15 Year Old Christian Garcia Stood In Front Of A Closet Door and Shielded A Girl He Had Recently Asked On A Date From Bullets During The Santa Fe Shooting, Saving Her Life

SANTA FE, Texas (KTRK) — Fifteen-year-old Courtney Marshall said art was her favorite class at Santa Fe High School. She wants to return to the room one last time for closure.

The freshman described Friday morning as horrific. She watched friends die in front of her after a gunman stormed into the school yelling, “surprise.” She said that she narrowly dodged his bullets.

Marshall said her classmate Christian Riley Garcia, 15, saved her life. The students and her substitute teacher, Ann Perkins, tried to break out the back door. When it failed, they rushed into different closets.

“It was just me, Christian, and Ms. Perkins left in the closet,” said Marshall. “He (Dimitrios Pagourtzis) shot the door. I guess the shot went through and killed Christian, and then he shot Ms. Perkins. Then he was trying to shoot at me but he missed. I was lucky enough to run out, but he was still shooting.”

You know what fucking sucks?  The fact that I already have a well established blog template for this exact situation.   Kids dying in school shootings.  That’s something I’ve had to write about so many times that there are multiple blogs I can choose from to share my exact thoughts.   It’s something you should never have to repeat yourself on.

The story of the Stoneman Douglas football coach and hero applies the exact same to this situation.

What I do like to do after something like this is highlight the heroes.  Every single one of them.  All of the people who stepped up in the face of crippling, unbelievable fear and danger in order to protect others.  People like Christian Riley Garcia, who literally used himself as a human shield to protect students.  A kid who saw a maniac pointing a gun at high school kids and put his own body in front of that gun instead of following every single basic hardwired human instinct to dive out of the way.  Christian Riley Garcia is the name people should remember from this, along with many others just like him that will come out in the next few days.  Not the piece of garbage who carried out the attack.  Christian Riley Garcia.

Christian Riley Garcia who shielded a girl from his class and his teacher from bullets while trapped in a classroom closet.

Marshall said before the gunman opened fire on the closet, Riley held on tight to the door. He tried to shield Courtney and Perkins.

“He was a hero, cause if he would never have been there,” said Marshall. “We pretty much would have been dead because we were stuck in that closet.”

This account from the AP is slightly different than Courtney Marshall’s above – while she had said it was just her, the teacher, and Christian in the closet, another student, Jai Gillard, whom Christian had recently asked out on a date, says she was also in the closet and was also shielded from the bullets.

Garcia described himself as a history junky who wanted to join the Army.

Student Jai Gillard, a 14-year-old freshman, tells The Associated Press that Garcia always sat next to her in art class, and had asked her on a date recently.

She says he was “always happy” and “very sweet.”

Gillard says that after they heard gunshots and smelled gunpowder on Friday, she and Garcia and other students piled into a closet. She says that Garcia used his body as a “barricade” against the closet door to keep the shooter from entering. [AP]

So Christian Riley either single handedly saved one life, or multiple lives.  Either way – he’s a hero.

RIP.