Heroism, almost at very great cost

Kansas City Star (Matt Campbell) reports:

Police said [a] woman was attacked about 1:30 p.m. Sunday as she was putting her infant in a car seat after shopping at the store near Shawnee Mission Parkway and Maurer Road. Two people approached and the woman was struck on the head, police said. A Good Samaritan who tried to help her was shot and critically wounded by one of the attackers.

The man who was shot was in critical condition for a time, with "wounds to the face and chest" (Fox4 [Robert Townsend])); but he now appears to be recovering:

FOX 4 has learned the Good Samaritan is 33 years old, now working as a landscaper, and has a 15-year-old step-daughter.

They said the man joined the Air Force shortly after 9/11 … [and served for six years] in which he was deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan….

Investigators said he ran to her rescue when he heard heard scream after being attacked from behind. That's when he was shot multiple times.

Fortunately, a "second Good Samaritan, a 36-year-old De Soto man, came forward and shot one of the attackers"—that attacker is dead, though the other is still being sought. The dead attacker was John W. Simmons III; "[a]ccording to online federal court records, a man named John W. Simmons III, of the same age as the man killed, was under indictment in U.S. District Court in Western Missouri with possession with intent to distribute cocaine, with having a firearm while trafficking drugs and with being a felon in possession of a firearm."