How a Man Dies

Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. - - John 15:13

Up in Hickory, a man made the ultimate sacrifice:

A man was killed and a woman injured in an early morning shooting Friday in Hickory.

The pair was in a vehicle in the 900 block of 2nd Street Southwest around 2:45 a.m. when someone shot them, according to Hickory police.

Eric Lynn Icenhour, a 25-year-old from Alexander County, died later at an area hospital.

The woman, whose name has not yet been released, was treated and released.

A friend of the victim told the Hickory Daily Record that Icenhour was shot multiple times as he used his body to shield the woman from the gunfire.


No more circumstances than this are detailed in the story; Icenhour may have been a total innocent caught up in an attack by a criminal, but it's also possible that Icenhour lived a life of crime himself, and yet in his final moments committed an act of sublime redemption.

Robert A. Heinlein, in his 1973 address to the US Naval Academy, The Pragmatics of Patriotism, described a similar scenario in which a stranger died while helping to free a woman stuck on a railroad track, and concluded with these words:

This is how a man dies.

This is how a man...lives!