The Westgate shopping mall terrorist attack occurred on September 21st, 2013 in Nairobi, Kenya, when four masked gunmen attached the mall. The extremist group, al-Shabaab, claimed responsibility for the incident as retribution for the Kenyan military’s deployment into Somalia
At around noon local Kenyan time, the 4 masked men launched their attack on the Westgate shopping mall which is considered the most upscale mall in Nairobi and probably Kenya. The masked men had assault rifles (mostly AK-47s) and hand grenades which they used in their attack. The attackers essentially went around and attacked civilians until the police showed up at which point, they engaged the police services over 48 hours.
These terrorists were largely achieving their goal as they targeted innocent citizens until an ex-SAS officer, now identified as Chris Craighead, and an ex-Irish Ranger, still unknown, sprung to action. Within 10 minutes of the attack, they had contacted the staff at the oil company both of them work at and found out they had 2 company staff members trapped inside the mall. They, like the police and military, launched their own rescue efforts.
As soon as they arrived on scene they began organizing innocent civilians into pairs and had them make the dash to safety at the main road. While they were running across Craighead and his partner, provided cover for them. From there they quickly recruited two plain clothes Kenyan police officers and two more uniformed police officers to follow them up the fire escape into the building.
Once inside, the group quickly began evacuating civilians out of the building, numbering right around 100 people. While navigating folks out of the building, they also commanded the 4 different police officers and helped utilize them to their best abilities. They then continued to work their way through the building, at one point splitting up to cover the most amount of ground quickly. As they worked their way through the building they had to almost convince some of the innocent people caught up to leave as they were terrified the attack would continue on the outside. At some point, they do end up finding the company’s staff members and help get them out of the building and to safety.
However, once the company staff members were loaded up into a vehicle and taken far away from the incident, they were informed the police was now going to run containment and wait for the cities SWAT team. Both military vets were not interested in waiting and they knew the body count would continue to grow and quickly. As a result, they approached a local policeman and were able to convince them to go into the building without waiting for the police SWAT team. By 4pm, they had all of their company staff members out and were working on assisting civilians. Eventually they left but not permanently as they return a bit later to pick up the missing worker who was eventually found inside.
Before they could be given any credit, both men disappeared into the night.
