A wounded El Paso shooting survivor told CNN anchor Chris Cuomo from his hospital bed that he wished his mother brought the gun she usually carried with them to Walmart on Saturday.
Christopher Grant said he recognized the sound of gunshots, “So I ran toward my mother to try to shield her and I’m like, mom — cause my mom, she’s a gun-wielding grandma. She carries a snub nose Smith & Wesson, .38 special with a built-in scope in it, everywhere she goes,” but she did not have it on her.
“An hour before we went to Walmart, she decides, ‘We’re just going to Walmart, I’m going to put it in my room.’ So when I went to her, no gun. And I was like, ‘Oh, my God, you got to be kidding me.'”
Grant ran off and saw the shooter in the Walmart parking lot and started to throw bottles at him to distract him. The shooter then started to fire his rifle at him, hitting Grant.
“When I got hit, it was like — it was like somebody put a hand grenade in your back and pulled the pin. That’s basically what it felt like,” he said.
Grant said the shooter moved on and he saw people begging and praying in Spanish to not be killed before being shot.
The death toll for the shooting reached 22 on Monday and appeared to have been targeting Hispanics. In a manifesto that was reportedly written by the shooter, he wrote that he wanted to stop the “Hispanic invasion of Texas.” The manifesto added he felt this way towards before Trump and his campaign.
