'But then it dawned on me...' Meet Brandon Tsay, the hero who disarmed Monterey Park shooter

As the saying goes,the brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear. The courageous story of 26-year-old computer coder Brandon Tsay, who disarmed the deadly shooter, Hu Can Tran, during the Monterey Park incident in California echoes similar sentiments.

Though it can bring you goosebumps to watch him standing there and engaging in a scuffle with a deadly armed person, it does require great courage to be able to save a dozen lives doing that.

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A CCTV footage was accessed exclusively by NBC where Tsay can be seen wrestling the weapon away from the gunman who is accused of killing 11 and wounding others at a dance hall in Alhambra, California. Tsay's struggle to unarm the gunman of what is described as a "semi-automatic assault pistol" went on for about full four minutes. What must be going on in the head of a man taking the first step and deciding to confront a mass shooter?

Gunman, who was later identified as Huu Can Tran, 72, was dressed in dark clothing and a hat. In the CCTV footage obtained by NBC, Tran visibly moves out of the camera for about 30 seconds and returns to an empty lobby in the dance hall wrestling with Tsay for the weapon. Tsay continued to push Tran away until finally the gunman gives up and walks out.

“There was a moment I actually froze up, because I was, I had the belief that I was gonna die, like my life was ending here, at that very moment,” Tsay recollects what he felt during his confrontation with the gunman.

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“But something amazing happened, a miracle actually. He started to try to prep his weapon so he could shoot everybody, but then it dawned on me that this was the moment to disarm him. I could do something here that could protect everybody and potentially save myself.”

“When he came in, he said nothing,” he said. “His face was very stoic. His expressions were mostly in his eyes — looking around trying to find people, trying to scout the area for other people.”

Tsay works at the dance hall a few nights a week to operate the place as the third generation in his family. The shooting took place during the Lunar Year celebrations. While speaking with "Good Morning America”, Tsay said that he heard the sound of the front door creaking closing which wasimmediately followed by the sound of a metal object clinking together.

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“We struggled into the lobby, trying to get this gun away from each other,” Tsay told ABC News. “He was hitting me across the face, bashing the back of my head. I was trying to use my elbows to separate the gun away from him, creating some distance.”

Tran was confirmed dead with a self-inflicted wound later. Though the motive of the shooting has yet not been made clear, Monterey Park Mayor Henry Lo told NBC News the gunman may have been targeting his ex-wife.

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