PORTLAND, Ore. (CNN/KGW) -- A woman being attacked on a street in Oregon gets help from an unlikely sources; a Trimet bus driver came to the her rescue.
Larry Porter is known as a good neighbor, but tonight he's the talk of the neighborhood after saving a woman from a brutal attack. His neighbor Bob Forrest says, "It's no surprise to me at all. He's a big guy." His wife Jean Forrest says, "Well, and he has southern values, and he's a good Christian man."
Larry was behind the wheel of his 24 bus when something caught his eye. It was a man assaulting a woman. Larry says, "I mean punching her, slapping her in the head, hitting her in the face."
Larry says nobody was stopping to help, so he pulled the bus over and yelled out the door, 'The cops are coming.' Larry says, "Whatever went on in his head made him start hitting her even faster."
For a man who has six kids and a half dozen sisters of his own, doing nothing wouldn't do, so Larry jumped out of the bus and headed for the couple. Larry says, "I had to tackle the guy off the girl and secure him with my body weight to stop him from hitting on this lady."
By this point, other witnesses had arrived to help. The woman was bruised and bloodied, and allegedly it was all over a cell phone. Larry says, "She didn't have no chance of defending herself, and the way I was brought up, you see someone who needs help, no matter what color, what race, what gender, you help them."
Larry's kids say, "When he walked in the door, we sang, 'His name is Larry, and he's a hero." That's how Larry's kids greeted him when he got home after work, but if you ask Larry, he's no hero. In fact, he's far from it. Larry says, "I'm just a normal guy who did what should've been done."
Porter says the victim left before police arrived, so the man was not arrested.