He made his way through the crowd wearing 40 extra pounds of safety gear — a baton, vest, helmet and body armor.
He was alone.
inshaw’s nearest help was still blocks away.
The crowd moved closer, and the yelling got angrier. Protesters hurled questions at him.
"Are you one of the good ones?"
"How do you think we feel?"
One women screamed, "All gas, no brakes!"
He tried to respond but was drowned out by the cacophony of sirens and yelling.
“We do care, man, we do care,” he said.
Hinshaw tried to reason with the crowd.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry you feel this way,” Hinshaw yelled, trying to make his voice heard over the anger of the crowd.
The 32-year-old was scared.
It was only going to take one person, and everyone would jump in, he knew.
He watched people's hands in the crowd, making sure nobody had a weapon and scanning for things thrown from protesters in the back.
It was at this moment that a man emerged from the crowd in a red University of Louisville mask covering the lower half of his face. He put himself between the closest protester and Hinshaw.
The Courier Journal captured the moment in a photograph that has now been shared across the nation.
Local entrepreneur Darrin Lee Jr. spotted Hinshaw and the advancing crowd and linked arms with the stranger in the red mask.
“Once I saw the guy with the red mask step up, I said, 'I gotta step up,'” said Lee, who also runs a child care center. “It was reactive. I just went.”
He had no idea what would happen next.
“I really thought at that moment, 'Protect him. It really isn’t his fault.'" Lee said.
Lee was also worried that Hinshaw would react and hit him from behind, so he turned to reassure the officer that they were going to protect him.
“He was looking nervous and scared,” Lee said. “If he panicked, then there was gonna be a war out there.”
Suddenly, the protesters seemed to turn on Lee. One man who had marched with him for nearly the whole protest was surprised. Another shouted in Lee's face: "How can you protect him!"
Ultimately, five men formed a human shield to protect Hinshaw. All of them strangers to one another. Nobody knew the name of the man to his left or to his right. Three were black, one white, one Dominican — all linking arms to keep harm away from Hinshaw, himself half-Pakistani.
“A human was in trouble, and right is right," said Ricky McClellan, a factory worker from Old Louisville who was locked onto Lee’s left arm.
After reaching the bridge and watching some protesters throwing rocks at police cars, McClellan spotted Hinshaw as he walked around the group and thought, "Whoa, you're by yourself?"
McClellan watched as the crowd around Hinshaw grew larger and louder. Then he heard Lee yell, “Lock arms! Lock arms!”
That's when Julian De La Cruz saw the men locking arms and jumped in.
“I saw the guys link up and I saw a weak spot,” De La Cruz said, and took up a position on the end of the line.
He was nervous, scared.
“Things could’ve gotten really bad,” he said.
The entire scene lasted no more than two minutes.
It felt much longer to those who were there.
They saved me': How protesters protected a lone cop, a moment captured in powerful photos
www.nationalreview.com
