After being shot in the head and through his eye, a man summoned the strength and courage to take out a mass shooter. However, he claims the media was eerily silent about his courageous actions, and he says we know why — and he’s not keeping quiet about it.
Months after a tragic mass shooting, authorities said they still didn’t know why 46-year-old Jason Hunt opened fire at an intimate house party in Surprise, Arizona. Survivors say the U.S. Army sergeant and military recruiter, who was a neighbor of the man hosting the party, came in and mingled with the gracious families before he suddenly brandished a gun in the kitchen without provocation or warning. Hunt began firing at the guests, killing Conrradito Ochoa Navarro, 41, and Carl Dinora, 38.
As soon as Raul Mendez, a guest at the party, heard the first shot ring out, he turned his head to see what had happened. In that instant, a round made its way through his head and exited his eye socket. He fell to the ground unconscious. Believing he was dead, his pregnant wife and two daughters fled to a bedroom and barricaded themselves inside the room.
“My back was turned. I heard the first gunshot and that’s what made me, kind of turn my head … But by the time I even was able to look and see what was going on, a bullet already had struck the side of my face,” Raul Mendez recounted to Fox News Digital in a phone interview.
Mendez says that, by God’s grace, he suddenly heard several women and children screaming and opened his eyes. He said he was able to get up, pulled out his concealed handgun, and shot the gunman dead before he could kill anyone else.
“By the glory of God or the adrenaline and just everything, just the will to live and the will to protect my family, I was able to hear those pleas, those yells for help. I heard my name. And I was able to get up,” he said.
Even with his life-threatening injury, Mendez shot the gunman four times in the chest. He spent a week in the hospital and required several surgeries. He lost his left eye, suffered a fractured jaw and a torn eardrum, and lost his sense of smell. Despite his incredible heroism, Mendez alleges that his story has been widely ignored by the mainstream media and that the reason is clear.
Even though the major news networks constantly run articles on gun violence, most avoided Mendez’s story for no other reason than he is a good guy with a gun who stopped a bad guy with a gun, the hero alleges. As a minority and a strong supporter of Second Amendment rights, Mendez doesn’t fit their anti-gun narrative, he said.
“I fully back up the Second Amendment and … this is why I’m speaking up,” Mendez told Fox News Digital.
Since the shooting, Mendez has become a spokesman for the NRA. Mendez made an ad with the NRA in which he called out the media for taking little or no interest in his story.
“If I didn’t have my gun with me, everyone in the house would have died. The news vans would’ve been front and center. But because I did, you never even heard about it,” he said in the video.
Raul Mendez has since purchased two additional handguns for his family and extra training. Now, he believes they are properly prepared to defend themselves in case of an emergency. He hopes that his story will inspire others to get armed and trained so that lives might be saved.
Each year, more than one million Americans use firearms to protect themselves and their loved ones. However, these stories are rarely covered. Is that because they don’t fit the political narrative? You decide, but in the meantime, help warn others by sharing Mendez’s story of survival and self-defense so that others might take the proper precautions.
