his adrenaline was pumping once again. He found himself in the middle of a bank robbery.
In Sarasota, Florida, Sgt. Peoples was at the Bank of America with his two sons; they were waiting in line for a teller when a robber walked through the doors with a gun. People’s couldn’t believe what he saw at first.
“It was a surreal moment,” Peoples said on ‘Good Morning America.’
The bank robber was 34-year-old, Matthew Rogers; he was dressed in casual attire with a baseball hat. He calmly entered the bank and brandished a large gun — he told everyone to stand still and the tellers to fill his bag with cash.
“The way he said it was the way you would order lunch, cold and calculated,” Sgt. Peoples said.” “I thought he was joking at first.”
Kioni and Ikaika are Peoples’ two sons — they are only 4- and 6-years-old. The boys were too young to understand what was going on and thought it was a joke as well. They began to laugh as the man waved his gun in the air. Of course, this only infuriated Rogers.
Rogers began to wave the gun some more and demand that people stay put; he ordered them not to ‘try anything.’ At this moment, Peoples military instinct combined with his fatherly instincts and he sprung into action.
Surveillance shows Peoples order his sons hide underneath some lobby chairs; he used his body and furniture to shield them as the robber’s bag was filled with money.
“My instincts took over,” Peoples said. “I’d rather take a bullet any day than one of these beautiful boys get hurt.”
Peoples didn’t care that he was in the robber’s direct line of fire; he’d do anything to protect his sons. After the gunman left, the danger didn’t end there. What happened next was something out of an action movie.
“If I could buy the police a little bit of time that’s what I was going to do,” Peoples said on ‘GMA.’ “This guy was potentially very dangerous.”
Peoples got into his van, sped across the bank’s parking lot and pinned his front bumper to the robber’s back bumper. The two entered a standoff.
“I fully expected at least two shots through my windshield,” said Peoples. “When that didn’t happen I got out of the van and was immediately greeted by a handgun to my face.”
“He put the gun at my forehead,” Peoples, served in both Iraq and Kuwait, and used a technique he learned in training. “But I grabbed him and twisted his arm and then I could grab the weapon and hit him with it.”
Money was flying around the parking lot when the Sarasota Police Department arrived on the scene. They arrested Rogers and found out that the gun was actually fake.
After the terrifying ordeal, Peoples was presented with a certificate of recognition from Sheriff Tom Knight.
“I think he’s like Batman,” 6-year-old Ikaika said about his courageous dad.
“Every time I go out [to war] I say ‘Daddy’s going to fight the bad guys,'” Peoples explained. “So when I came back in [from the robbery] they asked, ‘Daddy, did you get the bad guy?,’ ‘Yeah I got them,” he told them.
Peoples said that if he ever found himself in the same situation — he’d react the very same way. “Sometimes you have to put your own personal safety aside for the greater good.”
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