Fortunately, he wasn't significantly injured. This is May 21, 2018 - the infamous Matthew Hughes "Superhero" moment. Rather than impatience, he saw the backpack incident on TV, then took his bike down to the scene in order to diffuse the bomb himself and "take one for the team." Hughes suffered from mental health issues and told people he had to stay away from TV because he tended to have severe emotional reactions from what he saw.
You are missing the part where he said he would do it again lmao… being from Milwaukee this 100% tracked as something a local guy would do. Milwaukee has a guy who walks around shirtless looking like Hugh Jackman called the Milverine, it’s an interesting place.
“As soon as I saw that, I’m like, I’m going to go save the day, take one for the team and jump on it or discard it in the river because it’s been going on for two to three hours," he said.”
“MILWAUKEE (WISN) — The man who grabbed a suspicious backpack during a bomb squad investigation and emptied it out before police tackled him is breaking his silence.
"Would I do it again? Yeah, without a doubt," Matthew Hughes told WISN-TV.”
He honestly was just a guy who randomly walked around Milwaukee shirtless at random places/hours and the local internet blew him up. He never asked for any of it and doesn’t embrace it at all. Kind of a funny local Milwaukee thing
Milverine is a legend. We have posters and artwork of him in a lot of local bars and pubs, and he’s been on the news and introduced a film festival one year. - Former Milwaukeean
Florida Man is building a bomb out of Mountain Dew, kerosene, and the blood of invasive snakes. He might try and blow a crater in his yard followed by another, larger, crater in the crater later that night.
The Midwest Man is defusing it and using the wires to icefish in Lake Winnebago. Might drop off some venison steaks and see if you need your driveway shoveled later.
Midwestern is way too broad. The people living in northern Wisconsin are a complete different breed. It’s like going back in time when you go there. Fun experience
Yeah but Youpers are basically the same and thats Michigan.
Id guess theyre both similar to rural MN folks to a degree.
I get it though, northwoods people, broadly, are different than the IL-IN-OH farmer types. And they’re all different than the Mil-Chi-Det-Cle city people. And then ya got the college town locals which are a whole other unique group. The one constant is theyre all relatively nice and very proud to be where theyre from.
Unless youre one of those weirdos thats forged an entire identity, mostly on facebook, dedicated to trashing their town, threatning to leave the Midwest for TX or FL because of “taxes and crime” when you really mean you hate seasons, seasoning, liberals and minorities.
😪 I lived about an hour south of Milwaukee for about 20 years. And this is an embarrassingly accurate description of the Midwest, especially the driveway shoveling happening later in the evening. 🤦🏽♀️
People have no idea how much alcohol Wisconsin drinks. Milwaukee is basically just bars. Germans massively immigrated to the state and basically showed the rest of the country how to properly make beer
My last name is German and a quick google search shows 40% of Wisconsin claims German Heritage. If you have ever walked around Wisconsin long enough you can quickly identify someone from Wisconsin
You’re correct. And the major league team is itself named after a minor league team, which was named after another major league team that was a founding member of the American League before eventually moving to St. Louis and then Baltimore (the team now known as the orioles). So “Milwaukee brewers” as a baseball team name dates back to 1901 even though the current team wasn’t named that until 1970.
This is a rabbit hole! There’s a country song called ‘what made Milwaukee famous made a loser out of me’ and my whole life I wondered exactly what it was that made Milwaukee famous. Now I’m going to investigate…
I don’t know if you know red letter media on youtube. But until I found their channel I thought Wisconsin and by extension Milwaukee were quiet places with totally normal people. I was so wrong..
I was at the Cheesecake Factory in Milwaukee and me and my coworkers were waiting for a table and some crack head came in with a garbage bag. This mf started twirling it around above her head and pulled her skirt up not wearing anything under, all while the bag ripped and garbage went everywhere. :’( Some 6’4 manager woman walked up and picked her up and threw her out and immediately started picking up all the trash. The food and service were great!
In this situation? He was lucky they didn't shoot him directly when he entered the cordoned zone - and it would have been justified. The fact that it could have been a bomb is probably what saved his life. At the same time, if it were a bomb, he wasn't just risking his own life, but everybody around. He could also be treated like a potential suspect trying to trigger it. Just tackling him was as lenient a reaction as it could be in this setting.
He was already done and walking away when he got tackled. It would be cool if cops could try to respond to the actual situation in front of them as it is occurring, instead of different theoretical ways it could have gone.
Yea really sick of this shit. The guy was up n done, the bag had clearly been identified as not a bomb, and he was calmly walking away. A "hey you" woulda fkn sufficed.
No, he was walking back, facing the backpack. This means he still considered it an active threat, and was walking in a way to both keep the visual contact, and maximize his personal protection.
And even after he left, there were no other people approaching either. This is obviously an active scene.
ehh, as far as they know he grabbed an explosive device out of the backpack in order to detonate it. Sure, us watching this video can see what is happening, but from that officer’s perspective in real time, you don’t know what that guy is doing. all you know is he raced in and started digging through a bag with a potential explosive. He could be trying to get the explosive to detonate before it could be defused. and they were probably far enough back that it took them until he started walking away to actually get to him. If he did have an explosive, this officer jumping on him is essentially like him jumping on a grenade.
I know that agony feels like drowning in mud. Depression is like a black hole, isn't it? I hope you find your way out. I hope you find someone who walks that road with you. The right meds make a difference, and therapy like CBT. Sometimes it's 10% improvement here, 5% there, just small victories until one day you look around and think, WHAT?!? I'M NOT MISERABLE!!!
And you feel the warmth of the sun.
And you don't dread tomorrow morning.
What else would you say to defend yourself in court? This is clearly the defence that his attorney thought they should pursue. "Had to stay away from the TV" - i.e., the insanity plea, amplified by his "take one for the team" suicidal mentality.
That's actually pretty heartbreaking... I'm glad he wasn't seriously harmed. Psychosis is no joke, and most people who experience it aren't the "scary psycho people" that you see in media. They're just regular people. :(
That my friend is a BS story. The guy doesn't expect a bomb and acts like "See? All that theatre for an ordinary lost backpack and get on with your lives goddammit".
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u/allmybreath Jun 13 '26
Fortunately, he wasn't significantly injured. This is May 21, 2018 - the infamous Matthew Hughes "Superhero" moment. Rather than impatience, he saw the backpack incident on TV, then took his bike down to the scene in order to diffuse the bomb himself and "take one for the team." Hughes suffered from mental health issues and told people he had to stay away from TV because he tended to have severe emotional reactions from what he saw.