Off-Duty Soldier

A Racist Mass Killer Wasn’t Going to Stop an Off-Duty Soldier From Saving Kids’ Lives

Glendon Oakley Jr. carried children to safety.

DAVID BEARD

Recently back from duty in the Middle East, Army Pfc. Glendon Oakley Jr. was hanging out in a sports store in the El Paso mall on Saturday when the panic began.

He took out the 9mm Glock he had a license to carry.

Oakley served as a sort of rear guard for employees of a Foot Locker as they closed the security gate and decided to run toward an exit, away from the sound of gunfire.

Then he saw kids, about a dozen of them, screaming for their parents in an open play area in the mall. He tried to get fleeing bystanders to help, but no one stopped.

Oakley, 22, took charge. “I didn’t even think. I just grabbed as many kids as I could and ran five stores down to the exit,” he said. “I wasn’t focused on myself, and I wasn’t focused on my surroundings…I was just focused on those kids.”

In an interview with Task & Purpose, Oakley said that despite his training, “[I was] scared for my life” during the mass shooting, which killed at least 22 people and wounded dozens.

“I heard four kids died,” he said. “I wish I could have gotten more kids out of there. I wish those guys who ran would have stayed…I just think, ‘What if that was my child? How would I want some other man to react?’”

On television and social media, Oakley, the son of career military service members, was hailed as a hero. “A fine soldier and a good man with a big heart,” tweeted Matthew McLellan. “He deserves a country in which he doesn’t have to rescue children from a shooter in a mall.”