Hope you get to have some picnics on your "National hot dog day..."

Family of Local Colorado Shooting Survivor Speaks Out

Lindsey Buckingham Fox 8-  Matt McQuinn, of Springfield, Ohio, was one of the 12 killed. McQuinn was attempting to provide cover for his girlfriend when he was hit, a family attorney, Robert L. Scott, told CNN. He saved Samantha Yowler’s life, though she was hit by a bullet, Scott said. She is recovering at the hospital. Two Ohio men are among the dead and injured in Friday morning’s mass shooting at an Aurora, Colorado, movie theater. About 20 minutes into the movie, the boys heard gunshots and smelled smoke in the air. John Massara says that his nephews, 18-year-old Gage Hankins and 14-year-old Jackson Hankins, were in Theater 8 at the Century Aurora 16 multiplex early Friday morning for a midnight screening of the Batman sequel The Dark Knight Rises. “They thought it was part of the show,” their father, Dave Hankins, told Fox 8 News. Gage then felt a sensation in his arm, thinking, at first, he’d been hit with a firecracker. The brothers, not yet aware of the massacre next door, immediately fled the theater. That’s when, Dave Hankins says, his sons realized what had happened, and that Gage had been shot. Jackson was uninjured. In reality, a bullet had traveled through the wall of the adjacent Theater 9, where police say 24-year-old James E. Holmes stormed in and carried out a catastrophic attack, shooting nearly 70 people, 12 of whom died. A Good Samaritan applied pressure to Gage’s wound; a gunshot between his elbow and wrist, “about the size of a 50-cent piece,” Hankins said. But he didn’t want help for himself. “Gage saw that his injury was not life-threatening, and told the medics to go back inside to help the others,” Massara said. Gage’s father isn’t surprised by his son’s selflessness.  “It’s a situation that was random. Don’t let the bad guys win.” Moving forward, Hankins urges people to return to normalcy, and not be scared of going to the movies. Gage, a 2012 graduate of Riverdale High School, will attend Mount Union University in the fall, where he’ll study athletic training. It’s a challenge he is “very excited” for, his father said. “Gage has always been a team player,” Massara said. “He is a very mature, responsible young man.” Hankins says he’s thankful for his family’s safety while sad for the lives that were lost. “It’s the way he is,” Dave Hankins says. “He’s was that way all through school, sports … his track coach played a big part in encouraging Gage to help other people.”