Holley Silirie had just gotten her blood pressure checked on the 11th floor of the Northside Hospital Midtown medical building Wednesday when she heard the gunshots. Someone yelled “Active shooter!” Then she saw people running down the hallway. The bystanders’ screams, she said, were haunting.
The Grant Park resident instinctively ran after a hospital worker who ducked into a doctor’s office. They turned off the lights, barricaded the door with an exam table and got down on the floor. Silirie was shaking. Her heart was racing.
“We didn’t know if he was coming around room to room or where he was,” Silirie said of the gunman. “Not knowing that was so traumatizing — just lying in the dark.”
Silirie was among many people who shared harrowing accounts with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution about the deadly shootings in Midtown Atlanta. A 39-year-old woman was pronounced dead at the scene. Four other women were rushed to Grady Memorial Hospital, where three were in critical condition and one was stable on Wednesday.
KJ Johnson was with his son on the ninth floor of the medical building when he heard the pops. A U.S. Air Force veteran from Alpharetta, Johnson said there were about 20 patients inside the waiting room of the medical imaging office when the shooting began. He credits the staff with keeping everyone calm. The doors were quickly locked, Johnson said, and the patients were brought to a back room until police arrived and everyone was allowed to leave.
He helped a woman named Doris, who walks with a cane, down nine flights of stairs to safety.
“She had surgery on one leg and she was having an MRI,” Johnson said. “So we just walked, took our time and she was a champion about it.”
Credit: John Spink
Credit: John Spink
Dr. Sakib Qureshi immediately recognized the sounds he heard were gunshots. But the nurse supervisor who was assisting him with a routine biopsy wanted to be sure. So she left their clinic room at Laureate Medical Group’s Midtown office, opened the locked hallway door and then quickly pulled it shut.
“Active shooter,” the nurse shouted and ran for cover.
Qureshi, a neurologist, bandaged his patient’s biopsy wound and pushed an exam bed against the door to barricade it. They got down on the floor on their bellies, trying not to make a sound. The shooter was somewhere on the other side of his clinic wall.
Another round of gunfire rang out. Qureshi and his patient could hear screams and crying from the waiting room.
“And then there was just quiet,” Qureshi said.
A 911 dispatcher told him the authorities were coming soon. They stayed on the floor until police arrived. Qureshi kept his feet pushed up against the exam bed to make sure it was tight against the door.
“It was horrible to hear someone screaming and crying and hard to not go out there and help,” he said.
Instead, he and his patient waited. He could tell she was crying and praying.
“I was praying and crying, too,” the doctor said.
Just in case, he texted his goodbyes to his family and loved ones.
“I told them I love them. I told them to tell everyone I love, that I love them. And I said, ‘I believe in God,’” Qureshi said.
Dr. Ahmed Ali, the chief of radiation oncology who works on the medical center’s first floor, said he had just reentered the medical center from his lunchbreak when he saw rifle-wielding police officers entering the building.
A security guard, Ali said, told him shots were fired on the 11th floor and that police had been called after an elevator door opened, revealing a pool of blood inside. After he evacuated the building, Ali went to the corner of Spring and 14th streets, his team’s meeting place for fire drills.
“A lot of my colleagues are still in there,” he said.
Back inside, Silirie eventually heard police yelling “Hands up! Hands up!” An officer came to the room where she was hiding and told her it was OK for her to leave. As she headed out of the medical center, she saw injured people being carried out on stretchers. She went to a nearby real estate office, told police there what she had observed and caught a ride home.
“I can’t believe I was there,” said Silirie, who has two teenage children. “I can’t believe the odds of me being, not just in the building, but in the actual office. I’m still processing it. It’s just horrific.”
She added: “How long can this go on like this? I just went to get my blood pressure checked. And I could have not come home to my kids.”
AJC staff writers Shaddi Abusaid, Riley Bunch, Johnny Edwards, Willoughby Mariano and Jozsef Papp contributed to this report.
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