People ran for their lives at an El Paso mall on Saturday when a gunman opened fire at shoppers at a nearby Walmart, but one man, noticed a large group of frantic, unaccompanied kids and decided to jump into action.
In an interview with Fox News, U.S. Army Specialist Glen Oakley shared that he was shopping for a jersey when a child ran over and yelled that there was an active shooter. Oakley admitted that at first, he didn’t believe the child, but then as he walked toward a Footlocker store, he heard gunshots. Immediately, Oakley saw a crowd of people running towards a Dillard’s store in order to escape to the parking lot.
According to Oakley, when the Footlocker employee heard the gunfire, he closed the store’s gate, but frantic shoppers lifted it in order to escape. Oakley, who has a license to carry a firearm and was armed at the time of the shooting, decided to go with the crowd in case they ran into a shooter, he told Fox News.
While running with the crowd however, he noticed a group of 11 to 13 frightened children estimated to be between five and seven years of age near a mall play area. Oakley immediately jumped into action and began to grab as many children as he could so that he could bring them to safety.
“I see a whole bunch of kids running, so I grab as many as possible… I tried to get a couple others to help me, but you know, they’re so scared, they’re terrified,” Oakley told Fox News.
“I just stopped and grabbed as many as I could, and I brought them all with me.”
“The only thing I could think of was putting the babies before myself because I just thought about how if I had a child, and if I wasn’t around my child, how I would want another man to react to if they’d seen my child running around without me around,” Oakley added.
As Christian Headlines previously reported, Saturday morning’s shooting in El Paso, Texas left 20 dead, and more than two dozen injured. The shooter has been apprehended and authorities are treating the shooting as an act of domestic terrorism.
Photo courtesy: Getty Images/Ake Dynamic
Video courtesy: Fox News
