Chris Mintz, Umpqua Community College hero, describes shooting

Chris Mintz, the Army veteran now hailed as a hero after his attempt to stop the gunman at an Oregon college campus earlier this month, described the attack in a lengthy Facebook post on Friday.

Mr. Mintz, who was shot five times as he tried to tackle gunman Chris Harper Mercer, described the shooter as “nonchalant through it all, like he was playing a video game.”

The 10-year Army veteran wrote in his Facebook post that he was in class when he heard a “bunch of yelling” from another room and “gunshots that sounded like firecrackers going off.”

As the students realized what was happening and began fleeing, a counselor began screaming that someone needed to warn the people in the library, and Mr. Mintz volunteered to do it, he wrote.

“I ran in and told everyone they needed to leave and go to the other side of the campus,” he recalled.

As he alerted other students to what was happening, Mr. Mintz noticed “people across campus were walking around like nothing was going on.”

He recalled seeing a young girl who “seemed to be just showing up to school, and I yelled at her ’you cant [sic] be here’ ’there’s somebody shooting, you need to leave.’ Her face, it changed and she seemed so scared.”

Then Mr. Mintz headed toward the gunshots but didn’t know where the gunman was. As he approached the classroom door, a man hiding between parked cars warned him not to go in.

“Don’t man, hes [sic] going to shoot you man,” the man yelled, Mr. Mintz wrote.

He then noticed a woman’s foot wedged in the door.

“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 and motioned both my hands down for them to stay down,” Mr. Mintz wrote.

When Mr. Mintz realized the class was full of people, he tried to yell to the bystander to call the cops — that’s when the shooter 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,” Mr. 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 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,” Mr. Mintz wrote in the post.

Mr. Mintz was shot five times in the incident that left 10 dead at Umpqua Community College. The gunman killed himself during a firefight with police. 

Mr. Mintz wrote that he is “recovering well and thank everyone for their thoughts and prayers.”