ALEX TEVES, 24, with girlfriend, Amanda Lindgren
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MATT MCQUINN, 27, with his girlfriend
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They took bullets for their beloveds.
Three young men are being hailed as heroes for their old-fashioned chivalry and courage under fire in saving the lives of their girlfriends.
While using their bodies as shields, Matt McQuinn, 27, Jonathan Blunk, 26, and Alex Teves, 24, were killed in the worst mass shooting in US history.
Nine others were also murdered when deranged gunman James Holmes unloaded a fusillade of bullets into the packed Century 16 theater early Friday in Aurora, Colo.
McQuinn dived in front of his girlfriend, Samantha Yowler, also 27, when the gunfire erupted. She was shot in the knee. McQuinn was fatally struck three times.
Jonathan Blunk threw his date, Jansen Young, 21, to the floor, pushing her under the seat.
“Stay down!” he told her, moments before he was shot to death.
“He took a bullet for me,” Young told NBC’s “Today” show.
“He always talked about if he were going to die, he wanted to die a hero,” Blunk’s estranged wife, Chantel Blunk, told NBC News.
Teves, of Phoenix, used his body to cover girlfriend Amanda Lindgren, Teves’ grandmother Rae Iacovelli told The Post.
“He shielded her. He got down on the floor and covered her up,” said Iacovelli, who lives in Barneget, NJ. “She was pulled out from under him. I don’t know who pulled her out.”
Teves, born in Verona, NJ, and raised in Phoenix, had just finished graduate school in Denver. He turned 24 a month ago and had been dating Lindgren for just over a year.
“They were very serious,” Iacovelli said. “He was a good kid. He had so many friends. No matter where he went, he put people at ease. He was a fun kid. A happy boy.”
McQuinn and Yowler met while working at a Target store in Springfield, Ohio. They shared a love of video games and began dating in March 2009. They recently transferred to a store in Aurora, where Samantha’s brother, Nick, has lived for eight years. The three went to the movie together.
Nick told relatives they saw the gunman march into the theater. When he started firing into the audience, Matt and Nick, sitting with Samantha between them, “both jumped sideways in front of her,” family lawyer Ron Scott told The Post.
“Matt took three hits, one in the chest, one in the back, and one in the leg,” he said.
“He was a great kid, and we consider him part of the family,” the Yowler family said of Matt.
Yowler was listed in fair condition after surgery yesterday at Denver Health Medical Center. “She’s on the path to a full recovery,” Scott said.
Both families rushed to out to Aurora to cope with the crisis.
“They’re absolutely shocked and trying to make sense of what happened,” the lawyer said.
Blunk, a divorced dad of two, started dating Young last October.
To their surprise, they managed to snag tickets that day for the highly anticipated “Dark Knight Rises” premiere.
When the masked gunman, identified as James Eagan Holmes, launched his attack on the crowd, Blunk drew on his military experience. “He knew, and threw me on the ground and was like, ‘We have to get down and stay down,’ ” she told the “Today” show.
As shots and screams rang out, she felt herself get struck several times with what she believes was shrapnel.
“Jon gave me one good push against that concrete again, and then . . . I didn’t really feel his arms against my back anymore, but I knew he was still there.”
Then she realized what happened. “I guess I didn’t really know he had passed until I started shaking him and saying, ‘Jon, Jon we have to go . . .” she said. “I know I would not be here today if Jon had not been next to me in that movie theater.”
VERONICA MOSER, 6
“I want to die,” wailed Ashley Moser, when she awoke yesterday to news her beautiful, 6-year-old daughter, Veronica, was dead — the youngest victim in the nation’s worst mass murder.
Moser, weeping and in critical condition in her bed at Aurora Medical Center with bullet wounds to her neck and abdomen, screamed out in her waking moments in the ICU for her little girl.
Ashley was suffering before the shooting ever began, having lost her father three weeks earlier, Annie Dalton, her aunt, told The Post.
“It’s just a terrible time,” she added.
The very close mother and daughter had just moved to Aurora recently, Dalton said, for a brand-new start. Moser had been accepted to medical school.
“They expect her to have some paralysis but don’t know how extensive it will be,” the aunt said.
Veronica was thrilled that her mom was taking her to the midnight premiere of “The Dark Knight Rises.”
“She was excited about life, as she should be. She’s a 6-year-old girl,” Dalton said.
JOHN THOMAS LARIMER, 27
The Navy sailor was described as an “outstanding shipmate,” by his fellow servicemen.
John Larimer of Crystal Lake, Ill., became a cryptologic technician third class, an intelligence officer with the US Fleet Cyber Command stationed at Buckley Air Force Base in Aurora.
“I am incredibly saddened by the loss of Petty Officer John Larimer,” Commander Jeffrey Jakuboski said.
Larimer was the youngest of five siblings and graduated from Crystal Lake South HS in 2003.
“John was only 27 with an incredible life waiting for him,” said his aunt Randee Larimer on Facebook. “John had [an] incredible mind, a rapier wit.”
Jessica Ghawi, 24
A witty redhead who blogged about hockey and aspired to be a broadcast journalist, Ghawi dodged death at a mall shooting in Toronto a month ago but was unable to escape the movie theater in Aurora.
She went by the pen name Jessica Redfield and wrote for the Mile High Hockey blog where she covered the NHL’s Colorado Avalanche.
In one blog entry, Ghawi, who grew up in San Antonio, compared her dating options to pro hockey teams, awarding the title of Class Clown to the New York Islanders.
“There’s something about that team that cracks me up though. Maybe it’s the way that Rick DiPietro takes a punch,” she quipped.
JESSE CHILDRESS, 29
The 29-year-old Air Force staff sergeant was honored with flowers by three of his fellow airmen at a makeshift memorial near the theater. They said he was a “great man.”
Childress hailed from California and was a reservist on active duty as a cyber-systems operator based at the Buckley Air Force Base in Aurora.
“This tragic event has affected everybody here at Buckley Air Force Base and our local community friends and neighbors,” base commander Col. Daniel Dant said in a statement. “We are deeply saddened by the loss of each and every loved one.”
ALEX SULLIVAN, 27
He turned 27 the night of the premiere. An hour before the bloodbath, he tweeted it would “be the best BIRTHDAY ever.”
Today, Alex would have celebrated his first wedding anniversary with wife Cassandra. He was elated she had returned from a 3¹/₂-week vacation Wednesday.
“I love you, Cassie,” he gushed on Facebook.
Alex had recently attended the Denver Comic Con, declaring, “I’m about to get my geek on all night.”
MICAYLA MEDEK, 23
Known as Cayla, she worked as a “sandwich artist” and store closer at a local Subway franchise while also working toward a degree at the Community College of Aurora.
She liked to laugh about her busy life. “I do everything lol,” the 23-year-old wrote on Facebook.
“I’m a simple independent girl who’s just trying to get her life together while still having fun,” she added.
Cayla saw the movie with a bunch of pals. “I lost my Cayla. I lost my Cayla. I want to bring my baby home,” her dad said, according to the LA Times.
REBECCA WINGO, 33
She did it all — working as a waitress, a Chinese interpreter for the military and most recently as an intake specialist at a medical center. But her most important job was caring for her two daughters.
“Those two little girls were the light of her life,” one friend said at a memorial service.
Marcus Weaver, a friend who was with Wingo, 33, when she died, described her as outgoing, philosophical and extremely positive.
“She has tons of friends,” he said.
A.J. BOIK, 18
A class clown and comic-book fan, the Gateway HS student had already seen “The Avengers” four times when he went to see “The Dark Knight Rises.” The teen also hoped to marry his girlfriend Lasamoa Cross, whom he took to see the film.
Known as a class clown, pals put a video of him dancing in a tie-dyed shirt on an online memorial page.
“If you looked anything but happy, he would come up to you and say, ‘This ain’t working. You got to smile,’ ” his friend Michal Westrich told reporters.
GORDON COWDEN, 51
Going to see “The Dark Knight Rises” premiere was a special event for this hard-working father of three, who was so busy running his real-estate appraisal business, he could hardly get out.
Cowden “was always working, always busy during the day. For him to go out at night, it was a treat for him,” said neighbor Mike Paszel.
Cowden, a Texas native whose son Weston is a student at the Merchant Marine Academy, enjoyed the outdoors and particularly liked to hike and ski, a pal said.