If there’s one thing that dramatic stories of real-life peril have taught us over the years, it’s that just about anyone can be a hero.
After all, most people who found themselves in the right place at the right time to save someone’s life were just trying to have a normal day before disaster struck. But whether they found immense strength within themselves at a crucial moment or they thought fast when it counted, they ended that day knowing that someone would no longer be with us if it weren’t for them.
But as cameras become more ubiquitous in the technology we use, it’s becoming more common for people to report that rather than a good Samaritan protecting them from a dangerous situation, it was actually an unseen camera that warned them of the danger lurking ahead.
And for one man, the camera made it abundantly clear just what kind of threat he faced.
On November 15, a man named Cedric posted a TikTok depicting an incident than unfolded while he was on the campus of an unspecified college in Richmond, Virginia.
As the caption we see here illustrates, he was about to exit his Tesla before the car’s front camera revealed a masked man armed with a knife approaching his driver side door.
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In Cedric’s words, “Happened on campus. Got shook for a while.”
As the video goes on, it soon becomes clear that the stranger has a lot to say to Cedric while he tries to keep his knife hidden from view.
But as Cedric wrote in a comment, “I noticed the knife early and put the car in reverse incase he was going to do anything.”
Cedric said the man initially asked if his car was a Maserati, but he couldn’t make out what the stranger was trying to say after that.
In any case, it became obvious that this person was trying to make his conversation appear friendlier than it was, considering he had a knife at the ready.
But whether he could tell that Cedric was uncomfortable or he just never saw an opportunity to take the upper hand, the man could be seen walking away from the scene after their inaudible chat.
And once Cedric could confirm that the stranger wasn’t trying to trick him and had actually left, he went inside a nearby building and called campus police.
And by the time he returned to his car to collect the footage we can see here, officers were already patrolling the area.
It’s unknown whether anything will come of this incident, but it’s clear that it would have unfolded very differently if Cedric’s car wasn’t equipped with a front camera.
