Oregon Shooting Hero Told Gunman, 'It's My Son's Birthday'

Chris Mintz, a 30-year-old Army veteran is being hailed a hero today, for his selfless response during the tragic mass-shooting that happened on an Oregon college campus yesterday. Ten people were killed and seven wounded in a shooting at Umpqua Community College when a lone gunman (who was reportedly not a student) opened fire in a classroom.

Mintz heard the shots, and ran toward them.

From ABC News:

“He ran to the library and pulled the alarms and he was telling people to run, grabbing people, telling them, ‘You just have to go,” witness Hannah Miles told ABC News.

He actually ran back towards the building where the shooting was and he ran back into the building and I don’t know what happened to him,” she said of Mintz.

What happened was, he was shot seven times after he charged the shooter in a desperate attempt to stop the carnage. His aunt told CNN that Mintz tried to “block the door to keep the gunman from coming in,” then “gets shot three times, hits the floor, looks up at the gunman and says, ‘It’s my son’s birthday today.'” The gunman responded by firing more shots at him.

First, he thought of everyone else around him and ran back into a building where shots were being fired. Then, when faced with a shooter he thought of his six-year-old son.

He suffered two broken legs in the attack and will have to go through a lot of physical therapy to walk again. His cousin set up a GoFundMe page for his medical bills and donors have already given sixteen times the $10,000 amount requested – they’ve raised a whopping $163,000.

Mintz is still showing his selflessness in statements he’s made from the hospital: “I just hope that everyone else is OK. I’m just worried about everyone else.”

Mintz is an Army veteran who made it through a combat deployment without sustaining any injuries, but was shot seven times on our own soil, while just trying to attend college. Let’s let that sink in for a minute.

Yesterday’s was the 45th school shooting of 2015. It’s inspiring to read a story of such selfless heroism, and completely terrifying to know that we’ve gotten to a place where we desperately need it.