A heroic El Paso shooting survivor has revealed how he was shot and wounded after throwing soda bottles at the gunman in an effort to distract him.
Christopher Grant was shopping at the Walmart where suspected gunman Patrick Crusius opened fire on Saturday, killing 22 people, and saw the shooter targeting Hispanic people while letting white and African-American customers go by.
After shielding his fellow shoppers by turning the gunman’s attention to him, his own life was saved by CBP officer Donna Sifford, who took him to safety and had him sent to hospital.
‘She was like my guardian angel,’ he told CNN from his hospital bed, where he is recovering.
Emotional reunion: Christopher Grant (pictured right in his hospital bed) holds hands with CBP officer Donna Sifford (center) who took him to safety after he was shot and wounded
Grant, 50, said he had rushed towards his mother when he heard gunshots at the sprawling shopping complex.
His mother usually carries a Smith & Wesson firearm but had left it behind because ‘we’re just going to Walmart’, he discovered.
‘It was just chaos and I saw him [the gunman] standing in the parking lot and I saw him popping people off,’ he recounted.
‘I was inside the produce department which is right by the front door and I saw him popping people off and I was like, this is crazy.
‘To deter him I started just chucking bottles, I just started throwing random bottles at him.
‘I’m not a baseball player, so one went this way and one went that way, and then one went right towards him and that’s when he saw me.
‘I ducked and he just firing off rounds at me.
‘When I got hit, it was like somebody put a hand grenade in your back and pulled the pin, that’s basically what it felt like.’
Survivor: Christopher Grant (pictured back, with his sister Jenny) was shopping at the Walmart where alleged gunman Patrick Crusius opened fire, killing 22
On Sunday Grant’s sister Jenny said he had undergone two surgeries in hospital in the wake of his injuries.
Amid the chaos, Grant said he heard people praying in Spanish and said not everybody spoke enough English to understand their fellow customers urging them to take cover.
”In this town not everybody knows English, and there’s nothing wrong with that, but everybody’s like get down, get down, and there’s people walking around in awe or that didn’t understand,’ he said.
‘People were praying in Spanish, they were on the ground and he still just shot him in the head. He had no remorse for their lives at all. I could just tell he was prepared.’
Speaking to the El Paso Times, Grant’s family said he had seen the gunman targeting Hispanic shoppers while letting white and African-American people go by.’
Grant eventually found shelter after running through the door of the Walmart auto department, where he found CBP officer Sifford.
The federal agent patched him up, took him to shelter and then had him sent to hospital on a police truck, he recalled.
Like his mother, Sifford had not brought her weapon with her for what she expected to be a routine shopping trip.
Hero: Grant (pictured right) threw bottles at the shooter and saw him targeting Hispanic people while letting white and African-American customers go by
‘She’ll be a friend for life, because I honestly think she saved my life,’ Grant said of the CBP officer.
Breaking down, the survivor went on: ‘She was there for me and she never left my side.
‘She threw me in the back of a pickup truck who happened to be a police officer, and she said get this guy to the ambulance. She was like my guardian angel, I’ll forever be indebted to her.
‘From the time I got out of the ambulance to the time I got in here was like, wow, these people know what the hell they’re doing.
‘I don’t think I deserved to live like some of those children deserved to die. It’s not fair.
‘One little girl saw her parents get killed right in front of her. Why would you kill an innocent child? Why would you do that? How much hate do you have to have in your heart do to that?’
Playing down his own heroic role, he said: ‘I think a lot of men would have done that. It says that my father raised me that way. My father raised me to help people. I did what any good man would have done.’
‘If I could trade my life for that little girl’s life that I saw killed, I would do it in a second, because she had her whole life ahead of her.’
Remembrance: People pray beside a makeshift memorial outside the Cielo Vista Mall Walmart (background) where 22 people were killied in the shooting rampage
His mother was found sheltering in a container at the back of the store and also survived the shooting.
Grant and Sifford shared an emotional reunion in hospital, where he called her an ‘amazing, amazing person’.
She replied: ‘I’m happy I was there for you’.
Describing what happened, she went on: ‘We heard the gunshots happening, we were trying to get as many people as we could out.
‘We were able to get an old lady out, she didn’t know what was going on, we put her behind a tree and went back inside.
‘We found Chris and were able to get him outside,’ she said, adding that the attacker was a ‘hateful coward’.
The death toll in El Paso rose to 22 on Monday after two more victims of the shooting rampage died of their injuries.
Crusius has been charged with capital murder and remains in custody as the investigation continues.
Authorities are examining an anti-immigrant manifesto posted online, apparently by Crusius, which appears to show that the massacre was racially motivated.
It also expressed support for a gunman who killed 51 people at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, in March.
Eight of those killed in the attack were Mexican citizens, according to Mexico’s government.