Yes. In this case it's the author of the article calling him a hero. Rather than a person he has quoted. 

I mean, obviously I'm being a bit rude, welcome to the internet. But quite literally this gets asked and answered all the time. Quotes in newspaper headlines in Britain are literal quotations of what someone said to the reporter, in the article you may choose to then read below. 

That's how the system is set up, there's rules and order and we don't need to worry all that much about the presence or absence of quotes except to delineate exactly that