There is at least one story of heroism to come out of the Oregon massacre yesterday.
A 30-year-old Army vet was shot at least five times while charging at the gunman in an effort to protect his classmates. Chris Mintz, from North Carolina, is expected to recover from his wounds after spending most of Thursday in surgery.
According to Fox 8, when the gunman tried to enter Mintz’s class, Mintz told the students in his classroom to get to a safe place, then said to the shooter “you’re not getting by me”:
“At that point, the shooter shot him five times and the shooter moved on and apparently didn’t go in to that classroom,” Pastor Dennis Kreiss told People. “I applaud the guy’s heroism. He may have saved the people in that classroom.”
It was Mintz son’s sixth birthday, and that was all he could think of as he lay wounded: “It’s my son’s birthday, it’s my son’s birthday,” he was heard saying:
When word of Mintz’s heroism reached his kin in his native North Carolina, his cousin Derek Bourgeois was hardly surprised.
“It sounds like something he would do,” Bourgeois said.
Bourgeois was somewhat amazed that a guy who survived a combat deployment without serious injury had come so close to being killed in a small Oregon town not unlike the one in North Carolina where they grew up together.
According to his family, both of his legs are broken and he will have to learn to walk again.
Mintz’s aunt Sheila Brown told NBC News that “he tried to protect some people”.
“We were told he did heroic things to protect some people,” she said.
“He was on the wrestling team and and he’s done cage-fighting so it does not surprise me that he would act heroically.”
Mintz’s cousin Ariana Earnhardt told Fox 8:
His vital signs are OK. He’s going to have to learn to walk again, but he walked away with his life and that’s more than so many other people did.
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