EXCLUSIVE: Shooting survivor: ‘Everybody’s, like, Run. Get out of here’

ORLANDO — Jimmy La Grega was in a side room early Sunday morning at thePulse night club in Orlando for Latin Night when he heard the sound of gunshots and dropped to the ground.

“We heard shots and we didn’t know. At first you didn’t know if it was the music or something,” La Grega, 30, told The Palm Beach Post when reached by phone in Orlando. “Then everybody started screaming and everybody panicked and ran toward the back.”

The gunshots sounded like they were getting closer, La Grega said. Somehow he was able to make it through one of the doors.

Photos: Orlando nightclub shooting

“Everybody’s, like, ‘Run. Get out of here’,” he said.

La Grega and the friends he came with made it out of the club alive.

But he saw others who weren’t as lucky.

“I saw some guy who was shot and his arm was dangling,” La Grega said.

View a map of where the Pulse nightclub is in Orlando

La Grega said he didn’t see a fight or anything similar to that before the shooting. He said everyone was talking, socializing and having fun. He was in a separate room from where the shooting is believed to have started.

Now he’s wondering how the shooter was able to enter the club with guns.

Full coverage: Orlando shootings

“I think there needs to be better systems in place to make sure people aren’t getting into clubs with guns, especially a rifle,” La Grega said. “How did he sneak a rifle in? How did that happen?”