Over the past 24 hours, there have been harrowing stories from the people who were inside Orlando’s Pulse nightclub when a gunman opened fire, killing at least 50 people and injuring 53.
Authorities said Omar Mateen, 29, who said he has ties to ISIS, fired an AR-15 inside the business and held club-goers hostage.
Many described mayhem, but there were also stories of heroism.
Joshua McGill was at the club with his roommates.
The group sneaked out the back door and jumped a fence.
Almost out of harm’s way, McGill was out of the club and running for his life when he saw a man who had been hit by the barrage of bullets.
“At first, I just saw a lot of blood. When I got to him, I noticed he was shot once on each arm. And another time on his shoulder,” he said.
“I told him, ‘I’m here, I’ll be here to help you. I’ll do whatever I can,’” McGill said. “And I said, 'I need to stop the bleeding,' and he just was like, kind of out of it.”
McGill took off his own shirt to make a tourniquet.
He then held him in the back of a police cruiser on the way to the hospital when there wasn’t an available ambulance.
“The instructions they told me were pretty simple. I had to lay on my back in the backseat. They laid him on top of me, and I had to wrap my arms around him and put pressure on the gunshot wound on his back, and hold him on the way to the ER,” McGill said.
McGill didn’t know the man before that night, but he stayed in touch with the man’s friend and learned he’s in stable condition.
McGill hopes to reunite with the man.
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