On February 5, an armed citizen saved an Upper Darby police officer who was under assault and encircled by a mob of onlookers.

Upper Darby Police Superintendent Michael Chitwood said “there is no doubt they would have attacked” the officer without the armed citizen’s intervention.

According to Philly.com, the officer was breaking up a fight between two Upper Darby High School students–after school had let out for the day–and one of the students jumped the officer. Superintendent Chitwood said, “As he breaks up the fight, he takes one kid and then the other jumps [on] him. Now he’s fighting two of them and he’s calling for an assist officer at the same time. There’s a crowd of 40 or 50 kids watching the fight, and they all move in towards the officer.”

An area resident with a concealed carry permit saw the officer struggling and the crowd closing in, so he grabbed his gun and ran to the officer’s defense. The resident ordered the kids to get away from the officer and kept them away until sufficient backup arrived. Chitwood said, “He had the gun in his hand, but he didn’t point it at the kids, he just told them to back off. If this guy didn’t come out and come to the aid of the officer, this officer would have had significant problems.”

The officer who was under attack suffered “significant hand injuries” and the first officer to respond to calls for backup “suffered a major injury to a leg when he was kicked by one of the teens in the fight.”

Both teens “were charged with aggravated assault on police, riot, harassment, and related offenses.” Six other “youths” were arrested for fighting at other locations near the school on Friday as well.

After the incident was over, Chitwood restated police commitment to getting kids home safe after school and said, “I can’t emphasize it enough, but the majority of these kids are decent kids.”

AWR Hawkins is the Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.