JESUP, Ga. — Those close to Shannon Johnson knew him to be fearless — whether he was moving across the country to pursue love, rescuing stray animals in the path of a wildfire or trying to shield a co-worker from gunfire during the last moments of his life.
Johnson, a 45-year-old health inspector from Los Angeles, received a hero’s funeral Saturday in his home state of Georgia — 10 days after he was killed during the massacre in San Bernardino, Calif. A colleague wounded in the attack, Denise Peraza, said later that Johnson wrapped an arm tightly around her as bullets went flying and assured her: “I’ve got you.”
Those would be his last words.
Inside Calvary Baptist Church in Jesup, a rural city where Johnson was born about 2,300 miles from the auditorium in which he and 13 others died, a congressman gave his family a folded U.S. flag while praising him as “an American hero.”
Meanwhile, funerals were conducted Saturday in Southern California for two other victims — Tin Nguyen, 31, and Isaac Amanios, a 60-year-old married father of three.
Nguyen was remembered in a service conducted in Vietnamese at St. Barbara’s Catholic Church in Santa Ana, not far from Orange County’s Little Saigon area. Born in Vietnam, Nguyen was 8 years old when her family left that country for the United States.
Nguyen’s fiancé carried a large portrait of her into the church as members of the standing-room-only crowd reached out to touch it. The couple had planned to marry in 2017. The day before Nguyen was killed, she celebrated her fiancé’s 32nd birthday.
Nguyen’s mother and grandmother, both weeping, followed the casket down the aisle to the altar.
A cousin took a moment in English to thank first responders, local politicians and Nguyen’s co-workers at the San Bernardino County health department, where Nguyen was hired as an inspector after attending Cal State Fullerton.
In the days after the shooting, businesses that she inspected posted online tributes, remembering Nguyen’s big heart and laughter.
At the memorial service for Johnson, about 200 people filed into the church where roses, lilies and carnations sent by mourners decorated the pulpit amid strands of white lights and potted poinsettias set out for the Christmas season.
The Rev. Ed Bacon, a family relative, noted that Johnson’s selfless final act echoed that of his father, who died while saving another man during an industrial accident at a Kentucky paper mill in 1978.
Johnson’s brother said that as relatives gathered in Georgia to say goodbye, their grandmother, Willie Dell Johnson, helped put the tragedy of his death into perspective.
“It’s just kind of what our family does,” she said. “We save people.”
