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Jon Blunk, Matt McQuinn, Alex Teves Died Trying to Save Girlfriends During Batman Movie Massacre
Besides all being in the wrong place at the wrong time on the morning of July 20, Jansen Young, Samantha Yowler and Amanda Lindgren have one other thing in common: each was saved from James Holmes’ murderous rampage by their loving, heroic boyfriends.
Young, Yowler and Lindgren all survived the Batman Movie Massacre this past Friday because their boyfriends jumped on top of them and used their own bodies to shield them from the gunfire. That act of courageousness came at a cost, though, as Jon Blunk, Matt McQuinn and Alex Teves all wound up losing their own lives in the process.
“He’s a hero, and he’ll never be forgotten,” a tearful Jansen Young told the New York Daily News of Blunk. “Jon took a bullet for me.”
Her mother, Shellie Young, added: “He was loving, the kind of guy you want your daughter to be with, and ultimately, she’s alive because of this, because he protected her.”
Blunk was a former Navy man who had been hoping to eventually become a Navy SEAL. He planned to take Young to the midnight premiere of The Dark Knight Rises to celebrate her graduation from veterinarian school.
What was supposed to be a joyous night, however, quickly took a turn for the horrifying when Holmes allegedly burst in guns blazing. Without hesitation, Blunk pushed Jansen on the ground and then threw himself on top of her to shield her from the onslaught.
“He was 6-feet-2, in incredible shape, which is why he was able to push her down under the seats of the theater,” the mother said. “He pushed her down on the floor and laid down on top of her and he died there.”
(via New York Daily News)
Alex Teves, 24, and Matt McQuinn, 27, went out in similarly gallant fashion.
“He pushed her to the floor to save her and he ended up getting a bullet,” Teves’ aunt, Barbara Slivinske told the Daily News. “He was gonna hit the floor himself, but he never made it.”
According to witnesses, McQuinn leapt onto his girlfriend when she got hit in the knee with a bullet.
“Both the Yowler and McQuinn families thank everyone for their concerns, thoughts and prayers during this difficult time,” the McQuinns’ lawyer, Robert Scott, said in a statement. “Unfortunately, Matt perished from the injuries he sustained during the tragic events that unfolded . . . and went home to be with his maker.”
McQuinn, 27, and Yowler met at a Target store in Springfield, Ohio, where they worked.
“He was a great outgoing person,” McQuinn’s former co-worker at the Colorado Target told the Daily News. “We lost a great person and we still can’t picture or realize that he’s gone.”
(Kudos New York Daily News)
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Comments
Alex Groberman comes across
Alex Groberman comes across as a hate-filled homophobic bigot, for unjustifiably singling out like this only these three apparently heterosexual males who (naturally) placed their own lives at risk to save their womenfolk (in the usual fashion), and (ironically) paid for their anachronistic and belittling Chauvinism with their own lives. Shame on Mr Groberman for thus exploiting such a tragedy, scouring for unrelated coincidences, in order to peddle his own narrow-minded (and possibly even theistic!) prejudices. Why no mention of the LGBT sacrifices made that night? I think we can all work out the answer to that question, if we aren't "in denial"! Groberman should resign for penning this diatribe.
You're an idiot if that's
You're an idiot if that's what you truly got from this story.
It's not what I got from the
It's not what I got from the story MAINLY, just one of the two comments I chose to post (the other mysteriously being not visible, and much more mellow).
I'm not an idiot, but I admit I was fooling with y'all, being a bit of a "shock jock", satirising Opposing Views and the people often found here, people doing boring agit-prop for their own pet causes, preferably by finding (when they are clever enough to) a spurious continuity link between the story's content, and what they want to say - which usually turns out to be what they always want to say, whatever the story is about.
Opposing Views often runs stories that don't tug at the heart strings like this one does, other stories which turn out to be about nothing that's even slightly important, and which end up eliciting comments every bit as foolish as mine that got you going, except not meant in jest like mine - the kind of jest that is supposed to make people think.
For the record, I disapprove of the shooting, am saddened by the loss of life, and am probably manly enough myself - or Chauvinistic enough, to do, equally without pausing for thought, exactly what these three deceased lovers did, that might have saved the lives of their womenfolk, and might indeed have cost them their own lives.
Death is a commonplace event often thought about too little, and then sporadically thought about very much indeed for a change, whenever something as bad as this happens - several people dying at the same time, "senselessly" (as people like to say).
Maybe the sort of idiot who posts on less sombre Opposing Views stories than this, exactly the sort of comment that I posted, actually meaning it, will see his reflection in the mirror, so-to-speak, if he reads the way I put a spin onto this story that served an agenda I don't actually believe in, instead of addressing the content. At least it was worth a try.
This latest "going postal" crime has touched people on parts of their souls they didn't even know they had. Why, even James, the scourge of all theists, has gone soft, rambling about immortality!
The perpetrator of this crime was arrested alive, and will stand trial. I am SO happy the cops didn't shoot him instead, even if that that deprives some of the pleasure of hearing a radio news bulletin that he has been executed. Now he can be asked why he did it, and we can all learn something.
"Scourge of all theists?"
"Scourge of all theists?" Thank you, that's one of the nicest compliments imaginable.
FWIW, I do agree with you about using a tragedy to advance personal agendas.
No one really knows how they will react to these things until they happen. Like you, I hope I will do as these young men did and at least try to do the right thing. But we never can know. We might have reacted cleverly and properly in the past but that doesn't mean this time we won;t be distracted, confused or simply a bit slow.
That time, these three were not. There may have been others that reacted well and were not shot, we'll never know.
Mr. Allman, Your intellectual
Mr. Allman, Your intellectual laziness is glaring in your inability to reference parallel ideas without jabbing them into other sentences with parentheses. Perhaps more glaring, though, is your inability to reference whether there were other LGBT stories of bravery to share. If not, there is nothing wrong with this article. Even if there were, there is nothing wrong with this article. What is wrong, here, is your mocking and ambitious ascribing of "irony" to men giving their lives to save the women they love. I imagine very few view your post as a valid criticism, and rather merely see it as motivated by something very pathetic.
Had you going there for a
Had you going there for a minute, didn't I?
No matter what your religion
No matter what your religion or even none, these young men are now with the immortals.
Horrible losses, but because
Horrible losses, but because of their sacrifice for their girlfriends they won't be forgotten. They are truely heros and I have no doubt that if there was a heaven, that their glad that the girls made it alive, but either way, they showed the true courage and love and compassion of humanity, even if that massacre showed the worse humanity had to offer.
Despite the tragic circumstances, i'm sure their families are proud that they didn't panic in the face of what happened, that they put their gfs lives above their own, a trait we hopefully don't have to show in our own lives, mourn the losses, hope for the survivors or pray depending on your faith and move on, and keep their examples in our hearts, those are the only things we can go to honor the memory of the fallen and the lost.