The Marine recruiter shot in the leg while racing to escape a barrage of bullets during the July Chattanooga attacks on a Chattanooga, Tennessee, recruiting office last July will be awarded a the Purple Heart this month.

Sgt. DeMonte Demonte Cheeley will receive the medal during a Jan. 26 ceremony for wounds sustained in the July 16 assault on the recruiting station where he works he was working at, according to Marine Corps Recruiting Command officials.

Cheeley, a Marine motor transport operator, had only been on recruiting duty for a month and a half when the attack occurred. He was sitting on the couch near the office's front windows when 24-year-old Mohammad Youssef Abdulazeez sprayed the building recruiting center with automatic rifle fire before driving to a nearbyanother military facility and killing nearby where he to the U.S. Naval and Marine Reserve Center to continue firing, killed four Marines and a sailor.

The attacks, in which 24-year-old Mohammad Youssef Abdulazeez sprayed the recruiting center with automatic rifle fire before driving to the U.S. Naval and Marine Reserve Center to continue firing, killed four Marines and a sailor.

Abdulazeez died during a shootout with law enforcement personnel.

Navy Secretary Ray Mabus announced On Dec. 16 the Marine Corps announced that Cheeley and the five service members killed in the attack line of duty and Cheeley would be awarded the Purple Heart. The announcement was made after following FBI director James Comey officially claimed Abdulazeez was "inspired by a foreign terrorist organization's propaganda."

It's not immediately clear when the families of the fallen troops will receive their Purple Hearts.

Marine leaders are also considering valor awards for heroism displayed that day by Marines at the recruiting office and the naval reserve center.

Cheeley was one of seven people inside the recruiting office when it was attacked. There were four Marines, two prospective recruits and a little girl — the daughter of Gunnery Sgt. Camden Meyer, the staff noncommissioned officer in charge.

When the attack began, Meyer covered his daughter with his own body to shield her from the incoming rounds. Cheeley was the only person injured in the attack on the recruiting office.

The incident prompted Marine Corps Recruiting Command to implement several new security measures at recruiting offices across the country. Changes being considered by Marine officials include more security cameras, remote-locking doors, better security training and movable shields that could protect people from bullets.

It wasn't until Cheeley was outside the recruiting office that he realized he had been shot in the attack. He said he thought he had been nicked with glass, but a bullet had ripped through his thigh.

He was treated at the hospital and released the same day. Just days later, Cheeley returned to work just days later.   

"My job as a Marine recruiter is to be out there as the face of the Marine Corps and America," he said at the time. "We are going to continue to push forward."

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