After the gun went off, Jim Walsh saw his wife covered in blood.

He was sure she'd been shot. But the blood on her clothes was his. In August 1994, the Scranton firefighter took his wife and two young sons to a vacation in Nashville. After checking in to their downtown hotel, Mr. Walsh, then 35, drove around to the back of the building to get to their room.

It was there two armed men confronted the family and demanded cash.

They complied, and gave the robbers their entire vacation fund, about $400.

When one of the robbers started following the kids, 2-year-old Jimmy and 9-year-old Eddie, Mr. Walsh grabbed his wrist to twist the gun away.

Two decades have passed since that terrifying night in Nashville. Last month, Mr. Wash made a trip back there for a parole hearing to lend his voice and keep the driver of his robbers' getaway car in jail. Parole was eventually denied for Johnny Eugene McClain.

■■■

Thinking back on that day, Mr. Walsh remembered that Eddie was pulling a rolling suitcase with a leash while Jimmy sat on top. When one of the men zeroed in on the kids, the father's paternal instincts kicked in.

"I'll tell you what, I never knew what was inside of me," Mr. Walsh said. "I just jumped on him, and I beat him as hard as I could punch him."

"He never expected or knew what a West Side dad can do when his family is threatened," Mr. Walsh added.

During the struggle, the pistol went off several times. The two men fled with a third in a car.

When they were gone, Eddie came in for a hug. Mr. Walsh realized the severity of the situation when he saw the blood he left on his son.

"Dad, are you dying?" the boy asked.

"I said, ‘Nope, I am not dying,'" Mr. Walsh recalled.

A former police officer, he tried to cement the robbers' descriptions in his brain. In case he did die, he had been sure to get some of the robber's DNA under his fingernails.

Eddie got to his knees and started praying.

‘A real hero'

The three men were eventually arrested and convicted of serious crimes, but they could have easily escaped punishment, said the man who prosecuted them, former Assistant District Attorney Nick Bailey.

"The real guy that made the difference was the off-duty deputy, Pat," Mr. Bailey said.

"I consider him a real hero," Mr. Walsh said.

Pat Hamlin, a sheriff's deputy from the neighboring county of Cheatham, had brought his young niece and nephew, 6 and 8 at the time, into the city to drive go-karts.

He was filling his pickup truck across the street from the hotel when he heard the pops.

Then he saw the blood-stained Mr. Walsh, staggering in the parking lot.

The two robbers got into a red Toyota Tercel and took off. The deputy had to make a decision on whether to help the man or chase the suspects.

"I remember him looking like he was gone," Mr. Hamlin said of the Scranton firefighter. "Like he was fixing to expire any minute."

He screamed at his niece and nephew to get in the market, then peeled out.

He chased the Toyota through the city for 6 or 7 miles. He remembers seeing the man in the backseat stick a pistol out the window, but doesn't remember seeing it fire. He found out later that it had.

When he saw the weapon, he tried to duck down low and move his head to the center of the truck, while still keeping chase.

The deputy was eventually able to catch the trio when they slowed to take a corner. He tapped their back end and they spun out, crashing into a wall.

That wasn't the end of it.

The 28-year-old driver, Mr. McClain, approached the deputy's truck.

He tried grabbing Mr. Hamlin with one hand, then brought the other through the open driver-side window.

The officer had been carrying a tiny pistol in his front pocket, and removed it during the chase.

The .22 was small enough to fit in a pack of cigarettes, Mr. Hamlin said, and still leave room for a few smokes.

He fired at the attacker, hitting him in the chest.

Mr. McClain ran off.

Police found him, alive but on the ground, not far from the crash site.

The other two also fled. The man who shot Mr. Walsh was captured and died of AIDS a few years later in prison, Mr. Bailey said. The third went on to shoot and kill a man in another armed robbery before police caught up with him.

Mr. Hamlin is still devastated about that.

■■■

Back at the downtown hotel, Mr. Walsh had been shot in the shoulder from a high angle. The bullet had lodged in his spine. Surgeons at Vanderbilt University were eventually able to remove it.

The hospital where he was taken mistakenly put Mr. McClain in a bed next to him, Mr. Walsh said with a chuckle. Unknown to him at the time, the two gunshot victims were separated by only a sheet before police recognized the issue and removed the suspect.

"Life is crazier than fiction," the Scranton man said.

More tragedy

After he heard of the attack, Johnny Cash befriended the Walshes, especially Eddie. Charlie Daniels invited the family to his home for a picnic, where the boy jammed with the fiddle-playing country icon.

When tragedy battered the family again in 2001, Mr. Cash called Eddie as he was in the hospital, dying of leukemia. The boy told the music legend he had forgiven the men who robbed and shot his dad.

"I thought that if a little 16-year-old boy could find it in his heart to forgive them, then so could I," Mr. Walsh said.

The boy passed away a few days later.

■■■

The parole hearing for Mr. McClain was on July 21, and Mr. Walsh made sure he was there.

He knew the pain the man had inflicted on his family. The attack had financially devastated them. The resulting stress killed his marriage. He didn't want another young family to have to go through that.

Now in private practice, the ex-prosecutor Mr. Bailey helped him navigate the process. The former assistant district attorney did some research before the parole hearing and learned that Mr. McClain, who had been sentenced to 75 years in prison, had received nearly 50 violations for misconduct while behind bars.

Guards had cited him for assaults, as well as possessing shanks and drugs.

"All you had to do was look at how he's acted in prison and know he'd be a danger," Mr. Bailey said

At his hearing, Mr. McClain said he had been in the wrong place at the wrong time, and as the driver, didn't know what the other two had planned to do, according to Mr. Bailey, the former prosecutor. He spoke at the parole hearing as well, noting that the man had several arrests for armed robbery since he turned 18.

Mr. Walsh has never spoken to Mr. McClain, but he did receive a letter of apology from him. The Scranton fire lieutenant found it to be vague and insincere.

He has met the man's mother, who he called a "wonderful mom" and a "believer in the Lord."

At the parole hearing, Mr. McClain's sister, "a nice young lady," told him she remembered playing with little Eddie outside the courtroom during the trial.

"We really had a moment there in the prison," he said.

Mr. McClain is up for parole in six years. Mr. Walsh plans to be at that hearing, too.

‘Blessing me'

He can still feel pain where the bullet lodged, but it doesn't stop him from doing his job, storming into burning houses to douse the flames.

Mr. Walsh keeps the bullet they pulled out of him. On the way in, it came mere inches from his heart.

He's lost so much, but he's not bitter. He holds no hatred.

He still has his younger son and his career. And he's still here.

"God has been blessing me my whole life," he said.

Contact the writer: pcameron@timesshamrock.com, @pcameronTT on Twitter