'Like gunman was playing video game'
Oregon massacre hero's harrowing tale
The gunman who massacred nine people at an Oregon college campus was “nonchalant through it all, like he was playing a video game,” said the hero Army vet who helped slow the rampage.
Chris Mintz, a 10year veteran and former mixed martial arts fighter, recalled the Oct. 1 shooting in a lengthy Facebook post, describing his encounter with stonecold killer Christopher HarperMercer at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg.
Mintz was in class when he heard “a bunch of yelling” from another room and “gunshots that sounded like firecrackers going off,” he wrote.
As Mintz’s class started to flee, “A counselor kept screaming that someone needed to tell the people in the library, and I told her id [sic] do it. I ran in and told everyone they needed to leave and go to the other side of the campus,” he recalled.
The 30yearold, who had just started college with hopes of becoming a personal trainer, started heading toward the epicenter of the gunshots but didn’t know where the gunman was.
That’s when Mintz noticed a woman’s foot wedged in a classroom door and looked inside.
“There was so much blood and it was so dark,” he said. “I nudged the door closed, I could only see one of the students through the door, she was screaming and yelling and covered in blood, I motioned my finger over my mouth communicating to be quiet.”
That’s when Harper-Mercer appeared.
“All of a sudden, the shooter opened the classroom door beside the door to my left, he leaned half of his torso out and started shooting as I turned toward him. He had a black shirt on, a shaved head, was tan and wearing glasses, he was so nonchalant through it all, like he was playing a video game and showed no emotion,” Mintz wrote.
“The shots knocked me to the ground and felt like a truck hit me. He shot me again while I was on the ground and hit my finger, and said ‘that’s what you get for calling the cops.’
“I laid there, in a fetal position unable to move and responded ‘I didn’t call the cops man, they were already on the way.’ He leaned further out of the classroom and tried to shoot my phone, I yelled ‘its [sic] my kids [sic] birthday man’ he pointed the gun right at my face and then he retreated back into the class.
“I’m still confused at why he didn’t shoot me again. I tried to push myself back against the classroom door but I couldn’t move at all. My legs felt like ice, like they didn’t exist, until I tried to move. When I moved pain shot through me like a bomb going off,” according to the Facebook post.
Mintz was shot five times but assured, “I am recovering well and thank everyone for their thoughts and prayers.”