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GREENSBORO — The piercing scream came out of the darkness and startled the little group gathered at the bus stop near Bennett College.

In an instant, what started out as an errand to help a woman who misplaced her college ID turned into an errand of mercy to rescue a high school girl in big trouble.

Damien Cash and Derrick Gardner, two N.C. A&T students and members of the marching band's drumline, broke up an attempted sexual assault just after midnight Friday near the old post office at 900 E. Market St.

Greensboro police are still looking for the attacker, who is described as a thin, 5-foot-7-inch, clean-shaven black man in his early 20s. He was wearing a brown camouflage jacket, brown camouflage pants, a brown hat and boots.

And he was last seen running as fast as he could away from Cash and Gardner.

"We heard the scream, and I knew she wasn't playing," said Cash, a 21-year-old sophomore from Burlington. "This was definitely a scary scream, not a playing scream. I can still hear that scream in my head."

Moments earlier, Cash and Gardner watched a man walk by the bus stop. The two students, who had gone to Bennett to return a friend's lost ID, were chatting with some girls.

They couldn't help but notice the man.

"He looked rough around the edges," said Gardner, a freshman from Pontiac, Mich. "Walking around in a full camouflage outfit at 12 o'clock at night, checking out the girls. It didn't look right."

Then came the scream.

"It was just like on TV," Cash said. "She was screaming for help, and we could tell it was for real."

Cash and Gardner sprinted toward the sound.

"There were six or seven of us at the bus stop, and we all heard it," Gardner said. "It was us two, and a bunch of girls. I wouldn't expect them to come with us, but we had to go."

Cash said he and Gardner covered the "200 to 300 yards" in "not even a minute." At the end of their run, they saw the girl on the ground and the man on top of her.

"He had her pinned down and was trying to kiss on her," Cash said. "I yelled at him, and I took a swing at him."

The blow missed, but the man rolled away, got up and ran from the 6-foot-2-inch,

285-pound Cash.

Cash and Gardner said they chased him for a short distance, then returned to the crying girl.

Gardner ran back to Bennett to call 911, and Cash escorted the girl back to the college.

Cash said the girl, a 17-year-old student at Dudley, told him she had an argument with her mother and was walking to her aunt's house to spend the night. She told police she walked past the man on the sidewalk and he tackled her from behind.

She screamed. And the A&T students came running.

"That could've been my sister," Cash said. "I've got a sister the same age. I would hope someone would do that for my sister if she was in trouble.

"I'm not a hero. God just placed me in the right place at the right time."

Cash and Gardner both said they were not scared. Gardner said his only fear was getting there too late.

"I'd say I was brave, but I am not a hero," Gardner said. "We knew what was about to happen. We knew we had to do something."

Back on campus, people were calling Cash and Gardner heroes, even before they knew their names.

Jeremiah Spooner, a sophomore from Halifax, Va., said the news hadn't made its way around the campus as of 2 p.m. Friday.

"It's still kind of in the shade," Spooner said. "I only heard about it a little while ago. All I heard was some guys chased off this dude who was trying to assault a teenage girl. If you ask me, it showed a lot of dignity and a lot of pride. It's good that the Aggies will still stand up when they see something's not right."

Among those who think Cash and Gardner are heroes is Cash's mother, Cherlyn, who has gone back to school and is a junior at A&T.

"I know I raised him the right way," Cherlyn Cash said. "You see something that ain't right, you do the right thing. You don't sit back. You get involved."

Contact Jeff Mills at 373-7024 or jeff.mills@news-record.com