A man who was shot in the El Paso Walmart massacre is being hailed as a hero for throwing bottles at accused gunman Patrick Crusius to try to distract him, rather than fleeing from the rampage that killed 22.

Chris Grant, 50, was shopping for groceries in the Texas Walmart on Saturday when the 21-year-old started firing his AK-47-style assault rifle.

“I heard gunshots and I knew what it was so I ran towards my mother to try to shield her,” Grant told CNN, noting that the usually “gun-wielding grandma” left her weapon at home as they were “just going to Walmart.”

After making sure she was safe, he saw the gunman in the parking lot.

“I saw him popping people off. To deter him, I just started throwing bottles at him,” he recalled from his hospital bed.

“One went right towards him and that’s when he saw me.

“I ducked, and he just boop-boop-boop-boop started firing off rounds at me. I was like, ‘Oh my God, this guy is shooting at me.'”

Grant was struck twice, both bullets hitting near the rib cage. “When I got hit, it was somebody put a hand grenade in your back and pulled the pin. That’s what it felt like,” he told the network.

Rather than his injuries, he is most hurt by the memories of Crusius slaughtering innocent people as they prayed for mercy in Spanish.

“They were on the ground and he still just shot them in the head,” he told CNN’s Chris Cuomo. “They were praying, ‘Please! Please! Don’t shoot me.’ And he had no remorse for their lives at all.”

Breaking down, he said, “It’s just not fair. One little girl saw her parents get killed right in front of her.

“How much hate do you have to have in your heart to do that?”

He said he was saved by his own “guardian angel,” a customs agent who helped get him to an ambulance.

“I’ll forever be indebted to her because I honestly think she saved my life,” he said.

He also refused to consider himself a hero. “I did what any good man would have done,” he said.

Prosecutors say they will seek the death penalty for Crusius and are treating it as a “domestic terrorist case.”