As danger approached Valley View’s Shell gas station in the dark, drivers ditched their cars and ran inside the convenience store with restaurants just before it took a direct hit.
“The walls were coming down,” recalled Hugo Parra of Farmers Branch. “The wind tried to get us.”
They heard the roaring winds, felt their ears pop and the building started to give way.
“Windows started breaking down. The lights went out,” said Ana Parra, who was with her father, mother, husband, and siblings. “We were very scared in there.”
Get top local stories in DFW delivered to you every morning. Sign up for NBC DFW's News Headlines newsletter.
The family was heading up Interstate 35 toward the casino in Oklahoma when they received a call urging them to seek shelter.
“Inside, the people were moving the people to the restaurant to the chairs and tables,” said Hugo Parra. “I told everybody: No! Let’s go to the bathrooms!”
He hurried strangers and his family, including a pregnant Ana, toward the bathrooms. Parra estimates that 50-60 people were inside when the tornado hit.
“My wife asked me: Are you scared,” he said. “I said: ‘No.’ I don’t know why, but I felt like I had to protect everybody. It’s what I feel in my heart.”
That selfless act also happened to Kenneth Bolden Sr. He huddled in one bathroom with his 23-year-old son, Kenneth Jr., as his mother curled up underneath a sink in the other bathroom.
“My son was on top of me,” he said. “I was just down on my knees.”
Kenneth Jr said he wanted to shield his father from harm, no matter what.
“I can take a hit for my family,” he said. “If I do survive, I’ll take the hit for my family. I’m younger. I feel like my body would heal faster. If not, then he gets to go on living.”
Mom, dad, and son walked out alive.
