Colon said many people were saying goodbyes after a night of fun when the shooting started.
Advertisement
Forty-nine people were killed Sunday when a gunman opened fire at the LGBT nightclub in downtown Orlando. “He’s just shooting all over the place”. “I don’t feel pain, but I just feel all this blood on me”.
Colon said he was leaving the nightclub when the shots rang out.
“I tried to get back up, but everyone started running everywhere”, he said. Colon said he was trampled on by people trying to escape and was later pulled to safety by a police officer.
Later, 20-year-old survivor Patience Carter told the story of how she wound up crammed in a bathroom stall with others as the shooter fired into the stalls. Then he came back.
Colon said the shooter pointed his gun right at him.
By this time, this man, he goes into the other room, and I can just hear more shotguns going on. “I’m dead.'” Mateen shoots him twice, and although he aims for his head, he shoots Colon’s hand and the side of his hip.
“I wish I could remember his face or his name”, Colon said. Now, after making it out alive, he said he credits the hospital for keeping him alive. “I’ll love you guys forever”. “Our awesome nurses and techs were putting them on stretchers and rolling them into us, telling us another patient’s here, another patient’s here, another patient’s here”, Dr. Kathryn Bondani said.
Angel Colon is being treated at Orlando Regional Medical Center.
“It was the worst night of my career, and the best night”, said one staffer, describing how the trauma team rose to the challenge in the aftermath of the attack.
Nurse Megan Noblet cared for Angel Colon. “He just drops me off across the street, and there’s just bodies everywhere”.
Just moments before Noblet had been at home asleep.
Doctors also said they used all the emergency room supplies and had to call for additional supplies.
Patient after patient continued to pour in.
Recalling the shooting, Colon said he played dead – lying motionless on the ground – but didn’t think he’d make it out alive.
Watch a report on the news conference below from WCBS-TV. Further he added, “We need to do something”.
“I’m still here”, she said, concluding the interview.
In addition to the six people in critical condition, there are 5 in “guarded condition” and 16 who doctors consider stable, Cheatham said. This allows hospital staff to prepare for patients and EMS crews to stabilize patients as they are transported. Cheatham says he would not be surprised if the death toll rises and that some of the victims will lasting impact in terms of their functionality. It now stands at 49.
Advertisement
The hospital staff called in surgeons and doctors to match the demand, opening up every operating room in the hospital within 40 minutes of the first arrival of patients.
