The flag-shirt wearing hero who tackled the Mansfield Correctional Facility escaped convict, James David Myers, on July 4 said he wasn’t worried one bit about his personal safety during the ordeal.
“I’m confident enough in my strength that once I grab a hold of somebody like that, they’re not going to get back up,” Mark Cooper, 45, of Mansfield said.
The 6’4,” 320-pound Cooper said he had the convict pinned down for several minutes before police arrived.
“I told him until the state troopers got there, he wasn’t going anywhere because still at that point, I didn’t know if he had a gun or not,” Cooper recalled.
Cooper said that he recognized Myers from the news as soon as he saw the man. “I made sure my wife and son were away from him and I just walked back over there and threw him to the ground.”
He said he believes his impulse to tackle an escaped sexual predator was just the right thing to do.
“Just keeping everybody safe and keeping people like him off the streets,” Cooper said.
In case you missed it, you can watch Cooper’s insanely awesome take-down here.
This article appears in Jul 3-9, 2013.
