And El Paso Police are saying he’s no hero, just was trying to survive.
Earnest Christopher Grant, who goes by Chris, wasn’t able to make it to the award ceremony held at the White House because he was detained by the U.S. Secret Service on an outstanding fugitive warrant when he showed up in Washington, ABC News reported.
You read that correctly. Chris Grant, 50, who told a harrowing tale that made it to the President and who was honored by the President in ceremony, gave an ‘exaggerated account’ shall we say.
No this is not the soldier with the concealed carry who was shepherding kids out of the line of fire. Grant supposedly held the gunman off for precious seconds to aid his fellow shoppers. According to El, Paso though…
“Nobody bothered to check with us,” El Paso Police Sergeant Enrique Carrillo told the Washington Examiner. “They would have been informed, as I am telling you now, that our detectives reviewed hours of video and his actions did not match his account.”
“The video evidence of the scene does not support his assertions,” Sgt. Carrillo told KFOX. “His actions were captured by surveillance cameras, but they amount to an act of self-preservation, nothing more, nothing less.”
Grant has a less than honest past, so why not take advantage of a little misplaced hero worship?
In 2016, he was sentenced to 18 days in jail for stealing televisions from a Sears store. He was also convicted of evading arrest that same year. In March, he was convicted of stealing a 2009 Mazda 6, and was sentenced to eight months in prison. It is unclear how many months of that sentence he actually served.
Grant began revving up and touting his supposedly heroic actions during a series of interviews in the wake of the mass shooting, he gave some of those interviews from his hospital bed which would undoubtedly lend emotional gravitas to his tale.
Petty exploitation of tragedy is nothing new, but I’m tickled he got to spend his award ceremony in Secret Service custody and had his name removed from the ledger.
