Tag Archives: Heroes

News

Three men shot while shielding their girlfriends during Aurora, Colorado shooting

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From the NY Daily News. (H/T Doug G. and Joe C.)

Here’s one of the stories:

Three survivors of the Colorado movie-theater massacre escaped with minor wounds, but were left with broken hearts because their heroic boyfriends died saving them.

In final acts of valor, Jon Blunk, Matt McQuinn and Alex Teves used their bodies to shield their girlfriends as accused madman James Holmes turned the Aurora cineplex into a shooting gallery.

Blunk’s girlfriend, Jansen Young; McQuinn’s girlfriend, Samantha Yowler; and Teves’ gal pal Amanda Lindgren made it out of the bloodbath — but they would have been killed had it not been for the loves of their lives.

“He’s a hero, and he’ll never be forgotten,” a tearful Jansen Young told the Daily News of Blunk. “Jon took a bullet for me.”

[…]Jansen Young, 21, said Blunk took her to see Friday’s midnight premiere of “The Dark Knight Rises” to celebrate her graduation from veterinarian school. As the black-clad killer burst into the theater and unleashed tear gas and a torrent of indiscriminate gunfire, Blunk selflessly protected his girlfriend.

He pushed Jansen on the ground and under her seat, then threw his body on top of her, the mother said. “He was 6-feet-2, in incredible shape, which is why he was able to push her down under the seats of the theater,” the mother said. “He pushed her down on the floor and laid down on top of her and he died there.”

[…]Equally heroic was the 24-year-old [Alex] Teves, who hurled his girlfriend to the floor as bullets whizzed through the theater.

“He pushed her to the floor to save her and he ended up getting a bullet,” said his aunt, Barbara Slivinske, 57. “He was gonna hit the floor himself, but he never made it.”

[…]Samantha Yowler had a similar story of horror and heroism about her boyfriend, Matt McQuinn, whose last living act was to shield her from death. Yowler, 26, survived with a gunshot wound to the knee and is in fair condition after undergoing surgery.

This makes me sad, that self-sacrificial men should be killed by a criminal like this. It would have been better all around if the movie theater allowed the three heroes to carry their own weapons so that they could have shot back at the criminal. Not only would that have saved lives, but it would have deterred the assailant from even trying such a course of action. This story shows what we have to pay as a society when we prevent innocent law-abiding people from defending themselves from violent crooks.

News

Construction workers prevent gunman from shooting up school

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Story here in the Union-Tribune. (H/T Gateway Pundit via Wes Widner)

Excerpt:

A man seemingly bent on violence and destruction stormed Kelly Elementary School in Carlsbad Friday and fired into a crowd of children on the playground, striking two girls, before being chased and tackled by nearby construction workers.

Brendan L. O’Rourke, 41, believed to be a transient, was arrested on six counts of attempted murder and various weapons charges, Carlsbad police said.

A trail of blood led to a classroom, which held two second-graders who suffered bullet wounds to their right arms, police said. The girls, ages 6 and 7, were flown to Rady Children’s Hospital for treatment and were doing well, Carlsbad Police Chief Gary Morrison said.

“We are grateful to God only two children were hurt,” Carlsbad Mayor Bud Lewis said. “We know in this tragedy, it could have been far worse.”

Several witnesses saw the gunman clad in black, running on the school grounds shortly after noon carrying a gas can and shooting at random during recess.

“He was dressed just like a bad guy,” in a black hooded sweatshirt and black pants, said neighbor Scott Chandler, who saw the violence unfold from his driveway near the schoolyard on Kelly and Riviera drives.

Chandler ran toward the school as fast as he could and caught up with two construction workers, Steven Kane and Mario Contreras, assigned to a cafeteria expansion project. They chased the gunman through the field and over a fence.

Carlos Partida, another construction worker, said he jumped into his black Ford F-150 pickup when his co-workers started chasing the gunman. Partida struck the man with his truck, knocking him to the ground, police said.

Partida, Kane and Contreras wrestled a .357 Magnum silver revolver with a wooden handle from O’Rourke.

Here’s a previous post I did about whether multiple-victim shooters prefer to target areas where people will be armed or whether they prefer to attack “gun-free zones” provided by liberal educators. The left really doesn’t understand the difference between intentions and incentives. The only people who obey gun-free zone signs are people you don’t have to fear. Criminals see a gun-free zone sign and they think that you’ve opened a shooting gallery just for them. Luckily, the men standing near the area had not attended women’s studies classes at the local elite university. They did not know that all men are evil oppressors, so they had the confidence to act on their convictions.