A four-year-old British boy has been labeled a hero after standing up to a terrorist gunman during the Kenyan Westgate shopping mall attack. According to Time, Elliot Prior, from Windsor in southeast England, stood up and protected his sister and mother ultimately sparing their lives.
Prior's mother, Amber, had been shot in leg when men carrying AK47s stormed the shopping mall in Nairobi on Saturday. As the gunman approached him, his mother and his six-year-old sister Amelie, he stood up and shouted: "You're a bad man, let us leave."
The gunman reportedly had a change of heart and gave the little boy and his sister candy bars before allowing them to escape with their mother, Time reports.
"Please forgive me, we are not monsters," the gunman told the young boy.
Amber was also able to rescue two other young children from the mall attack including a 12-year-old boy whose mom had been killed.
On Tuesday, Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta said the attack was officially over. He addressed the nation saying that five attackers were killed and 11 were captured by authorities.
"I promise that we shall have a full accountability for the mindless destruction, deaths, pain, loss and suffering we have all undergone as a national family.
"These cowards will meet justice, as will their accomplices and patrons, wherever they are," Kenyatta said.
The attack left 175 people wounded and 62 in the hospital. There has not been an official count for the amount of foreigner deaths but according to reports at least 18 from England, France, Canada, the Netherlands, Australia, Peru, India, Ghana, South Africa, and China were killed.
Among those killed was 33-year-old Elif Yavuz, who was eight-and-half-months pregnant. Her husband, Ross Langdon, also died in the attack. Yavuz was a former Clinton Foundation employee, the New York Daily News reports.
"This beautiful woman comes up to me, very pregnant. She was so pregnant that I assured her that I had been a Lamaze father and could be pressed into service at any moment," former President Bill Clinton said about Yavuz at the Clinton Global Initiative in New York.
"She and her baby's father, they went to Nairobi because they thought it was the safest, best place for her to give birth."
On Saturday, multiple gunman and reportedly one woman stormed the shopping mall and began firing at random customers. The eventually set off explosives in the mall leading to an attack that would last four days.
