In The Darkest Hour

On Saturday August 3, 2019 a little after 10:30 AM a white male opened fire in an El Paso Walmart. In this incident, employee Gilbert Serna and a local Adria Gonzalez took action. 36-year-old Gilbert Serna heard “Code Brown” over the radio. He took a second to process what the code meant and then he remembered that it meant “Active Shooter”. Moments after gunshots echoed in the building. Serna quickly signaled customers and coworkers to follow him to the back room. He led the large group outside and into shipping containers. Instead of hiding with the group he ran back inside to find more people to help get them to safety. Serna helped dozens of people to safety.

37-year-old Adria Gonzalez and her mother were simply grocery shopping and shopping for school. Gunshots rang out and could be heard throughout the entire store. Without hesitation, Gonzalez took her pink hat off of her head and was signaling people nearby to the nearest exit. She led the large group safely into a storage area near the meat counter in the store. They waited in silence until gunshots were no longer heard. Minutes after, the large group exited the back of the building quickly.

In this tragic event 22 lives were lost. The suspect is said to have had a written book of racist views. He is facing hate crime charges in addition to capital murders. In times like these we don’t really recognize the heroes but, this is something not a lot of people should forget.