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A trio of Marines who came to the rescue of a teenager who found himself on the wrong side of an assault earlier this month are being celebrated for their heroic actions, which could have saved the boy from serious injury.
Cpl. John W. Darby, Cpl. Bradley J. Feldkamp, and Lance Cpl. Nicholas M. Dural, all students at the Marine Security Guard School in Quantico, received the Navy and marine Corps Achievement Medal during a recent awards ceremony touting their bravery and quick thinking.
Shortly before 1:45 p.m. on Saturday, April 1, members of the Stafford County Sheriff’s Office were called to Chick-fil-A on Dunn Drive after there was a reported disturbance involving three teens who got into an argument that rapidly went off the rails.
During the assault, a spokesperson for the sheriff’s office said that one of the assailants pulled out a knife, at which point the three nearby Marines put their training to use and diffused the situation with precision.
Dural grabbed the teen's arm and was able to wrestle him to the ground, officials said, while Darby and Feldkamp stood over them to prevent anyone else from intervening. The knife was snapped in half during the struggle, which was quickly grabbed by Darby to prevent the weapon from possibly being used.
"This is serious ... This went from one level to a whole different level," Dural, an infantry rifleman and Louisiana native, said. "At that point I realized that there are women and children here. I couldn't let anyone get hurt."
No one was stabbed during the incident due to the quick-acting Marines. Only minor injuries were reported.
"Basically, as soon as it happened, my only thought was to keep Dural safe,” explained Darby, a flight equipment technician also from Louisiana. “If anything happens to him, it's my responsibility to keep him safe. I thought once he involved himself, we all had to.”
Deputies from the sheriff's office proceeded to canvas the area and later tracked down the two suspects in the CVS parking lot on Garrisonville Road who matched the description that was provided to investigators.
The suspects, a 14-year-old and 17-year-old, were both taken into custody, and a cell phone taken during the scuffle was recovered.
Criminal complaints have been filed for assault and battery, as well as robbery for both teens. The older suspect was also hit with an attempted felony wounding charge.
The Marines were quick to explain why they felt compelled to run toward danger, not away from it, as they've been trained to do.
"When the people saw the scuffle, they were going for the doors. So there weren't many people in there that were trying to help out,” Feldkamp, a motor transport operator from Ann Arbor, Michigan, added.
“Then suddenly the knife came out and more people got scared. None of us are really scared of a knife, we had to go help somebody out before it got worse."
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