06/08/2026
This is Jon Meis, the 22-year-old student building monitor who ended a campus sh**ting with a can of pepper spray.
On June 5, 2014, Aaron Ybarra walked onto the Seattle Pacific University campus with a shotg*n and f*tally sh*t 19-year-old Paul Lee outside Otto Miller Hall, then entered the lobby and ordered everyone inside not to move.
He sh*t 22-year-old Sarah Williams as she came down a staircase, critically w*unding her.
Meis was working at the security desk about 15 feet away, and when he saw Ybarra fumbling to reload, he pulled pepper spray from his backpack and sprayed him twice in the face.
He wrestled the shotg*n away and carried it into the security office, then returned and took Ybarra to the floor, kicking a hunting k*ife out of reach until another student helped hold him down for police.
Police said Ybarra was carrying roughly 50 more shotg*n shells and had told them he wanted to k*ll as many people as possible.
Meis later wrote that he found the word hero hard to accept, saying the attention could not change the fact that a life had been taken.
In March 2015 he was honored at Arlington National Cemetery with the Citizen Service Before Self Honors, and that December he received the Carnegie Medal.
He testified at the trial in 2016, where Ybarra was convicted of first-degree m*rder and three counts of attempted m*rder, and sentenced the following February to 112 years in prison.