What started off as another day at work became something different for a construction worker at UC Merced. Before 8AM, Byron Price heard what he thought was a fight, he went to check it out. The Associated Press reports:

Byron Price, 31, was working on remodeling a waiting room at the University of California, Merced campus when he heard a commotion Wednesday and rushed to check on it.

The violence left Price and three others injured, but all are expected to survive. The assailant, described as a college student in his 20s, was shot and killed by campus police as he fled the scene.

“I really believe he’s a hero here. I think he prevented this first student from dying,” Merced County Sheriff Vern Warnke said. “The cops on campus, oh my gosh, praise them because they stopped a threat, but this first guy, he stopped a death.”

This is a hero. Someone who put helping strangers before personal safety and saved lives.

The incident began when the assailant used a knife to stab two people in a second-floor room around the start of an 8 a.m. class, Warnke said.

“He didn’t go in knowing that there was a stabbing taking place. He went in thinking there was a fight,” Warnke said during an afternoon news conference.

Warnke said the suspect fled the room after attacking the construction worker and ran down two flights of stairs to the outside where he stabbed a school employee sitting on a bench. The suspect fled the building. He was shot and killed by pursuing campus police on a nearby foot bridge.

Way to go Mr. Price and thank you for doing the right thing.