She recalled the gunman saying, “You know, I don’t have a problem with black people”.
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Appearing Tuesday in a wheelchair alongside the doctors and nurses who treated him, Colon told the staff: “I will love you guys forever”.
Patience Carter, a victim in the Pulse nightclub shooting from Philadelphia, speaks of her experience during a news conference at Florida Hospital Orlando Tuesday, June 14, 2016, in Orlando, Fla. “We would have never thought in a million years that our children would be laying hostage and shot”.
After not hearing gunfire for a while, Santiago chose to crawl out from under the stall to try to get help. And I could actually start to smell, I guess it was gunpowder, it kind of smells like firecrackers going off.
Everyone in the stall tried to be as quiet as possible. ‘We got to get out of here, ‘ they said.
Santiago could not hear the gunman, but Carter did. He said he wanted America to stop bombing his country.
“When we arrived, there were already people hiding in the handicapped stall”, said Angel Santiago, 32. Maybe, she thought, it was something the DJ was playing to get people to leave.
“I was even Snapchatting in the bathroom stall”, she said.
Then she heard the voice. I dialed 911 a few times, tried explaining to the operator what was occurring, what was going on while continuing to hear gunfire.
She, too, discussed seeing the rifle that was used to mow down club-goers, but expressed her conflicting emotions over being happy she wasn’t killed by it or sad that she made it out while others did not. Some were frantically texting or calling relatives, she said, but other phones went unanswered. They said they joined about 15 others in a large bathroom stall. The two of them went to Orlando for the first time this weekend.
“He was like, damn it, it jammed”, she said. “I told her that her shoes were the cutest I’ve ever seen”. She could not believe one man could cause all this mayhem.
“I was just begging God to take my soul out of my body”, Carter said.
That didn’t stop him from firing his gun many more times, she said. No one responded, so Carter threw her phone out to appease him. He described the gunman shot the injured, apparently “making sure they’re dead”. FOX 29 HR Director Megan Young spoke with Carter Monday and said she sounded weak. Then he scooted away.
Carter’s other friend, Tiara Parker, was shot and survived. “I don’t know who that was, but thank you”.
Then a SWAT team broke through a concrete wall with a battering ram, busting the water pipes.
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“I was getting pretty scared because I thought if they don’t come soon, I might drown in this bloody water”, Crater said. Right around 2 o’clock, right when they stopped serving alcohol, that’s when we heard the first round of shots go off. So immediately my friend and I fell to the ground to take cover. She was. So was friend Akira Murray, 18, who was sprawled on Parker’s lap, unresponsive. Recovering from the horrific event is going to be a journey for everyone, she said. I finally heard police arrive, I heard police yelling, “Drop it, hands up”, but I don’t know what was going on.
