An Army vet was shot five times after he charged at the gunman who opened fire at Umpqua Community College Thursday morning.
Chris Mintz, 30, survived the brutal shooting at college in Roseburg, Oregon, but with serious injuries. The gunman, Chris Harper Mercer, 26, shot and wounded Mintz and killed another 9 before he was gunned down by the police. No police officers were hurt.
Mintz was hit in the upper back, left hand, lower stomach, and each leg, but he is in stable condition.
Here’s what you need to know about this vigilante hero:
1. He served in the Army for 10 years before moving to Oregon.
Chris Mintz moved to Oregon four years ago after serving in the Army for a decade, where he was based in Washington state and was deployed overseas.
“It sounds like something he would do,” Bourgeois he told media.
A friend posted on Mintz’s Facebook page in place of him, saying, “This is Chris’s friend, Chris asked me to thank everyone for their support, he is grateful and keeping our community and all victims in his thoughts.”
2. He will have to learn to walk again.
“He is very upset that people had to die, and he wishes that he could have saved everyone. That was about all he was able to get out before he broke down. Hang in there, brother,” Bourgeois said in a Facebook post after talking to his cousin Mintz.
“He could have very easily died,” Wanda Mintz, Chris’s aunt, told media. “I really think that if he wasn’t such a strong, young guy, he may have died.”
3. The day of the shooting was his son’s sixth birthday.
Mintz was getting ready to celebrate his son’s sixth birthday on Thursday. He posted on Facebook about it just hours before the brutal attack.
His family told reporters this morning that after he was shot by the gunman, he looked up at him and said, “It’s my son’s birthday today,” and was shot again.
His Aunt Wanda told media that Chris Mintz was on the phone with his father in North Carolina as he was walking into the classroom where the gunman would soon arrive at.
“My brother talked to Chris on the phone while Chris was walking into school to tell him, to remind his grandson that grandpa said, ‘Happy Birthday,’” Wanda Mintz told media.
4. He enlisted in the Army right after graduating from high school in North Carolina.
After graduating from Randleman High School in 2003, Mintz was quick to enlist in the Army.
He was a football player at Randleman. His family still lives in North Carolina.
5. It was his fourth day back in classes at Umpqua.
Mintz was in just his fourth day of being back at Umpqua Community College when he was shot.
His aunt says her brother, Mintz’s father, had spent the week before the shooting in Oregon with his son and grandson.
Mintz was volunteering at the local YMCA in Oregon and is studying to be a fitness trainer.