A touching photo is going viral this week showing the moment a Good Samaritan shielded a saluting deputy from the rain with his umbrella. Bystanders said that the man stood behind the deputy for around a half an hour, and she did not appear to be aware of his presence the entire time.

The image was captured on Saturday, when Deputy Tiffany Dial was standing on the side of a street in Birmingham, Alabama to salute a procession in the funeral of 44 year-old Sgt. Wytasha Carter. The officer had been killed in the line of duty earlier this month while working a case on car break-ins.

The man did not say a word as he stood behind Dial, and it was only when the photo went viral that she realized that he had been there.

“I didn’t know he was there,” she said. “My peripheral vision was cut off with my hat, so I didn’t know anything was there. I was in my moment.”

Dial went on to say that the kind act meant a lot to her.

“It meant a lot in ways that you really can’t put into words,” she said. “It wasn’t just about keeping the rain off of me for that little bit. It meant a lot more than that.”

The Good Samaritan has since been identified as attorney Shawn Allen, who had been working that morning and was keeping up with the procession online. When he saw that the procession was nearing his office, he stepped outside in the rain to pay his respects, and that’s when he saw Dial.

“I had an umbrella and she didn’t, and I’d like to think that had she been a deputy saluting, or had she been just a regular person that was standing there paying her respects like I was, that I would have shared the umbrella either way,” he said. “And I imagine that if I had not done it, that probably somebody else may have come up minutes after that and very well may have done the same thing.”

Allen went on to say that he wants Dial to know that “she doesn’t owe me anything.”

“I just appreciate what she does for a living, and I appreciate what she was doing on that day, and I just was happy to help somebody who helps people,” he said.

These days, it often seems that police officers do not get the respect that they deserve in this country. We’re glad to see this man step up and help an officer of the law in such a kind way!